Poetry Winter 2022 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover
Li Zhang
Ana Reisens
Pam asked about Europe
& other poems
Krystle May Statler
To the Slow Burn
& other poems
Kristina Cecka
On Remodeling
& other poems
Belinda Roddie
Bless The Bones Of California
& other poems
Summer Rand
Alexander tells me how he'd like to be buried
& other poems
Alexander Perez
Toward the Rainbow
& other poems
Karo Ska
self-portrait of compassion…
& other poems
David Southward
The Pelican
& other poems
George Longenecker
Stamp Collection
& other poems
Mary Keating
Salty
& other poems
Talya Jankovits
Imagine A World Without Raging Hormones
& other poems
Laurie Holding
Sonnet to Mr. Frost
& other poems
David Ruekberg
A Short Essay on Love
& other poems
Elaine Greenwood
There’s a thick, quiet Angel
& other poems
Richard Baldo
Carry On Caretaker
& other poems
Jefferson Singer
Dave Righetti’s No-Hitter…
& other poems
Diane Ayer
A Fan
& other poems
Kaecey McCormick
Meditation Before Desert Monsoon
& other poems
Meg Whelan
Resubstantiation
& other poems
Katherine B. Arthaud
Possible
& other poems
Aaron Glover
On Transformation
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
[I'm crying in a sandwich shop reading Diane Seuss' sonnets]
& other poems
Holly Cian
Untitled
& other poems
Kimberly Russo
Selective Memories are the Only Gift of Dementia
& other poems
Steven Monte
Larkin
& other poems
Mervyn Seivwright
Fear Mountain
& other poems
George Longenecker
Newly fallen
snow covers his face,
body facing grey sky
which he can’t see
one arm outstretched to the right
as if reaching out
when he was shot
Kharkiv under siege
everything grey
another cold war
in the photograph
nearby troop carrier
a caterpillar
blackened burned
tread blown off
nobody alive shown
a mother and father
will get the news
death doesn’t take sides
all decay and return to soil
traffic light
street lamp
burned building
all dark
snow
newly fallen
Cold War
19 soldiers
ponchos flapping in wind,
perhaps they’re at Chosin Reservoir
perhaps on Heartbreak Ridge
winter war Korea so cold
they slog on through ice and snow
each clutching his weapon
Frank Gaylord’s sculptures
neither alive nor dead
frozen in time
like war that never ended
magpies fly over the border
quiet now in the DMZ
where they nest in maples
so many dead there
some left behind
a mere dimming
between life and death
as sunlight fades and night grows cold
war
19 soldiers frozen in time
Only One Casualty Today
Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory
As he defeated—dying—
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
—Emily Dickinson
My brother wades in cool water,
a scrawny kid in a red and blue swimsuit.
On the dock he poses with a pickerel,
New Hampshire—15 years left of his life.
Another summer—hours in the back seat,
smell of warm crayons in afternoon heat.
We pass an oil well—fragrance of raw crude,
Kansas, our grandmother’s house, cars on brick streets.
Only one casualty, the newscaster explained,
good news,—things are improving.
My brother the single casualty that day
not even battle, just a parachute plunge from a plane.
A good way to die if you have to, perhaps,
falling through clear sky.
Perhaps the smell of soil and lawn coming
fast, closer and closer—so long ago.
And there’s no way to ask him how he felt
about being the only one that day.
Only one son, only one brother
only one casualty today.
Stamp Collection
I flew a four engine China Clipper
straight off a twenty cent U.S. airmail stamp,
up over deep, forested valleys of Montenegro,
high over megalithic temples of Malta,
across the Mediterranean to the Rock of Gibraltar.
In San Marino I climbed high onto the ramparts of ancient
castles with panoramas across Italy to the Adriatic Sea.
I glided swiftly across the savanna
with Angola’s postage stamp giraffes.
How could I have known at ten,
that kids died before they got to be my age?
Portugal would kill every last Angolan
before giving up their colony.
They killed rhinos for horns to make aphrodisiacs,
slaughtered elephants for tusks
to make ivory cameos and piano keys,
then issued stamps with colorful pictures of wildlife.
I arranged my stamps and daydreamed of zebras,
my sister practiced piano.
while the USSR and USA fought the cold war on their postage—
Yuri Gagarin and Cosmonauts, Telstar,
Oklahoma—Arrows to Atoms, Atoms for Peace,
Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt.
What did I know of dying empires,
revolution, independence, liberation?
I was a kid collecting stamps.
So, I flew my China Clipper
as high as I could—
above it all.
Still Life
Sheep in Snow
Joseph Farquharson (1846-1935)
It’s still as sun sets,
light snow in a pasture,
we look west into orange sunset,
scattered clouds in shades of pink,
still enough light for long shadows
from trees on a small rise,
shades of orange in snow.
Sheep graze for what grass they can find,
waiting for sunset,
when they’ll return to shelter
outside the frame.
Though winter is brown and grey,
their pasture is full of color,
peaceful at solstice sunset.
Do sheep worry like we do,
about what will come
when night grows cold?
Though shadows cross their pasture,
there’s still color,
still life left as daylight fades.
What more could we ask?
George Longenecker
lives on the edge of the woods in Middlesex, Vermont. His poems, stories and book reviews have been published in Bryant Literary Review, Evening Street Review, Rain Taxi, The Saturday Evening Post and The Mountain Troubadour. His book Star Route was published by Main Street Rag. He’s executive secretary of The Poetry Society of Vermont. He looks for poetry in the paradoxical ways humans repeat their mistakes and reflect nature in their art. See George Longenecker on youtube.