#14 Harbor Review
Future in the Past
by Nataliia Burmaka
Editor’s Note
I'm so pleased to present the 14th issue of Harbor Review Magazine, where we continue to explore the depths of human experience through poetry and art. This issue features a diverse array of voices and themes, each piece offering a unique perspective on the world around us.
In Priyanuj Mazumdar's poignant poem "how to love in times of a genocide," the poet grapples with the weight of global suffering and personal loss, asking, "how do you love in times of a genocide? what does it matter? if you take out all the stars from the sky, is it even a sky anymore?". This powerful reflection on love and resilience in the face of unimaginable hardship sets the tone for the issue.
Sami Helgeson's "A Baby Mouse is Called a Pinky," delves into the innocence of childhood and the early lessons of loss. The poet writes, "baby mice in woodchips teach loss early grubby hands can only hold so much grief". This evocative imagery captures the delicate balance between innocence and the harsh realities of life.
We invite you to immerse yourself in the rich tapestry of voices and stories that make up this issue. Each poem and piece of art is a testament to the power of creativity and the persistence of our spirit. Enjoy the journey.
Kristiane Weeks-Rogers
Feburary 2025
how to love in times of a genocide
by Priyanuj Mazumdar
what did you get me? you ask on valentine’s day. i’m sorry honey,
i forgot. so much is dying in the world, what if our love is one of them?
you forget to make me dinner. it’s fine, lost my appetite
from watching the butchery of palestinian bodies and souls anyway.
4th hour on the 4k tv, 4th day in a row. that’s all we do anymore.
i can still see my cat’s face the day he died, my sweet baby. think about
the children of gaza, the mothers of gaza—orphaned and childless, yet
my tears received more tenderness.
if i cover my eyes, i see precious little sidra hanging from the concrete slab,
disfigured.
you say you need a break
and turn on the super bowl. an israeli propaganda ad
gets the crowd going. you don’t find it amusing,
you don’t mind it either. you don’t get it, and neither do i.
but i am the son of a colonized nation. when my people bow to colonizers,
my ancestors wonder which side of history we would be on
if the british never left.
you forget that blood washes away, scars stay.
when you bruise your leg, do you ask me how much it hurts?
love, i have something to say. i didn’t forget to buy you a gift.
you look at me and answer in mourning. please say something, please say
something. my heart’s combustible after all.
for now, can i lay my head on your chest and listen to your heartbeat?
how do you love in times of a genocide? what does it matter?
if you take out all the stars from the sky, is it even a sky anymore?
Sculpture
Diewke van den Heuvel
A Baby Mouse is Called a Pinky
by Sami Helgeson
milk at preschool
slush ice chaser to
goulash ladling itself down
open toddler throats
ready to sing about hunting
the bear from the nap room
blue crayon as
house paint as
eyeshadow as
boy or not boy
pink crayon as
tablecloth as
tattoo as
girl or not girl
baby mice in woodchips
teach loss early
grubby hands can only hold
so much grief
at the thought now of a mother
mouse returning to find there is no
name for a parent that has lost a child
Lady Asia Weeping
Ernest Williamson III
#126
by Debbie Feit
—For Steven Branfman, in memory of Jared Branfman
Rather than shake his fists
at the God who called his child
home for dinner when it was still light out
and the other kids were allowed to stay
out and play, he opened them,
held them around a lump of clay,
and began to shape and mold
until something took hold.
His hands guided,
not the nervous boy
on his first two-wheeler;
his hands shaped,
not the upstanding character
of a fine young man;
his hands built
a vessel for his grief.
And then another.
And another.
How many vessels does it take to hold
everything you have lost?
What type of vessel is worthy
of holding such precious cargo?
A chawan is a traditional Japanese tea bowl designed to be held
with both hands. It takes both hands to hold a prayer book open
to the Mourner’s Kaddish, the prayer said after the loss of a parent,
sibling, spouse…or child. The chawan is traditionally hand-shaped
rather than thrown on a potter’s wheel. He had been thrown when his
son was diagnosed with brain cancer. The chawan is a critical element of
the Japanese tea ceremony, which brings family and friends together. The
Mourner’s Kaddish needs to be said in the presence of a minyan--at least
ten adults—so that the mourner is not alone in their grief. Alone in his
pottery studio, he began making a single chawan every day for a year.
He made nothing else. It was his own way of saying Kaddish,
of honoring his son. The Mourner’s Kaddish is said every day
for a year. At the end of the year, he had 365 chawan.
Not enough to contain all his grief, but it was a start.
He eventually glazed and fired and displayed
all the chawan. Some he sold.
