Poetry Winter 2015 fiction all issues
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Cover Peter Rawlings
J. H Yun
Yesenia
& other poems
Colby Hansen
Killing Jar #37
& other poems
Melissa Bond
Freud's Asparagus
& other poems
Jane Schulman
When Krupa Played Those Drums
& other poems
Susan F. Glassmeyer
First Moon of a Blue Moon Month
& other poems
Melissa Tyndall
Haptics
& other poems
Micah Chatterton
Medicine
& other poems
Emily Graf
Toolbox
& other poems
Kate Magill
LV Winter, 2015
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Meeting Mrs. Ping
& other poems
Richard Parisio
Brown Creeper
& other poems
Jennifer Leigh Stevenson
Circe in Business
& other poems
Laurel Eshelman
Tuckpointing
& other poems
Barry W. North
Molotov Cocktail of the Deep South
& other poems
Charles C. Childers
Privilege
& other poems
Ricky Ray
A Way to Work
& other poems
Cassandra Sanborn
Revelation
& other poems
Linda Sonia Miller
Full Circle
& other poems
J. Lee Strickland
Anna's Plague
& other poems
Erin Dorso
In the Kitchen
& other poems
Holly Lyn Walrath
Behind the Glass
& other poems
Jeff Lewis
Charles Ives, A Connecticut Yankee
& other poems
Karen Kraco
Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill
& other poems
Rafael Miguel Montes
Casket
& other poems
Micah Chatterton
Medicine
for Sylvia and her mother
For a nosebleed: drop
something cold, a coin or key,
the length of your back.
Wicked lumbago
needs brown paper ironed hot,
pressed into the small.
To improve eyesight,
pierce your ears and get some gold.
Silver does nothing.
Rheumatism: carry
a young spud in your pocket.
Or soak in Epsom.
Sore throat: tie a wool
stocking round your neck; Father’s
sweaty sock will do.
Linseed, lime for burns.
Boiled onion poultice for ears.
Bread poultice for boils.
Bluebag for bee stings.
Warm cow dung for carbuncle,
or draw the devil
out with a hot glass.
Rub butter on a bumped head,
fig leaf on a bruise.
In case of a cut,
a little whiskey leeches rust.
It’s good to let dogs
lick an open wound,
but only those you know well,
not some thin-boned stray.
Next, to clot the cut,
use cobwebs, fresh cigar ash—
in a pinch, sugar.
Egg water causes warts,
and touching toads. Spin horsehair
around your finger,
or daub with sow thistle.
If that cure fails, steal a piece
of meat. Rub the wart
into the cold chop.
Bury it in the garden.
Tell no one. The flesh
and the wart decay
together. Some say you need
a dead cat. Jabber—
any meat will do.
No, what we make we make in
in burial, in hiding.
Kin
Remember this, then.
There is a girl at the edge
of town, window jimmied, slipping
lumps of scrambled egg and hard toast
out onto the damp side of the sill.
Morning fog’s bitten off all
but the nearest branches of the family
sycamore, and the family of crows
living there, chittering, churning
the clouds with their wings.
There’s a line of objects laid neatly
along the dry side of the windowsill:
a pebble, a paper clip, can tabs, beachglass,
earrings, buttons, a cat’s broken femur,
the silver half of a heart.
She waits with her nosetip cold
to the pane, quietly breathing herself
into the swirl of an old man’s beard,
until one by one, dewhooded
and coin-eyed, the crows come
clutching gifts, offering trade.
A Love Poem
What did you see in there? you asked later,
mermaid red hair floating past my pillow.
I saw the way we leaned to kiss, how we
made cairns of our cold feet, spun up shivers
from still places in our bodies, then fell asleep.
Queen of noses, Vitruvian wife, worried
nursemaid to the world’s most delicate dog,
remembrist of first things, spontaneous
cupcake baker, teacher of small children,
teacher of just one unforgotten child—
I thought, What a mother you’ll make, Jenny.
I saw too how your fear would ache into
panic, beebuzzed by unchecked burners, un-
pulled doors, always waiting for a beltfall,
some fate you might, you should have seen coming:
scuffed heels, uncoastered cups, germs or burglars.
So many days you sat in the driveway,
eyes shaking, willing yourself: Turn the key.
Yet, somehow, you loved me enough to risk
my inevitable tremors of grieving.
Somehow, hours ago, weeks pregnant, you leapt
into the shower fully clothed, new shoes
sopping, mascara bruising the porcelain,
to catch me, collapsed by a memory.
I saw you, the mother you’ve always been,
the family I never thought I’d have again.
Dropped Tanka
We all learn one day:
something dropped is something lost.
“Out of reach” means “gone
forever,” bits of childhood locked
in a mirror of pond water.
He watches my mouth, lost,
lost, thrusts against the railing
reaching for the spot
of the splash where the tiger
was thrown, dove, and disappeared.
Once below, all sound
stops. The plastic tiger sinks,
watching a boy cry
by skyfuls its wavering life,
its eternal inch of silt.
Micah Chatterton
lives in Riverside, California. Read more at micahchatterton.com