Poetry Winter 2013 fiction all issues
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Alysse Kathleen McCanna
Pentimento
& other poems
Peter Nash
Shooting Star
& other poems
Katherine Smith
House of Cards
& other poems
David Sloan
On the Rocks
& other poems
Alexandra Smyth
Exoskeleton Blues
& other poems
John Glowney
The Bus Stop Outside Ajax Bail Bonds
& other poems
Andrea Jurjević O’Rourke
It Was a Large Wardrobe...
& other poems
Lisa DeSiro
Babel Tree
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Reptiles
& other poems
Michael Berkowitz
As regards the tattoo on your wrist
& other poems
Michael Brokos
Landscape without Rest
& other poems
Michael H. Lythgoe
Orpheus In Asheville
& other poems
John Wentworth
morning people
& other poems
Christopher Jelley
Double Exposure
& other poems
Catherine Dierker
dinner party
& other poems
William Doreski
Hate the Sinner, Not the Sin
& other poems
Robert Barasch
Loons
& other poems
Rande Mack
bear
& other poems
Susan Marie Powers
Red Bird
& other poems
Anne Graue
Sky
& other poems
Mariah Blankenship
Tub Restoration
& other poems
Paul R. Davis
Landscape
& other poems
Philip Jackey
Garage drinking after 1989
& other poems
Karen Hoy
A Naturalist in New York
& other poems
Gary Sokolow
Underworld Goddess
& other poems
Michal Mechlovitz
The Early
& other poems
Henry Graziano
Last Apple
& other poems
Stephanie L. Harper
Unvoiced
& other poems
Roger Desy
anhinga
& other poems
R. G. Evans
Hangoverman
& other poems
Frederick L. Shiels
Driving Past the Oliver House
& other poems
Richard Sime
Berry Eater
& other poems
Jennifer Popoli
Generations in a wine dark sea
& other poems
Landscape
I like the way
lamplight makes the page
of the book
I’m reading gleam.
A wild vanilla with
crazed insects wobbling
into my mind.
I start to close
the book
and night appears,
sheep stranded high
on the outcropping.
Between the pages
is the everdark valley
of no language,
where words cross over
hurriedly to reach
the other side.
I put the book down,
the words don’t fall out,
or over themselves.
They are locked in place,
like fresh eggs in their
cartons, asleep
and dreaming of speech.
Second Vision
Too many eyes, too many things to see.
Twin cathedral steeples, nipples
erupting from the breasts of God.
Signs falsely proclaiming pizza is both
original and Italian.
Conversations boomerang off bent elbows,
mismatched words litter avenues.
Briefcases, laptop attache cases,
bag lunches, boxes of pizza for one:
FedEx will not deliver your life
or you from it.
Clouds invade your shoes,
your pockets full of gray money,
handfuls of anxiety fall out of your hat.
Afraid to go home, afraid of the continual fear,
drowning in the comfortable couch.
Going to sleep naked,
one sheet, one blanket,
2,738 dreams you won’t remember.
Morning is a roving wolf,
eating the bones you forgot.
Eating Molly’s Pie
It was a sunny morning,
sky of flour and butter.
I went out to eat
some of Molly’s pie,
came away fuller than the moon.
It was noon like turtles lounging.
I went out and had some more
of Molly’s pie.
I left the desk,
overturned the timesheet,
went out like a thunderstorm.
I looked in corners where butts are thrown,
looked at signs like forgotten face cards,
looking for Molly’s pie.
Close to midnight
down by the river,
Hungry Davy was there,
eating the last of Molly’s pie.
I cried up, all the way through my hair,
wanting some of Molly’s pie.
Klismos
(4th Century Greek chair, perhaps the first of Western civilization)
Ladies, be seated.
Rest in elegance and wait for the news.
Your husbands are in the fields,
or fighting for Athens.
When Rome ascends,
when Saint Peter visits,
he will be crucified but leave a seat
for his crude descendants.
But this will be hidden, kept secret
from the tillers and the potters.
They will have curved backs,
broken backs, will lack support.
Castle residents will know the comfort,
the tribute from the fields, the gathering laws.
Conquistadores will bring saddles
and crucifixes to a world reclining.
They will join with missionaries
to bring enlightenment and germs.
All the world will be seated:
To work, to learn, to take rest.
What wondrous device will ennoble us?
How will nature uncivilized devolve?
We will lose our legs, take on those of wood,
carved with faces straining under the weight.
Our backs will weaken,
our eyes forget the wide vistas scouting danger,
our minds will turn more quietly.
We will be soothed.
The oceans are crossed while we stand
before the compass, afraid to sit and
not see the upright horizon.
These new lands have knowledge
of running and resting,
but we bring strange new instruments
lacking harmony with nature.
Forests are hacked down,
the wood is shaped into towns,
houses and their possessions,
legs and spindles hold us in place.
Intricacy and detail envelop our bodies,
stiffnecked we suffer the hardness
of where we sit.
The plains and rivers hold freedom
like butterfly wings hold the sun,
we seek the prairie grass to burn.
The western shore is gained
but there is no rest for our business,
still we are straight-backed.
Leisure is acquired with sweat
and now we can know comfort
of leather, of upholstery,
feathering our labors.
Finally, we sit: collapsed,
to think of new inventions,
made for human bodies.
New devices take craft
and they have arms, levers,
footrests and let us dream.
All in beautiful reveries,
we take our seats.
Paul R. Davis
lives in central New York State with his wife, parrots and cats Now retired, he enjoys operating model trains, philately, gardening, and preparing meals with his wife. His work has been published in Latitudes, Comstock Review, Comrades, Hot Metal Press, Georgian Blue Poetry Anthology, The Externalist, Centrifugal Eye, and others. He believes in a simple poetic philosophy: to wit, the joy of expression, the necessity of communication.