Poetry Winter 2019 fiction all issues
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Cover Florian Klauer
Meli Broderick Eaton
Three Mississippi
& other poems
Andrea Reisenauer
What quiet ache do you wear?
& other poems
Alex Wasalinko
Two Dreams of Vegas
& other poems
AJ Powell
The Grammar Between Us
& other poems
Emma Flattery
Our Shared Jungle, Mr. Conrad
& other poems
Nathaniel Cairney
The Desert Cometh
& other poems
Sarah W. Bartlett
Unexpected
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
Jaybird by the Fence
& other poems
Brandon Hansen
Bradley
& other poems
Andy Kerstetter
The Inferno Lessons
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Space Walk
& other poems
Richard Cole
Perfect Corporations
& other poems
Susan Bouchard
Circus Performers
& other poems
Edward Garvey
Nine Songs of Love
& other poems
Mehrnaz Sokhansanj
Sea of Detachment
& other poems
Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius
Aftershock
& other poems
Claudia Skutar
Homage II
& other poems
Donna French McArdle
Knitting Sample
& other poems
Megan Skelly
Puzzle Box Ghazal
& other poems
Tess Cooper
Charged
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
Auschwitz
& other poems
Catherine R. Cryan
Raven
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
Seagulls
They come from sound and flotsam
forgotten the way a first kiss is forgot
and found again in a sudden flash of delight,
bright against a breastbone that has been wrought
into a hard, old thing.
They come down from storm clouds,
bow into the wind, magnificent and pale
like women who wait along the shore
for men to return, dragging fin whale
behind them.
They come in twos and fours of pointed wing,
sing to these lonesome ocean wives,
and soar past the salt drenched wharf.
They go beyond the sickle moon to live the lives
of sailors who died too soon.
She Was Lilac
and bold barefooted by the muddy bank
of thin ice, came to drink in that splendid
isolation. Her bone-pale youth transcended,
so he came, cloven hoof & quivering flank.
The cud of his mouth burned as it sank
to her honeysuckle skin, scented
heavy as the altar candles gifted
by her mother. But she left him manque
as she darted like gossamer through the glen.
Oh the game! The game! That uncertain squeeze
in his lungs by the quake and disease
of loneliness. She waited, as golden Helen,
calling for him from the blooms. And again.
Calling, as naked as the stretch towards heaven.
South of the Reservation
This house.
This house of mud daubers
and fried bread. Chicory burning
on the stove. Cigarettes blooming
out of a flat tray, like stakes
in the Llano Estacado,
where you were from.
This mean old dog tied to the yard
a yard covered in burs, yellow weeds,
and the gently swaying laundry.
He doesn’t wish to be touched
unless there is caution
unless you know of his bite.
Then maybe.
Maybe you can touch him
a little.
The rain came in bursts of heat.
Then the sky opened and breathed.
And it burned these shoulders
of ours, as we sucked sugar water
from cheep plastic tubes,
fluttered in the yard like hummingbirds
grass clinging to our bare ankles.
Slugs
They appeared that morning fat, gray,
and so blissfully unaware
they were unwanted and, elsewhere,
in the garden, strawberries swelled
with open wounds and there
were silver trails that dwelled
among leaves, like railways.
You appeared and expelled
the slugs with violent salt. The stray
one she tried to save hissed a prayer
from its long body and she stared
at you, quiet, but her eyes yelled:
They appeared that morning fat, gray,
and so blissfully unaware!
Jaybird by the Fence
She had seen it through the dawn mist
folded in adolescent wing
next to the begonias. Flies swarmed.
A sorry little thing, too beautiful
to be wrapped in a plastic sack
but it moved its head.
She could not touch it while
it lived.
By noon, it shuffled into the twist
of shade. Ants slipped like a shoestring
around it. It bobbed its head in the warm
swell of air fixed inside the unusable
body. What could she do but go back
to the house, pretend there was nothing dead
in the garden? Eventually, the heat took it. Mild wind
kept the stink away.
She hadn’t meant for it to suffer.
She wished she had a brother,
someone who knew the language of rocks.
Abigail F Taylor
has been previously published in Illya’s Honey, 3Elements Review, and Cattlemen and Cadillacs, among others. Her novella, The Ballad of a Muscogee Trapper, recently debuted with accompanying artwork by @samhears & is available on her website.