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Poetry Winter 2017    fiction    all issues

Cover of Poetry Winter 2017 issue

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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

Don Hogle
Austin Wallson Confesses
& other poems


Violet Mitchell

No One Lives at 1962 McCollum Road

wraparound


porch ties up the


stench of smoke


and 8x10s of me

                                      and my brother

                                                                          and cousin Kevin,


one from every


year but now


                                      upstairs—


                                      a ghost smoking Marlboros


next to the lady who


rented the top floor,


                                                                          gone since August


and fled the Ohio farmhouse—


                                      brought some whiskey to


the attic washed-out lemon


party—sour but real—


for Grandfather Rusty’s strict mother:


sworn Catholic, first


owner of the house,


                                                               rudely sat on his lighter

forgetting things could still


                                      be solid—


                                                               doorknob spins, Kevin



crashes with


extra meds in hand


Rusty tells his life story


                                                               ends different


                                                               every time I ask



Deleting Emails the Week After Kevin Died

Sympathy note from a distant

great uncle who plays bass:

Know that I am thinking about you

and playing as much music as I can


for you right now. I can hear his

strings stretch and swirl in notes

I don’t know how to read. In his

hands, there’s a blueberry smoothie


with lavender foam the same shade

as my hair. The straw is too small,

but he’s trying hard to balance his

breath with the ground-up plants.


I wish I could draw on the bricks

of my building the way he can play.

I could remember the sound of just,

and forget the piercings in the crux.



[worked hard]

worked hard

metal

sprinkles

lungs

instead of

nutrients

failed

moons

like us

spewing

tulips

not

there was

no

difference

what

you

gave




Remington

I sit with my inherited

typewriter under rainbow

strung lights framing a frost-bitten

window. My fingernails chip

and rip when they catch

between the dusty keys.

The number 1 is missing

and at first I thought I broke it

but then I learned old Remingtons

don’t have 1s, so people

just used a lowercase “L”

instead. The stains on my fingers

from the ribbon smudge everything

I touch and I wonder if like

Midas I can turn the cat into

ink. The jags in the ribbon

older than my mother remind me

of teeth: baby teeth riding

the subway, yellowing teeth

hooked in my clenched jaw,

a baby tooth I found in a creaky

chest from McCollum Road that

I flung away because who

even knows whose it was.



A Wednesday I Can’t Remember

“The heart lies to itself because it must.” —Jack Gilbert


The sale

sticker on

    the shampoo bottle is crinkled from

    water-dry-water-dry and

        reminds me of a sun if it had


a big

“1.99”

    painted on it. The last of bacon

    is a puddle of grease

        and unhealthy burnt fat bits swimming


in the

American

    Dream. At work, a ghost scrap of lint has its

    toes trapped in the black frame

        of the window. It shakes in the breeze,


forcib-

ly dancing.

    Some sort of machine hiding in the

    walls regulates the air

        and washes the silence over with


an on-

going wave

    that we filter into as silence.

    When I looked down at my therapist’s

        shoes, trying to avoid


her eyes

as mine dripped,

    I said we have the same water bottle.

    There’s glitter on the floor

        from a dollar-store hat that


shed its

skin once the

    cake was all gone. Dark brown lipstick on

    a girl’s lips are perfect

        until she opens her mouth, when you


can see

where the pen-

    cil ends and her skin that hardly spends any time in the

    light begins. A dryer

        sheet fell out of my clean


clothes, and

a tangled

    grayed silver USB cord is there

    with a thin black sock that isn’t mine.

Violet Mitchell is a Denver-based writer and artist. She is working toward a B.A S. in cognitive literary studies and a B.A. in creative writing, both from Regis University. Her work has been published in Loophole, Flourishing, Across the Canyon, and Who’s Who. Her poems about McCollum Road are experimental free verse that explore her relationship to her late Grandfather and her family dynamics.

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