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| Issue 24: | 30 Aug. 2024 |
| Cheribun: | 60 words |
By Dick Westheimer
What the Gods Have Decided
Since my coronary, I’ve learned the alchemy of blood, how its pumping must be slowed, how its thinning helps it flow, how much the human heart hungers for more, how it blossoms into bruises as lurid as oil on a bird’s wing.
every day counting pills like talismans I swallow an offering wrapped in time
—Short-listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #2
Dick Westheimer
lives in rural southwest Ohio with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared or are upcoming in Abandon Journal, Minyan, Only Poems, Rattle, and Whale Road Review. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands: Poems Responding to Russia’s War on Ukraine, is published by SheilaNaGig.
Author’s website: Poetry, Poetics, and Their Discontents
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