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R.H. Miller – “Genome” and “Junction Cemetery”
Genome To see my genes encodedwould be an experience of terror.I should be overcome by bothfear and awe. Doctors predictwe will all be mapped nothing hiddenforced to face Nature’s dirty secretsface our Alzheimer’s our Parkinson’sour Huntington’s our cancersour MS our ALS our cardiac flaws.Yet as for me I prefer to stumble oninto the end of…
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Kathleen Gregg – “Sightings” and “Cut, Gathered, Arranged”
Sightings A glee club of honks drawsmy eyes skyward. Canada geesesoaracross beaming blue sky,a rippling chevronof sound and wing, life in full flight.Like my sister, once. Not this ghost of a featherdetached, adriftin thickening fog. Lifeabout to lose visibility. I watch the formation shrinkto a black arrow shootingsouth. Most geese will survivethis grueling migration, never…
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Adam Valentine – “Lean so I can whisper” and “You better hope you don’t run out of wishes”
Lean so I can whisper You know how he comes riding up on his tractor, shaking like his edgescan’t set, rolling past you a little since the brakes don’t work right, tellinghow he’s ready to scare the grass down around the radio, the dogsraising from piles like dirty snow, him covered like the dust tried…
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Melissa Helton – “Blip”
Blip – after “Today” by Hao Wang Today once more,the sun glared off the winter-saltedroad and my eyes narrowedto mostly-blind slitsas I commuted east. I will trynot to make thata metaphorfor being Americanor being white in Americaor being a straight-passingqueer in America. I will leavemy poetry notebook onthe bedside table, beside the crustyteacup whose baghas…
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Bob Bires – “Redeployment”
Redeployment The last hourcomes downto a fruitlesssearch for an olivegreen sock,baby Joshua screechingeach time one of themsets him down,the tv’s irrelevantweather forecast,burnt meatloaf,and the smell ofheated metaland bitter smoke,once the watersteaming the potatoeshas simmeredaway. Robert Bires writes in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He and his wife, a Kentucky native, married in Lisman, Kentucky in a small church…
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Hallie Fogarty – “Fidelity”
Fidelity Chainsaws on summer morningswake you from razor-red dreams,drag you from the harsh softness of sleep. In another life, you wake in another woman’sbed, with vomit on your sleeve. In another life, you ache for this one.Ache for someone to instruct you,to invent a time machine,take you back to when the earthwas soft beneath your…
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Book Beat Spring 2023 – Reviews by Elaine Palencia
At Pegasus we draw great pleasure in celebrating the work of our colleagues. Although Book Beat only reviews poetry, we will be happy to announce books members publish in other genres. If you are a member of the Kentucky State Poetry Society and interested in having a recently published work reviewed for publication in Pegasus,…
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2022 Student Poetry Contest Winners
Category Place Student Name Poem Title 1 First Sally Birnsteel Right Where I Want to Be 1 Second Bingqi “Pinkie” Lin So Beautiful, So Brown? 1 Third Gabriel # The Stars Poem 2 First Ruth Uwajeneza Rwanda and the United States 2 Second Presleigh Hill Pretty 2 Third Ashlynn Elmore Papaw 3 First Arson Rai…
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Editor’s Note Fall 2022
When I sit down to write these notes, I am often at a crossroads of elation and exhaustion; elated at the content of Pegasus issues and exhausted with the expectations, pressures, and assaults of everyday American life in Kentucky. These challenges are just a part of life. And yet, they can become exhaustingly complicated and…