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
Winner of $200 for 2nd-place-voted Poems
Peter NashShooting Star
First, a twenty-year run of brilliance,
your yellow-green eyes glittering
beneath the raven wings of your eyebrows,
the lightning retorts of your valentine mouth,
the shimmy of garnet earrings
framing your linnet face—
we still remember the little girls on the stoops
bringing you their broken doll babies to kiss,
how we applauded you madly in Oklahoma!
as you sashayed off the Marshall High School stage
leading the cowboys up the aisle,
and the way you could pick up enough change
for a six pack of Heineken singing Bob Dylan
on the Sunset Pacific Mall with your paint spattered guitar
and a can of dollar bills. We’d never forget
the famous night you filled Café Prégo
with guys who’d fallen in love following you up the outside stairs
of the wooden house on Ocean Avenue,
your legs flickering in the sulfur light of the street lamps.
But somewhere in your thirties people stopped buying
your cardboard collages or the bouquets you scavenged
from the mason jars at Pioneer Cemetery,
your parents stopped paying the rent, the last boyfriend
slashed your painting of him sitting on the toilet,
no one would hire you to walk their dogs after Dotty the Dalmatian
got run over as you read the New York Times at McDonald’s
and your cat Matisse died locked in your room
when you drove your VW Bug with daisy decals
onto the Talmadge Bridge. We still picture you
floating downstream, your face a petal of light,
though the moon was not bright enough to see the water
rippling through the folds of your dress,
or the algae-stained rocks below.
What I Hear
I’ve been watching these trees half my life;
this hill of pines whose pitchy limbs
balance their rough trunks,
sprouting needles, dropping needles
the topmost tier a green undulating mat
roaring in the wind, changing light into matter.
Is it trees talking with the wind?
the small animals who shelter in the shadows?
the squirming rootlets in the basement of the hill?
I hear voices from a hive of mouths,
but not the words. I hear the brown towhees,
long-tailed, lurking in the underbrush,
scuffling in leaf-litter for seeds, the finches,
gold-bellied, sociable, jittering in the sun,
flung by the wind across a field of dandelions,
darting among the branches of shade trees,
living a life without naming the world.
I know that each of you is saying something
but I’ll never get it right. Best to stand here looking
at that roaring, piney hill, hand covering my mouth,
the better to hear you with.
Morning Chores
Night ends with a final snap,
clawed feet scrabble linoleum
dragging the Victor trap.
This morning I tote up the damage:
the crushed snouts, the oozing abdomens,
the tiny turds black as poppy seeds
speckling the floor. Now it’s time
to pull on my crusted gloves, walk across the lawn
and flip the bodies over the fence. Turn on the sprinklers.
The truth is I don’t know where to go from here.
As if I were in a maze of electron rings
whizzing around one small house-mouse
rapturously suckling a half dozen babies.
Orbiting her, the weed patch fills with corpses,
flies lay eggs in furry crevices, maggots
scour toothpick ribs. In the outermost ring
my spotted hands bait the trap with a Sun Maid raisin
imbedded in a dollop of crunchy peanut butter.
Beyond that, a space so vast
my mind clamps down, unable to enter,
but gives it a name: VICTOR.
John Brown’s Cows
Leaking milk from swollen udders
the cows have been separated from the calves
who wander dazed in the far pasture
crying for their mothers.
Strings of slobber hang from their mouths.
Bellowing their grief
the sound becomes background
like the rush of rain in the creeks,
while we dig the garden,
pitch hay to the horses, stack firewood.
And then a silence settles upon these meadows,
and just as you learn to live without your children,
the calves begin to suck water,
to graze by themselves.
Rocky’s Place
There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of spirit on the body.
—Rumi
Sometimes I think of his thousand Post-its
plastering the lamp shade, creeping
along the base boards, up the metal legs
of the card table and covering the window
overlooking a graveled parking lot.
In the corner, boxes of Zip-lock bags
filled with alfalfa pellets are stacked.
A bare bulb dangles by its wire
over two rabbits, Flopsy and Mopsy
inside a baby’s playpen.
Each day begins seven inches above the sink
when he whispers the first Post-it:
Every seeker is a beggar
before moving on to the next
and the next in their ordained order
as if they were a trail of stone steps winding
seven times around sacred Mecca.
And when he arrives at those who have reached
their arms into emptiness I imagine
him ascending the path to the doorknob of the closet
where the last Post-it reads: This is the place
the soul is most afraid of, on this height,
this ecstatic turret, and climbing
into the playpen he lies down with the rabbits
who nuzzle his face, their eyes half-closed,
their furry, smoky-white heads
moving back and forth
in mysterious jerks.
Peter Nash
has been practicing medicine for forty years in Northern California. He writes most mornings, occasionally helps his wife in the garden, boards two old mares, and wanders along the Mattole River with his dog Quigley. He has been published in numerous journals and anthologies; his chapbook Tracks won the 2007 Hot Metal Press chapbook contest and his book, Coyote Bush: Poems From The Lost Coast, was the winner of the 2012 Off the Grid Poetry Prize.