Number 126 sits on my bookcase.
I like to hold it with both hands.
Impressioni
Maurizio Fusillo
Ephemeral Lake, Death Valley
by juj e lepe
I hear the desert flows with rain.
Honeysuckle crowds the corners of spring
Streams, birds arrive like cerebral songs I'm reminded
I've forgotten. And the rovers send dispatches
From Mars: see the shadow of sun
Leave one hemisphere
For another, watch a deluge of milk
Barrel the planet's eye. Satellites deny a drought
With their imaging: the Sierras carry white animals
On their backs, and it's all super
Blooms and basins now. I trudge through space,
Lying in the Driftless
With bone fingered branches
Crowding my periphery, with hills that make the sky seem
Like an obvious globe. In the blue above,
An eagle circles me, I think because I'm so good
At clutching the earth, at being like death, but his circles
Circumvent my deception,
He is carried off by wind in spiraling apogee.
What I know of the world becomes trivial,
And then becomes a lie. Graffiti in the driveway.
Antlers in the mouth of a dog.
Composition
Michael Noonan
her rape
by Justine Payton
In darkness with cum-coated thighs she decides to minimize her rape.
Le Rose lip gloss and a slight hair toss easily disguise her rape.
Shaded lamps and the buzz of white noise in a void —
the therapist offers a blank stare, tells her to reprise her rape.
She tries to explain. He was a good boy with friends.
But he wants to know what she wore. She must bowdlerize her rape.
2AM brings cold tiles and pooled tears, whipped by chains of insomnia.
The walls echo her cries — theirs are the only voices to vocalize her rape.
Now the drinks come easy with curves and tight shirts,
in the embrace of intoxication she learns to anesthetize her rape.
Unnamed men line up to come between her legs,
in a barbarian ritual meant to baptize her rape.
Salivating for mined pleasure in the feminine mystique,
from Mary to Persephone — we mythologize her rape.
Years pass in a monthly deluge of vaginal secretions,
stain red the violating passage to slowly amortize her rape.
Waver on the precipice of a life held in suspense —
Justine, speak! With these words, humanize her rape.
Balaa
Sjafril
End Days
by Amy Thatcher
I eat baby carrots on the couch
and watch California wildfires race
toward Earth’s ultimate screw you.
What gods are left have quit listening.
I’ve decided to die
right here in the living room
with my mother lying on a rented
hospital bed, thin as the spine
of a deveined shrimp. She waits
for me to turn the channel
back to Clark Gable
kissing another soft-jawed
beauty. Cigarette smoke rising
from her hand like a middle finger.
Future in the Past
Nataliia Burmaka
godbless
by Joanna Deng
My ma peels pomegranate
the way my daddy holds a gun
Her thumbs tucked
Head bent
and I wonder if her heart is as methodical
as how her fingers are when they claw past white
leaving nothing but palmed seeds from pulp
to spike with morning glories for dinner.
My daddy smells of girls when he comes home
perfumed like the ones in lace by the bar on the strip,
who are doused in powder
with pig eyes popped past their sockets.
He has been out hunting again, he says,
his cheeks flushed like bruised wineapples
as he slaps another skinned fish, tagged at the wing, into the kitchen sink
My ma once told me that there’s always a hesitation before we pull our first trigger
A single pause to pray because
the best kills are carried out alongside apologies.
When we fly to America
everything my daddy knows is castrated except for his manhood
and my ma learns how to shed the film from her eyes first
scraping them clean with metal
revealing something pummeled with paradise beneath them
perforated with scales.
Now she paints the kitchen sink red and slathers souls into the lines of her palms without thought.
She is fond of skinning, I think,
and we drink the sin from her cupped hands
on the hunt for a sensation that’ll send gunpowder free falling through our veins.
I watch fish peels swallow pomegranate piss in that sink
two bloods turned to one,
And remember
my daddy’s favorite color is red;
not the firecracker kind
nor the lucky in his red envelopes,
but he never tells us if the shade he likes is worth searching for
or if he’s ever found it himself.
Last Supper
Alexey Adonin
exile
by Jessica Popeski
don't you want to be alive before you die? – anthony doerr
a prayer can be anything:
this lilac morning, its navy
blue branches, & sparrow
specs. i slice a radish &
think of you; everyone has
the right to disappear. on
our walks, the streets teem
with blossom: butter &
peach-pearl. here's something
i wonder: because my puppy
was born in winter, was young
in winter, does she know
instinctively there is a summer
to come, or will it be a surprise?
i have a throat full of russian;
not nonsense: nursery rhymes.
i reread my sent emails to
remind me who i am, slather
cream on the reptilian skin
of my knuckles and wrists,
crosshatched by papercuts;
everyone has a right to do away
with themselves if they want.
pain zigzags; i exile my foot to
forget when it was ripped off,
flesh-seams fraying, dangling
by a ribbon of ligament,
selvage scrapped. i'm ragweed-
skinny, again. remember: now
all the nice things mean nothing.
