Poetry Winter 2020 fiction all issues
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Paula Reed Nancarrow
Morning Coffee
& other poems
Jill Burkey
Mala
& other poems
Oak Morse
Boys Born out of Blues
& other poems
Beatrix Bondor
Engine Ode
& other poems
Monique Jonath
a mi sheberach
& other poems
Lisa Rachel Apple
Bounty
& other poems
Gillian Freebody
The Human Condition
& other poems
Kirsten Hippe-Rychlik
and we are echoes
& other poems
Devon Bohm
Forgiveness
& other poems
Jeddie Sophronius
I Rest My Mother Tongue
& other poems
John Delaney
Poem as Map
& other poems
Elizabeth Bayou-Grace
Fire in Paradise
& other poems
Monaye
In Utero
& other poems
Michelle Lerner
Ode to Exhaustion
& other poems
William French
I Have Never Been
& other poems
Josiah Patterson Wheatley
Coeur de Fleurs
& other poems
Karo Ska
womb song
& other poems
Robyn Joy
Sisyphus
& other poems
Han Raschka
Love Language
& other poems
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
The Memory in My Pinky
& other poems
Gilaine Fiezmont
Europe, too, Came from Somewhere Else
& other poems
Scott Ruescher
At the Childhood Home of Ozzy Osbourne
& other poems
Emily R. Daniel
Visitation Dreams
& other poems
Lindsay Gioffre
Toxicodendron Radicans [Sonnet 1]
& other poems
Paula Reed Nancarrow
Morning Coffee
In that bungalow where your dad and I slept
on the ground floor, I would rise with care
so the old farm bedstead did not creak.
Take my coffee on the back porch,
relish the few quiet moments
I’d have to myself that day
before I had to put on All My Roles
the way Heidi must climb the mountain
in dress over dress over dress.
I might sit ten minutes before
a thud on the ceiling above me
signaled you sensed awake energy,
and knew you could beat your sister
to it. Then I would swallow my solitude
with the scalding caffeine.
Hearing your feet on the stairs,
rushing boy-forward into the open day:
I’d sigh, and put my book away.
And there you were. Blond
as my own childhood
hazel eyes singing like wrens,
wearing that blue reunion T-shirt
that came almost down to your knees
with your cartoon Pop-Pop on it.
You’d climb into my lap, lay your head in
the curve beneath my shoulder
and we would be quiet together.
Once I looked down on those small legs
dangling on either side of mine while
the coffee cooled. Remember this always,
I thought. So far so good. Though now you
are tall, and your hair dark, and your legs
are hairy like Esau’s. Now I lean my head
against your shoulder. All My Roles
lay folded between tissue in the dresser.
Now no one I love sleeps upstairs
Or ever interrupts my coffee.
Hain’t
My father’s middle finger
pokes me just below the clavicle:
You hain’t going.
His face is scrunched; there’s spittle
in the corner of his mouth.
I am sixteen. I have opinions.
I am becoming uncontrollable.
All too soon men will find with their thumbs
the knot between my shoulder blades
where all my worries gather.
All too soon
there will be new ways of influencing me:
Less ugly, but perhaps more dangerous.
My father’s middle finger says hain’t.
After Turtle Lake
for Cathie
Who can say why these things happen?
My 2000 Toyota hit 100,000 miles on the way
to Turtle Lake for your funeral. Zeros lined up
like pineapples on your behalf
but you weren’t there
to watch the coins spill into my hands.
“Life is short!” you told me. “Buy a horse!”
I grip the sheepskin wheel cover
think of your saddle pad.
What was so important
that we did not keep
our coffee date last winter?
Farm equipment slow moving
to the point of tedium.
Double yellow lines.
Where on that two lane trunk highway
between Stillwater and Forest
did I start reading the mile markers?
When did I begin to keep score?
Birthdays in one column,
funerals in the other—
the rituals of death overtaking
the rituals of life three to one,
just as I was told to expect.
Why did the flowers smell like
the opposite of garden?
We sing “Morning is Broken.”
We sing “Happy Trails.”
The stories are all we take home.
The stories, they stick to our bones.
Mackerel Sky
A mackerel sky can be used to forecast weather, but it is at the more challenging end of the weather lore spectrum. The simple bit is this: a mackerel sky of any kind means change is likely.—Tristan Gooley, The Natural Navigator.
Birds open the day for business:
the sky is not intended for fish. Morning clouds
in long lines move across downtown
toward St. Anthony Falls. Scaled gray
underbellies illuminated by the rising sun
skim office towers and high rises
avoid the light display on the Target building
where the puffer fish in the faint aquarium
keeps blowing itself up. The clouds head off
to be fog on the Mississippi. Condense into what
will soon be steamy air. For now it’s cool.
Birdsong sweeps the sidewalks. A rabbit
scuttles under the iron fence to loot
my neighbor’s lettuce. No sirens. On my balcony
I watch fish swim in the sky as if
they owned it. Treetops wave like jazz hands.
A man at the bus stop lifts a mask from
his fast food uniform, clouding his singular face.
Paula Reed Nancarrow
is a poet and storyteller living in Minneapolis. She has performed at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, the Moth Grand Slam at St. Paul’s Fitzgerald Theater, and other venues. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in bluepepper, Neologism, and Tiny Seed.