Poetry Summer 2014 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Anne Rankin-Kotchek
Letter to the World
from a Dying Woman
& other poems
Sara Graybeal
Ghetto City
& other poems
Tee Iseminger
Construction
& other poems
Lisa Beth Fulgham
After They Sold the Cows...
& other poems
Mary Mills
The Practical Knowledge
of Women
& other poems
Monika Cassel
Waldschatten, Muttersprache
& other poems
Michael Fleming
To a Fighter
& other poems
Daniel Stewart
January
& other poems
John Glowney
Cigarettes
& other poems
Hannah Callahan
The Ptarmigan Suite
& other poems
Lee Kisling
How the Music Came
to My Father
& other poems
Jose A. Alcantara
Finding the God Particle
& other poems
David A. Bart
Veteran’s Park
& other poems
Greg Grummer
War Reportage
& other poems
Rande Mack
rat
& other poems
J. K. Kitchen
Anger Kills Himself
& other poems
Jim Pascual Agustin
The Man Who Wished
He Was Lego
& other poems
Jessica M. Lockhart
Scylla of the Alabama
& other poems
James P. Leveque
Three Films of Jean Painlevé
& other poems
Kelsey Charles
Autobiography
& other poems
Therese L. Broderick
Polly
& other poems
Lane Falcon
Touch
& other poems
Ricky Ray
The Bird
& other poems
Phoebe Reeves
Every Petal
& other poems
David Livingstone Fore
Eternity is a very long time...
& other poems
Tim Hawkins
Northern Idyll
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
On the Pillow Where You Lie
& other poems
Joey DeSantis
Baby Names
& other poems
Cameron Price
Every Morning
& other poems
David Walker
Sestina for Housesitting
& other poems
Helen R. Peterson
Ablaut
& other poems
Winner of $200 for 2nd-place-voted Poems
Sara GraybealGhetto City
My students have created a board game
Out of cardboard, tape, and staples.
Ghetto City, they call it.
A numbered path leads to a 3D hut
With a restless stick figure in the window.
The goal: reach jail and bail your brother out
Before getting shot.
We play the day John’s brother gets booked
And the day Kareem’s uncle comes home.
We play the day of the middle school shooting,
Two kids with guns, none of my students,
Nobody hurt. We play as if these things
Make the game all right, safe still,
Hypothetical.
When funders visit, we hide Ghetto City
Under a red sheet in the back of the class.
My students cross their arms, discuss the impact
Of arts enrichment on their lives.
When we play, I am usually the first to get shot.
My students love the way that this makes sense,
And all the ways it doesn’t. When I suggest
A new game, they are disappointed in me.
It doesn’t work that way, they say.
General Store Café
All day, jazz. At a blue table, Masquerade dancer painted on top
One hand cradling a jug of wine & a white clown face
Glittery scarf, arched eyebrows, dotted eyes
On the walls stained glass, green & gold
Bounce light every which way, winding
Wind chimes, shelves painted lilac, housing
Cloth dolls, home-made post cards, wreaths
Disheveled over rims of chairs, a bookcase of local books
That we don’t want to read
But will pretend to
When forced
To, when there is no one else to share our table
So much jazz: oil paintings of farm animals
Pig snouts blowing kisses
Herons psychedelic lime green & pink
A sack labeled Product of Colombia, 70 Kilos—
To which twenty-first century soul
Did this old thing appear artistic?
Rabbit wind vanes, painted wood critters
A forest goddess cloaked in hand-stamped robes
Carly’s Grab ‘Em By the Cowtail mocha
A plaque stating Love me, love my dog
& butterflies swinging from the ceiling.
A woman walks in, eyes wide, lost stare
Her sweatshirt spelling United We Stand
Can I get a coffee, she says, trips
Over the frayed rug, bumps
Into the boom box, plastered with
Bumper stickers & rainbow flags
The radio stutters, shifts from jazz
To Christmas tunes
Jingle bells jingle bells, faces fall flat around the café
What is this CVS music? This gas station music?
What is this music that turns my mocha bitter?
That spins the butterflies idly, that nauseates
The herons in pink-green waves, that reminds me
I am spending twelve dollars & eighty-six cents
On my organic fair trade in-season spinach quesadilla
Music that sounds like my grandmother’s house where she
Stuffed my stocking, read from the Bible
I do not visit Grandma now
She cringes at my unshaved legs
This music, these fucking lullabies
That make me want to snap shut my laptop
Step outside, reach my fingers to the sky &
Hold the world close; no
Not the café—
Hold the world close; recall that
These are two different things
I am a citizen of both &
One is begging
Eat your spinach quesadilla for the right reasons &
Switch the station now & then, if only for a second because
Just jazz can get to be too much.
Did You Hear That, Just Now?
Zimmerman not guilty.
Trayvon Martin dead.
In South Philadelphia,
Silent streets: a sleepy fig tree,
Bony cats stalking their prey.
Is rising up too much to ask
On a July night like this one,
Wearing rage on our bodies
As we do on our Facebook pages?
Are we all so weary, so unsurprised
That a march is unattainable,
That the fury of our solitary brains,
Our fingers whipping across the keys
Are the most we can offer up
In the name of solidarity?
If it were the sixties, millions would have marched.
If it were the nineties, streets would have burned.
But it is 2013. The numbers ring apocalyptic.
Sidewalks are bare. Windows so dark
It seems all souls have departed.
I am Trayvon Martin
We are Trayvon Martin
The cries, once smothered by sirens,
Forced entries and the clink of handcuffs
Around the smooth wrists of brothers and sons
Stand no chance against this silence.
Boarded windows splinter open.
Potholes yawn. They will swallow
These cries by morning.
These homes, vacated of hope,
Will soon be yoga studios and
Montessori schools. And finally,
The fight—the few voices still
Murmuring over candlelight
In buildings slated for demolition
By winter—will drift to places still
Worth fighting for. I cannot tell
Whether or not they will be missed.
Raised on a vegetable and cattle farm in North Carolina, 
Sara Graybeal is a writer, spoken word performer and teaching artist living in Philadelphia. She is a founding member of the Poeticians, a spoken-word collective based in South Philly, and a member of the Backyard Writers’ Fiction Workshop of West Philadelphia. Her work is published or forthcoming in Tempered Magazine, Apiary Magazine, the Head & the Hand Press, and Floating Bridge Review.