Une soirée bordée de rouge — An evening bordered red
JC Alfier
The Nightly News
by Noah Soltau
When I remember to drag myself
Out from under the wet blanket of August
I take my heart out of the crisper drawer
And put it in your mouth
When I remember to extract the tarred
Roofing nails from the soles of my feet
I dance past our burning house
And take you in my arms
When I remember to rinse the concrete dust
And bone fragments off of my eyeballs
I squeeze them back into my head
And look at the life that you’ve built
When I remember to sit in the garden
Of silence that I have planted for myself
I leave the gate cracked open
And wait like a ram at the altar
When I remember to kill the old man
That sits in the back room watching
I will bring you his silver tongue
And we will grow a fig tree from it
The Way Of Nature
Abubakar Sadiq Mustapha
The Flowers
by Yubeen Karen Lee
After Japanese soldiers took young Korean girls to become “comfort women,” or sexual slaves during World War II, the women were brutally raped for years.
Across the soft gardens, the children fly
their kites, turning the world
upside down, the sky sprouting roses.
Bloodstains emptied the village, stealing
the green from the ginkgo leaves—only
the swaddled baby breathed.
By the wooden door, soldiers stripped us
naked of dignity in brackish occupation.
Hye, innocent and just fourteen, recited
Buddhist scripture every day, asking to be
saved. But there was no savior. Even after
their escape, shots flooded the ban
of the Han River. Some soldiers wore
smiles, shining teeth swimming through
the mud. Wading through villages with
families, babies, smiles blaspheming Hye’s buddha.
One of the girls said her name was Sol.
Another’s name circled the garden like a miracle—
Nabi. Close friends by the end
of the war, the pine trees stood
strong, house after village house. The smell
wrapping around each, cleansing
the cigarette butts of their blood. Now, the borders
between enemies blur. Everyone in the village lives
as one family, sharing each breath.
The soldiers ask for forgiveness.
It’s Christmas, and snow whispers until the
day dozes, relieving itself of weight, having
witnessed the world. Souls flake as they
return
to life on the ground. The hillock,
white as canvas. Winter passes and the
world turns right-side up, pink cosmos
sprinkling
the blossoming hills. The flowers se
to shout, beautiful girls lay in this field
Should we forgive them? Even when we
do
step on the flowers, they blossom again.
Chosen Family
Diana Baltag
Adjusted in the Tomb
by Marisa Lainson
—after Emily Dickinson
All the jacarandas are in bloom and still I want
to die. The miner bees dig their dirt nests
into the bluffs and I’ve never seen a hole
I didn’t want to stick my fingers into: lovers,
wormholes, power sockets. Every cliff is a ladder
or launching pad. Either way you meet God
and, likely, disappoint him, so I keep my toes flat
on the precipice for now. I won't tell you I want
the bees to sting me, but let's just say a past self
forgot another staff meeting so I punished her
by not eating for three days. My shrink
keeps saying You let your ADHD collude
with your disordered eating. The meds
are supposed to help me be a human but
they lock my appetite in a dark trunk, so
now I attend staff meetings and eat
three fingernails for lunch. Depression, she says, is
a common comorbidity of executive dysfunction.
Comorbidity makes me think of two corpses
curled around each other in a mossy grave, big
Emily Dickinson vibes, I died for beauty
but was scarce adjusted in the tomb, etc.
etc. Point is, I crave another skeleton
to wrap around my own, skull cupped
in someone’s scapula like spoons
tucked together in a hot dishwasher. Some nights
I press warm spoons against my eyelids
and pretend they're Death’s palms. She's leading me
blind across a highway, her breath hot on my neck
and we’re barefoot in a river and Surprise!
It's heaven, after all, everyone
I ever could have loved spooning and singing
hymns on a checkered picnic blanket, eating
fistfuls of mashed potatoes and I don't have to
have a face or press my body into shapes
others like to call she. But here I am,
alive and something next to human or
woman on a cliff's upper lip, wailing
the mind's small fists against the shell
of the world. I press gnawed fingertips
against the holes of the bees’ nests but not
inside. Lord, lord, let me sink into the ground
and curl up against soft yellow bodies buzzing
in the darkness. I am starving again
for something even jacarandas can't sing.
