Poetry Winter 2017 fiction all issues
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Cover Thought-Forms
Laura Apol
On My Fiftieth Birthday I Return
& other poems
Jihyun Yun
Aubade
& other poems
Jamie Ross
Red Jetta
& other poems
Sarah Blanchard
Carolina Clay
& other poems
lauren a. boisvert
Save a Seat for Me in the Void
& other poems
Faith Shearin
A Pirate at Midlife
& other poems
Helen Yeoman-Shaw
Calling Long Distance
& other poems
Sarah B. Sullivan
Iris
& other poems
Timothy Walsh
Metro Messenger
& other poems
Gabriel Spera
Scratch
& other poems
Zoë Harrison
Pattee Creek
& other poems
AJ Powell
Blanket
& other poems
Alexa Poteet
The Man Who Got off the Train Between Madrid and Valencia
& other poems
Marcie McGuire
Still Birth
& other poems
Kim Drew Wright
Elephants Standing
& other poems
Michael Jenkins
The Garden Next Door
& other poems
Nicky Nicholson-Klingerman
Costume
& other poems
Doni Faber
Man Moth
& other poems
M. Underwood
In Other Words
& other poems
Carson Pynes
Diet Coke
& other poems
Bucky Ignatius
Something Old, . . .
& other poems
Violet Mitchell
Deleting Emails the Week After Kevin Died
& other poems
Sam Collier
Nocturne in an Empty Sea
& other poems
Meryl Natchez
Equivocal Activist
& other poems
William Godbey
A Corn Field in Los Angeles
& other poems
lauren a. boisvert
Save A Seat for Me in the Void
For two consecutive years
I have seen a dead cat on my birthday.
This has to be an omen, I say to no one, to myself
there is no other answer
except that there are cats in the world
and there are cars in the world
and sometimes they meet and don’t get along
sometimes things just happen.
One year before the cats
I started believing you might be dead
because no one had seen you in five years
or at least I hadn’t
and I like to base all decisions on the probability of death.
The probability of death was high
so I decided you were dead
and thought
sometimes things just happen.
The thing about Boisverts is we love hard
but our secret is we hate even harder
but our solution to this is we are terrible at remembering.
I go out in the woods and carve your name in a slab of ice
and watch my letters melt into girl tears
lusty with glitter and salt
and they are not in the ice but in my body
shaking the cage of me
and there are cats in the woods sharpening the trees.
Stand your back against red clapboards
so I can throw my knives between all your spaces.
The probability of death is low
you are alive in my grandfather’s house
with my knives jutting through the walls
we use them to hang our house keys on.
We have the frozen lake behind us
that I stood on once and never again after that
so I am not accustomed to walking on water
and neither are you
I would not like you as much if you were.
The ghosts of two dead cats walk the water
black and white and whole
clean fur
mouths pink as Jackie Kennedy’s death suit.
I read that somewhere
she wore “muted pink as the inside of a cat’s mouth”
and I think yes, that’s true, I have seen that pink
and I sit you down in a chair draped with a bear pelt
and make you open your mouth.
My grandfather lived in the woods
but I am probably misremembering the bear pelt
sometimes things just happen.
I take the omen of the dead cats
ball it up like tissue paper
and press it into your sternum like planting a seed
cup my hands over it and pull out the ghosts.
The cats settle into my grandfather’s house
sneezing in the dust of years
licking the old glue that holds together his French novels
rubbing their cold bodies against our legs.
They pick their teeth on the knives in the wall
and so do I
and so do you
scraping away the plaque of false memories
until the tragic real gleams in the thick yellow light.
Frida Kahlo On Display at the Dalí
I’ve been having dreams
of howling and gold glitter burst from a package
spilling across my body I am naked I am pale and red
as pomegranate flesh.
Nothing is good enough for a speeding train
I tell it that I am here howling my presence to the fast metal
but everything is gold everything stars.
A hand passes before my eyes I will not dream
take this howling and give it back to the wolves.
I am not sweet not even in my blood am I sweet
see how it moves filling the train mixing gold
crawling from my shattered pelvis my twisted spine see how it moves.
A white paper package bursts like a membrane
later I will pluck stars from my skin keep them in a glass jar
or maybe I will be buried with my body gilded like a relic.
David Foster Wallace Explains
Default Settings
This morning was a sweet cling peach
until I drove past a construction site
and remnants of rejection gripped my insides
like a frozen hand
squeezing my stomach
like an overripe fig.
Picture a man standing at a motel mirror
swigging gin from a plastic pint bottle
cheap stuff
just the back of him in a plaid shirt
radiating disgust like a visible aura.
Disgust as default (this is water)
David Foster Wallace tells me to choose.
Compliance as default obedience as default
lying cheating getting fucked over as default
but mostly complaint as default
center of the universe narcissism
like love is narcissism
and procreation is narcissism
as default.
God as scientist was reading Frankenstein
when he made us
and he modelled this man after the good doctor
(from Mary’s own mouth: the monster’s name is Frankenstein.)
I am getting ahead of my default setting:
not everything is about me
but this time it was.
This time my default was not a farce
but a reckoning fact biblical rendering
of what it means to be used and tossed for scrap.
David Foster Wallace says you get to decide
but how can I
when bad memories are scattered like pollen
in my frontal lobes blooming and becoming
without my consent?
The best I can do is walk slowly
and try not to complain.
lauren a. boisvert
is a poet and a pisces from Florida. Her work has been published in Spy Kids Review, Mochila Review, Coffin Corner, and elsewhere. She tweets @myldstallyns.