Eye Tests
The first technician says, Click
each time you see a flashing light.
I click and click and click.
Let’s try taking a picture of your retina,
she says and switches me to another
machine that flashes light into my eye.
I am blind until framed prints dance
on the office wall like gray ghosts—
so much like teen summers I spent
in a lounger staring into the sun’s
hot eye. Red haze follows me
to a chair. I wait until another technician
calls me. Can you see this? she asks
handing me a photo. I see what appears
as Vaseline oozing in my eye around
tiny blood vessels. She shows me
another photo. This is a healthy eye,
she says. No globs on this photo. I see,
I say. We call that drusen, she says.
Let’s take one more. Get ready
for the flash. The other technician
reports you clicked too many times.
What does this mean? I ask.
The doctor will speak to you soon, she says.
Outside, the sun so bright
and young and tan.
Maryfrances Wagner’s books include Salvatore’s Daughter, Light Subtracts Itself, Red Silk (Thorpe Menn Book Award for Literary Excellence), Dioramas (Mammoth) and Pouf (FLP). Poems have appeared in New Letters, Midwest Quarterly, Laurel Review, Voices in Italian Americana, Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (Penguin Books), Literature Across Cultures (Pearson/Longman), Bearing Witness, The Dream Book, An Anthology of Writings by Italian American Women (American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation), et.al. She co-edits I-70 Review.
Eric Allen Yankee is a poet and freelance writer. His poems appear in publications like Crab Fat Magazine, Vanilla Sex Magazine, Yellow Chair Review, The Good Men Project, The People’s Tribune, and more. His work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. His chapbook RIOT is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. His second chapbook American Bullet will be out later this year through Atomic Theory Micro Press (December 2017).
Lisa Richards earned her B.A. in English and Creative Writing from U.C.L.A., and her M.S.W. from U.S.C. She is a Board Certified Diplomat in Clinical Social Work, and has maintained a consulting practice in Southern California for over thirty years. She is published in her field and has presented at numerous conferences. Lisa received an Honorable Mention from the Academy of American Poets. She recently won residencies from Turkey Land Cove Foundation, Hypatia-in-the-Woods, and University of Washington’s Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center. In 2012, Lisa co-authored Dear Mallory: Letters To a Teenage Girl Who Killed Herself (New Middle Press) following the 2011 suicide of her only child. Dear Mallory received an Honorable Mention in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and was called “hauntingly candid” by The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Dear Mallory has been added to the recommended reading list of the American Association of Suicidology, and is being used as a suicide prevention tool in schools and psychotherapy offices. Dear Mallory is also a resource for survivors of suicide loss.
Deborah Kahan Kolb was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. Much of her poetry reflects the unique experiences and challenges of growing up in, and ultimately leaving, the insular world of Hasidic Judaism. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetica, Voices Israel, Veils, Halos & Shackles (an international poetry anthology on the oppression and empowerment of women), New Verse News, Tuck, Literary Mama, Poets Reading the News, 3Elements Review, Rise Up Review, and Writers Resist. Her poetry won the James E. Tobin Award at Queens College and was selected as a finalist for the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award. Deborah’s debut collection, Windows and a Looking Glass (Finishing Line Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2016 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. You can visit the author at:
Patricia Carragon’s recent publications include Bear Creek Haiku, Sensitive Skin, and Sensations Magazine among others. Her latest book is Innocence (Finishing Line Press, 2017). The Cupcake Chronicles is forthcoming from Poets Wear Prada. Patricia hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She is an active member of brevitas, as well as the PEN Women’s Literary Workshop, Women Writers in Bloom, and Tamarind. She is an executive editor for Home Planet News Online.
Rachael Ikins is a 2016 Pushcart, 2013 CNY Book Award nominee, award winning poet/artist. Her artwork has appeared in one-woman and group exhibits in Syracuse galleries and from Hamilton to Albany and the NYS Fair and her writing in journals around the world. 7/17 she juried into SUM a show by PATF at Point of Contact Gallery, Syracuse. She has been featured poet/artist at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, Tyler Gallery SUNY Oswego 2017, Aaduna fundraiser 2017 Auburn, NY and at Palace Poetry, Syracuse NY. April 2018 she will feature at Word Revisited through the Cayuga Museum, Auburn, NY. Rachael founded and moderated Monday Night Poetry at Sushi Blues, feature & open mic, Hamilton NY.
Laurel S. Peterson is an English professor at Norwalk Community College and her poetry has been published in many literary journals. She has two chapbooks, That’s the Way the Music Sounds (Finishing Line Press) and Talking to the Mirror (Last Automat Press). Her full length collection, Do You Expect Your Art to Answer? (Futurecycle Press) was released in January 2017. She has also written a mystery novel, Shadow Notes, which is available through Barking Rain Press. She currently serves as the town of Norwalk, Connecticut’s poet laureate.
The Paddock Review 