EASTERN IOWA REVIEW
  • Home
    • About Us
    • Guidelines
    • Masthead
  • Current Issue
    • Issue 13 - Winter
  • Past Issues
    • Lyric Essay Issues >
      • The Lyric Essay
      • Issue 10 - Spring 2020
      • Issue 8 - Spring 2019
      • Issue 7 - Print Anthology
      • Issue 6 - 2018
      • Issue 3 - 2017 >
        • Editors Note - Issue 3
      • Issue 2 - 2016
      • Issue 1 - 2015
    • Themed Issues >
      • Issue 4 Contributors & Samples
      • Issue 5 - The SmartApocalypse
      • All Things Anne - Issue 9
      • Issue 11 - Hope in Renewal (An Intermission)
      • Issue 12 - Water
  • 3 Sisters Awards
    • The Christine Prose Poetry Award
    • Dory Ann Fiction Award
    • Maggie Nonfiction Award
  • Chapbooks
  • More
    • The Prose Poem
    • Fictions >
      • Contemporary Mystery
      • Dark Fiction
      • Debut Fiction
      • Fan Fiction
      • Honorable Mentions
      • Literary Fiction
      • Mythical Fiction
      • Speculative Fiction
      • Woods-Western-Mountain-Appalachian
      • Young Author
      • Unclassifiable
    • Prizes
    • Interviews
    • List of Contributors
    • Donor Report
(POETRY)

EVERYTHING WE FEAR

​JOHN DORROH

EDITOR'S CHOICE AWARD

Let’s not talk about the coronavirus
or the tornadoes in Nashville
or the tight-lipped man named
Tony in 34C. Let’s not talk about
your mother’s surgery or the cat
who keeps us up most nights or the
possibility that typhoid will return with
a new name like Contra-vic-1003.
Instead, let’s pretend our bodies
are barrels and we roll down the hill
in front of the city museum, up over
the lip of the lake into the murky depths
all the way to Bali. Let’s dip our fingers
into our lattes from that eclectic coffee shop
on the corner of 6th and Sassafrass, fling some
foam on the walls, run away and blame
it on the kids at the next table. Let’s skip
our 2:00 class and conjure up a universe
with rules that apply only to others.

Picture



​John Dorroh
may have taught high school science for a couple of decades. Whether he did is still being discussed. His poems have appeared in Selcouth Station, North Dakota Quarterly, Dime Show Review, Blue Moon Literary & Arts Review, and many others. He also writes short fiction and the occasional rant.

All rights reserved.
© 2012-2021, Port Yonder Press LLC
6332 - 33rd Avenue Drive, Shellsburg IA
www.PortYonderPress.com