Poetry
From Issue III (2018) 
Nest | LINDA LAINO
Watercolor, mixed media on hand-felted wool and rice paper on wood panel, 12 x 10 in., 2017
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Age 5, Considers
the Causes of Exile and Migration
by MARK LUEBBERS
Having moved with her family to Kansas
from Wisconsin woods, by way of
Missouri, but before her father’s lease
on the new farm was revoked for lying
on the Osage Diminished Reserve
in her early girlhood, she waded
through the bluestem grass, trying
both to sway, and to stay upright.
Behind the gray-brown house, she found
nests of fleeing mice, who ignored
her apologies and appeals to come back.
Quail too, launched from their hatchlings,
leaving them to scatter under the thatch
and in her chest, she could feel
the percussion of wings.
And once, ferrets—which she scared off
with her careless steps, and they were like
threads of a dream: traceless, slippery
in the dim light under the grass
and almost gone before one knew
they were ever there.
Everything leaves, she thought:
grasshopper, milkweed seed, V of geese
—pushed by wind, cold, hunger
or a shadow beyond
reckoning.
Mark Luebbers
Mark Luebbers teaches English and poetry in Cincinnati, Ohio. His poems have appeared in The Apple Valley Review, Kudzu House, The Wayfarer, and Wilderness House Literary Review. Mark’s collaborations with Benjamin Goluboff will be published this summer in the anthology They Said, published by Black Lawrence Press.
Linda Laino
Linda Laino is an artist, writer, and teacher. She has an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Since 2012, she has resided in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where the surreal atmosphere and sensuous colors have wormed their way into her paintings. Her essays and poetry can be found in Elephant Journal, The New Engagement, Sheila-Na-Gig Journal, and Life In 10 Minutes. Her website is lindalaino.com.