Lit Fox Poetry Series
Spring 2025
STRATAGEM
I hung my father’s photograph on the wall
above his notepad, signet ring,
stethoscope, ten shaving brushes.
That was my stratagem for grief.
The items glistened in the evening sun
before the stars came out,
and I drank my nightly Chardonnay.
Next to me is his yad.
He was not a religious man.
Nor was he an optimistic one.
Though his favorite novel was utopian.
Some look to the meteors and shooting stars
for those they’ve lost.
I thought I saw him once
on the Western coast
of Costa Rica.
And he said, Forgive everyone,
including yourself.
It was a wild place still.
This poem originally appeared in the Baltimore Review.
The Poet
Elizabeth J. Coleman is editor of Here: Poems for the Planet (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), and author of two poetry collections published by Spuyten Duyvil Press. She has written three chapbooks and translated a sonnet collection into French. Elizabeth’s current collection was or is a finalist or quarter finalist for seven book prizes. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including 32 Poems, Baltimore Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Colorado Review, and Rattle. A public interest attorney for many years, Elizabeth received her MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2012.
Winter 2025
MARSH
March rears its head and I am once again remembering how to breathe.
The egrets, asking for nothing, stalk through foxtail
while the boys on the old railroad bridge can be heard
screaming a mile away before splashing below into frigid waters.
Sweet peach tea in the afternoons and eating my heart out in the evenings,
I am both the deer on the side of the road and the car hurtling towards it.
Where there’s one there’s always more.
This too can be a prayer or an omen.
Bones laying where the backroads meet the marsh.
I lived here once, they say, as well as
the fawn in the meadow will wait for a mother that will never return.
Those moments where we are able to tell
when we are seeing something for the last time
do not come often enough.
My brother visits me in the form of a mourning dove,
calling in a language I’m not fluent in.
Isn’t that sound sweeter than anything?
March comes around one more time
and I have gone home and killed no one in the process.
The Poet
Lev St. Valentine (he/him) is a queer/transmasc writer originating from Russia. He is currently based in the Pacific Northwest. He received his BLA from Xavier University in 2020. His work has been featured in Arboreal Magazine, Papers Publishing, and several local galleries in Seattle. In his free time he enjoys painting, gardening, and letting bugs crawl over his skin. You can find him on Patreon @levstvalentine and at his website: levstvalentine.squarespace.com
Fall 2024
The Science of Longing
I’m no believer, no scientist. I am a daughter
sitting opposite my dead mother
at the breakfast table, the distance between us
as large as the gravitational pull
between binary stars. It’s possible infinite
dimensions exist, not just the three, and once
I knew Jesus, the Truth who rose from the dead.
Now, all I know is the dumb muffle
of TV, the doorbell’s silence, this breakfast
table, no breakfast. There is much I’d like science
to answer. Is it all or nothing: alive or dead? Why
am I ashamed to hope? Will I ever break my orbit
around her constant death? Dear science,
is my longing yet large enough? Perhaps
my mother sits at the table in a dimension
only a dog can hear. She asks where she is, or
where am I, or where her life has gone. Why
I’m so old, why she so young, why death made us
into sisters, estranged for light years,
who have forgotten how to talk to one another.
The Poet
