Poetry Winter 2014 fiction all issues
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Debbra Palmer
Bake Sale
& other poems
Ann V. DeVilbiss
Far Away, Like a Mirror
& other poems
Michael Fleming
On the Bus
& other poems
Harold Schumacher
Dying To Say It
& other poems
Heather Erin Herbert
Georgia’s Advent
& other poems
Sharron Singleton
Sonnet for Small Rip-Rap
& other poems
Bryce Emley
College Beer
& other poems
Harry Bauld
On a Napkin
& other poems
George Mathon
Do You See Me Waving?
& other poems
Mariana Weisler
Soft Soap and Wishful Thinking
& other poems
Michael Kramer
Nighthawks, Kaua’i
& other poems
Jill Murphy
Migration
& other poems
Cassandra Sanborn
Remnants
& other poems
Kendall Grant
Winter Love Note
& other poems
Donna French McArdle
White Blossoms at Night
& other poems
Tom Freeman
On Foot, Joliet, Illinois
& other poems
George Longenecker
Nest
& other poems
Kimberly Sailor
The Bitter Daughter
& other poems
Rebecca Irene
Woodpecker
& other poems
Savannah Grant
And Not As Shame
& other poems
Michael Hugh Lythgoe
Titian Left No Paper Trail
& other poems
Martin Conte
We’re Not There
& other poems
A. Sgroi
Sore Soles
& other poems
Miguel Coronado
Body-Poem
& other poems
Franklin Zawacki
Experience Before Memory
& other poems
Tracy Pitts
Stroke
& other poems
Rachel A. Girty
Collapse
& other poems
Ryan Flores
Language Without Lies
& other poems
Margie Curcio
Gravity
& other poems
Stephanie L. Harper
Painted Chickens
& other poems
Nicholas Petrone
Running Out of Space
& other poems
Danielle C. Robinson
A Taste of Family Business
& other poems
Meghan Kemp-Gee
A Rhyme Scheme
& other poems
Tania Brown
On Weeknights
& other poems
James Ph. Kotsybar
Unmeasured
& other poems
Matthew Scampoli
Paddle Ball
& other poems
Jamie Ross
Not Exactly
& other poems
Rachel A. Girty
Collapse
Like a window left open
Winter after winter, like
A knock on the weathered door
And never a reply, I
Am a ghost town. I swallow
The plains around me,
I clear out warehouses, drive
Even the coyotes from town.
You’re only riding by, just a little
Blue girl on a bike, but
Sickness spreads, and once its enters you,
You can never pull every tendril out.
Radioactive, gleaming with kinesis,
You begin your rapid decay,
Halving and halving, baking in the sun
Until you are nothing but
A wisp of a receipt from the
Drugstore, a dying echo on the concrete
Wall, My bottle cap, my seesaw,
My aluminum clink.
Everything Gets Harder
Everything gets harder: the ground
Packed tight under days of snow, teeth and
Fingertips as winter beats on, scraping itself
Through the gaps in the window frame.
There are holes in us too—the chill
Reaches deep into your lungs and it’s harder
To say exactly what you mean. You open
The refrigerator door, just to see the pop
Of light, the rows and rows of boxes
And bottles. You try to speak and
Your voice drops away. It’s okay—
I’m trying to love you harder.
I mean the things I say now, I clean
The dishes you forget, I stop myself
From waking you when I’m afraid.
There are things we’ll never say
To one another, things we hoard that wedge
Themselves between us when we sleep,
But you’re warmer in the morning.
Things could be a whole lot harder.
I’m Afraid of the Things You Keep
After that night you wouldn’t
Touch peaches for a week.
You said something had happened
In the produce section, in your dream,
A floor full of grease and blunt objects.
In the morning you kept running
Your fingers along my jaw, to make sure
It was still there. I’m sorry about the peaches,
You said. It’s gruesome, you said, blood
And cooking oil don’t mix. I should have
Told you to stop, I should have said that
Dreams aren’t real until you wake up
And you choose to remember. I’m afraid
Of the things you keep: the sound
The sedan made outside our window
The night of the thunderless rain
And the scream of whatever it smashed.
You couldn’t find anything, even standing
In the driveway, soaking in your pajamas.
You carry every day the smell of the clinic
The day you told me you thought you would die
(There was nothing wrong with you at all)
And you’ve memorized the official list
Of ongoing worldwide conflicts. You keep
Imagining me gunned down or gagged up
But this is not a war. You and I
Are safe for now, are warm and loved
But you keep forgetting the days
Spent on windy beaches, the hours
Of firelight and spice-dark tea,
The kind old woman who gave you a nickel
When you came up short at the cider mill,
The minutes when you first fall asleep,
Dreaming nothing, listening, knowing
A word from me can wake you up.
Rachel A. Girty
is a student at Northwestern University studying vocal performance and creative writing. She has performed with The Lyric Opera of Chicago, The Northwestern University Opera Theatre, and The Castleton Festival. She works on the poetry staff of Helicon. Her poetry has appeared in Prompt magazine, and she was recently awarded the Jean Meyer Aloe Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.