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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

Anne Graue

Sky

We were always looking up

in spring; those months so

hot and cold anything could happen;

funnels dropped, vanished,


vacuumed up between the clouds.

The Midwest sky turned

jaundiced and still.


Oklahoma knew it was coming:

the cliché of the freight train,

the stillness,

the mass of moving earth.


This time, the myth would shred

the houses to toothpicks

scatter photographs

and houses like paper shells.


In Kansas, tornado

drills were routine;

I thought we would outlive

whatever hit us; our heads

down, legs cramped, breath

hot above our folded laps.


Carrying my blanket

down under the stairs, my

father’s shortwave crackling

weather reports,


I knew I would not survive

when the tornado hit

our house. Living would be


too difficult, as the living always is.



Her Letter to Kurt Vonnegut, 1982

There’s a place in Kansas City

called Montana Wildhack’s;

I thought we might meet for a drink

and talk about Cat’s Cradle or

Slaughterhouse Five. It would be

nice, nice, very nice.


My sister knows the place.

It isn’t a gay bar, really, but

she might have kept that secret

(she is so used to keeping that

secret); she just likes the name,

I think, and said she’d take me.


I think you write like you know

all too well how humans behave—

the writing is spiritual,

tough, real. (Too much?)


My sister hasn’t read a word

of it, and probably won’t; it’s

not her thing. She leaves reading

to me except for Anais Nin

or the author of 9 1/2 Weeks;

The books were in her room

and she was out.


Earthly conversation

would suffice, not be

the end of the world,

frosty and nuclear—

so it goes.


She told me she was in love

with a woman one night

in an old pickup we hot-wired.

At her friend’s house with a pool

late at night, we drank beer

and swam above the Playboy

logo, down and back and down.


I am sure this type of thing

has happened, more or less; this

may be one of the good times

we concentrate on, ignoring

awful ones. I hope you will

consider meeting me


the next time you’re in Kansas City.



Cycles

Spring hot, yet

it feels like fall—

through weak bones

through clotted skin

thickened and congealed—


jaundiced spring and wild

ochre seep through

flaming bramble; bruised

plum of laden hyacinth,

the cadaver of a grey mouse,

the pinched ruby of a tree


growing, leaning toward pale

summer petals of a shrub flowering

in bells that hang low, look

as if they might reach


for furry mustard & black

pepper with wings—

translucent and spinning—


winter insinuating.


Originally from Kansas, Anne Graue lives, writes, and teaches online from her home in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Paradigm, Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal (May, 2013), and The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly. She was a finalist for the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award for 2013. She is a reviewer for NewPages.com.

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