Poetry Fall 2013 fiction all issues
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Chris Joyner
Wrestlemania III
& other poems
Carey Russell
Visiting Hours
& other poems
Marc Pietrzykowski
Cabinet of Wonders
& other poems
Jonathan Travelstead
Prayer of the K-12
& other poems
Jennifer Lowers Warren
Our Daughter's Skin
& other poems
Jeff Burt
The Mapmaker's Legend
& other poems
Patricia Percival
Giving in to What If
& other poems
Toni Hanner
1960—Lanny
& other poems
Christopher Dulaney
Uncle
& other poems
Suzanne Burns
Window Shopping
& other poems
Katherine Smith
Mountain Lion
& other poems
Peter Kent
Surliness in the Green Mountains
& other poems
William Doreski
Gathering Sea Lavender
& other poems
Huso Liszt
Fresco, The Forlorn Virgin...
& other poems
Clifford Hill
How natural you are
& other poems
R. G. Evans
Dungeoness
& other poems
David Kann
Dead Reckoning
& other poems
Ricky Ray
The Music of As Is
& other poems
Tori Jane Quante
Creatio ex Materia
& other poems
G. L. Morrison
Baba Yaga
& other poems
Joe Freeman
In a Wood
& other poems
George Longenecker
Bear Lake
& other poems
Benjamin Dombroski
South of Paris
& other poems
Ryan Kerr
Pulp
& other poems
Josh Flaccavento
Glen Canyon Dam
& other poems
& other poems
Christine Stroud
Grandmother
& other poems
Abraham Moore
Inadvertent Landscape
& other poems
Chris Haug
Cow with Parasol
& other poems
Mariah Blankenship
Fiberglass Madonna
& other poems
Emily Hyland
The Hit
& other poems
Sam Pittman
Growth Memory
& other poems
Alex Linden
The Blues of In-Between
& other poems
Bobby Lynn Taylor
Lift
& other poems
D. Ellis Phelps
Five Poems
Alia Neaton
Cosmogony I
& other poems
Elisa Albo
Each Day More
& other poems
Noah B. Salamon
Sanctuary
& other poems
Our Daughter’s Skin
He left for Tikrit when milk,
not language, was pooling
in our daughter’s mouth.
A drowsy suckle.
He is prepared for saw-scaled vipers
and scorpions curled
in the toe of his no-shine boots
but not her dialogue.
She is sand skinned
and camel haired,
everything glistening.
He’s seen the underside of baby shine,
dark grit, bodies turned inside out.
He knows her skin is just casing
and beautiful features are
just pieces, ground sausage.
Tightly packed.
Easily scattered.
God’s Hips
I have hips like God’s.
Ample and unbroken,
a thick sway.
Children slopped out of me
and into cupped hands like
yolks slipping, shell to bowl.
God gave birth too,
oceans and continents crowning.
Stars fell from his strained divinity
like tears. He sweated light.
Thighs spread. Elasticity tested.
Omnipotence intact.
Operation Iraqi Freedom
After an IED they search
and wager,
comparing body parts,
one against the other.
My husband finds the
biggest chunk—
five hundred for the face.
They favor circumference
over length.
Eve Hitchhikes in Hawaii
I pick her up at Haleiwa Beach Park,
home to the North Shore hungry.
She carries a plastic bag
full of strawberry guavas
and three cigarettes,
half smoked and stubbed for later.
A conservationist.
She reaches into the backseat,
touches the inside of my daughter’s ankle,
legs turned out in sleep.
She whispers,
“Soft like Abel, Cain’s toes.”
We talk about spearfishing
for Ulua and trapping the feral pigs
that rut along the ridgeline trails.
She leans deep into the floorboard
and pulls her shirt up,
showing me her coral scarred back.
Then rising with a smile,
crooks both arms against her body
as if still nursing
both brothers.
Eve’s Response
“Well I met him under the tree while Adam was wallowing
in his dreams of God and the grass.
I was bored, Adam was oblivious and He was handsome.
He tongued my innocence.
I was an eternity too young to know the difference
between the systematic tick on the clitoris
and the slow tap of someone knocking
against the wall of my heart.
I sucked syrupy mangos from his fingers and went back to Adam
with the juice still on my lips.”
Jennifer Lowers Warren
has published poetry in Rhino, Nerve Cowboy, and Literary Mama. She lives near a military base somewhere in the world for the next ten years.