Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 5, is now online. Yeah, you heard right…, Issue 5. We’re shifting our new volume year to begin in April starting in 2017. For now, enjoy a special BONUS issue to Volume 18 with new poems by Laura Falsetti, Sara Henning, Elizabeth Onusko, Alyssa Jewell, John A. Nieves, Hayden Saunier, Wendy Drexler, Wendy Taylor Carlisle, Alina Borger, Sarah Carleton, Allyson Jeffredo, Wendy DeGroat, Charlotte Covey, Judith Montgomery, Carmen Germain, and Christopher Citro. Stay tuned later in the month for new reviews by Jeff Whitney and Barbara L. Estrin.
Tag Archives: Alina Borger
The Plural of Grief
by Alina Borger
Ekphrastic response to Untitled Work by Eliezer Sotillo
Her son’s pygmy frog floated near the top of its tank one Tuesday evening in fall. She had to explain the epistemology of it all (how do we know frog isn’t coming back), traditional Western toilet bowl burial rituals, and where the water goes.
Also, her mother’s long illness, the death she’d forgotten to keep expecting, and weeks later her father’s cancer. The please no prayers, the please not again prayers, the please, just please prayers she murmurs underneath her working and sleeping.
The productivity of it all still astonishes her, facing inward, concentrating entirely on something so deeply held only to let it go—like running long distance, like giving birth. Everything else pushed out of the way, face white, eyes closed.
Surprising, too, what returns. Even with a benediction on her lips, ready to take a breath, lift her head, move on, that damn frog sprang to life again, its legs pushing through unflushed water until she found the net and scooped him back out.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 4.
Alina Borger writes and teaches in Iowa City, IA. She is the author of Tuesday’s Children, a chapbook from Hermeneutic Chaos Press, and her work recently appeared or is scheduled to appear in Midwestern Gothic, The Mom Egg Review, and The Pittsburgh Poetry Review.
See all items about Alina Borger
Disappearing Shore
by Alina Borger
Ekphrastic Response to “Southeastern Louisiana” by Beth Aala
The space where something is:
her mother, watching the kids play
or making Thanksgiving dinner
just to feed the giblets to the dogs
who ordinarily get a firm No over
table food. Her mother, perched
near the computer, a managing
sort of matriarch, drinking Tab.
It’s a firm place to stand, the space
where a thing is where it belongs,
like land, like breathing, like being
above water and seeing the sky.
The space where something isn’t:
all of those. Also, the Kohl’s card,
the Facebook account, the phone,
and her mother’s bed, now hosting
relatives who visit the old house
her parents occupied so faithfully
all the years of their marriage.
While it’s possible to stand there,
in the space where a thing isn’t
anymore, it’s more like sinking, like
wishing, like wading out waist deep
to touch the bamboo poles marking
so many places people once lived.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 4.
Alina Borger writes and teaches in Iowa City, IA. She is the author of Tuesday’s Children, a chapbook from Hermeneutic Chaos Press, and her work recently appeared or is scheduled to appear in Midwestern Gothic, The Mom Egg Review, and The Pittsburgh Poetry Review.
See all items about Alina Borger