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
Kate Magill
NOLA, 2006
Rusted bikes clattering
over rutted streets:
only sound this morning
in a city still learning
how to breathe
now that the flood has receded.
This boy I barely know
takes me to a childhood home.
We stand on the sidewalk
saying nothing,
breathing in the lush smell
of puddles and drowned worms.
We’re stripping away
the blackmold sheetrock,
exposing studs
we hope are strong enough,
press of bodies
in the small rooms,
smell of sweat
and waterlogged stuff.
Someone has planted
sunflowers out back.
Their big heads gyre west
to watch the sinking sun.
Down on the sand after dark
listening to black waves
and that air-swelling bayou hum:
we are almost children still,
hurtling forward,
verging on something pure.
Morning, Five Ways
1.
Whitebread morning—
give up on daring.
Focus on something
mundane and immediate:
backbone, for example,
or sinew.
2.
Through the open door,
a furnace blast of morning
The dog has shit a chickenbone
still whole.
No goose today,
no golden egg.
3.
You cannot remember,
standing in a potential friend’s foyer,
which boots are yours.
Perhaps finding the correct coat
will spark something.
4.
You have not yet opened your eyes.
The fact of being alive
kicks you in the ribs,
threatens to slit you down the middle
and spill your slick ruby innards
all across the slant of light
whose heat sears through your lids.
5.
It is best to wake first
to give yourself the option
of staying in bed and listening
to his roughhewn breaths
or leaving for an open space
where you can hear your own.
Tanka for The New Year
New Year’s Eve, and grey:
cloud upon cloud, swollen full
with unfallen rain.
We are already asleep
on the chill white sunless sheets.
LV Winter, 2015
It’s not hot yet and already I’m tired,
trying to read Bronk while the baby sleeps,
trying to sort the husk and hulk of words.
The sun is asserting itself again,
hot butter glow cowing the short grey days,
filling the air with creosote and sage.
Lizard skitter and hummingbird pulses,
the rest is stillness, that desert restraint,
knowing always when and when not to move.
Coffee is blacker in the old palm’s shade,
dry fronds brushing my shoulders, somewhat like
a lover’s presence, breathing, imagined,
remembered: that kneejerk covering-up
of unfinished pages, this black-on-blank:
I’m sorry, dear, this is not yours to read.
Kate Magill
is a Vermont native and a devoted backcountry wanderer. This is her second appearance in Sixfold. Her first volume of poetry, Roadworthy Creature, Roadworthy Craft, was published in 2011 by Fomite Press.