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Poetry Summer 2014    fiction    all issues

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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

Cameron Price

Every Morning

New moons fade to longing,

filling the air with transfusions of autumn light.


In the crevices of sleep, the world dreams

of tossing a coin :


heads, we wake up // tails, we keep sleeping.


It is always tails, the doldrums of the covers.


(listen) every morning a clear white note

breaks out over the land : it’s the snap of a

dream sundering.


In that moment, everything wakes up :


                        moss undulates in a breeze that

                        is not there;


            the mice collect twigs and hair

            to build palaces;


      the deer gather to search out the

      most delicate rosebushes to plunder.


And then it ends.


Things revert to rising slowly, as from

a daze or stupor.


Some things feel more hopeless than others :

maybe your back aches mysteriously or you

worry habitually about the bills.


But yet there is still that moment, every morning,

when everything pulses at once, tributary to

one rhythmic source.


                  Don’t blink // don’t sleep.


We must try to rise and feel it every morning,

to remember who we are.



The Silence of The Dead

The final cessation is

a tomb, a stone cup, a chorus,

flung far into a dream

of black water and the rushing

of exhausted exits.


This is the hymn of listening,

a secret hid from the world.


In this cavern, cut smooth

by centuries of bitter water,

I find a pool of gaping shadow.


The bones of every being that came before me

sleep submerged and wait for a sign :

they, too, listen

for a revelation on the other side of the silence.


I tread the stones around the edge,

and watch the brittle hands of the dead wave

like kelp in a secret current.


I kneel and lean my face down to the water

to kiss the menagerie of bones

arranged in grooves of sleep.


A slender finger bent in cold yearning

reaches for my lips

and their memory of warmth :

a frigid caress.


The wait rolls on in constant flow,

in this tomb, this holy cup,

the chorus of the dead :


This is the hymn of listening,

A secret hid from the world.


Now I, too, wait and reach

for lips that come to kiss the dead,

the waiting,

waiting for the end of silence,

for the tomb to break open,

for hope to break open,

and breathe.



L’Ancien Chanson d’Hiver

A thousand yards of linen are not long enough to record this story,

written on the skins of onions in yellow thread,

sewn by fingers of light.


I am in a place, existing in liminal spaces,

like a shred of yesterday lingering in a patch of morning shadow,

fleeing the noon eye.


I am the concrete road, splayed like a compass,

pointing towards your future : walk on.

I am open, split like the gaping mouths of lions,

my strength laying in the multiplicity of my pieces,

the hydra of my being : I live.


Come to this place, warm and humming :

the perfume of a hornet’s nest in June,

the smell of honey in a tree, raw and woody.


Find me there, between the gaps of leafless trees,

waiting like the smell of smoke,

in dappled puddles on a wet path.


I wait there writing my story,

on the backs of beetles and the fingers of bats.

I am there singing this poem through the pores of a leaf,

the mouth of a dandelion.

I am there like a thought, the memory of a still pond in winter,

the sadness of the night passed away.


So wait : be my friend.

Sing this song with me in the hollow of my open hand.

Add to my fullness, find me in the ancient song of winter:

Attende-moi, aime-moi, et chante, mon cher, cher ami.


Cameron Price is a poet living in Ann Arbor, MI. His poetry and experimental film work has appeared in Humble Pie and Small Po[r]tions, respectively. He is the design and visual art editor at Duende, a new online journal of art and literature.

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