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Poetry Fall 2013    fiction    all issues

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Chris Joyner
Wrestlemania III
& other poems

Carey Russell
Visiting Hours
& other poems

Marc Pietrzykowski
Cabinet of Wonders
& other poems

Jonathan Travelstead
Prayer of the K-12
& other poems

Jennifer Lowers Warren
Our Daughter's Skin
& other poems

Jeff Burt
The Mapmaker's Legend
& other poems

Patricia Percival
Giving in to What If
& other poems

Toni Hanner
1960—Lanny
& other poems

Christopher Dulaney
Uncle
& other poems

Suzanne Burns
Window Shopping
& other poems

Katherine Smith
Mountain Lion
& other poems

Peter Kent
Surliness in the Green Mountains
& other poems

William Doreski
Gathering Sea Lavender
& other poems

Huso Liszt
Fresco, The Forlorn Virgin...
& other poems

Clifford Hill
How natural you are
& other poems

R. G. Evans
Dungeoness
& other poems

David Kann
Dead Reckoning
& other poems

Ricky Ray
The Music of As Is
& other poems

Tori Jane Quante
Creatio ex Materia
& other poems

G. L. Morrison
Baba Yaga
& other poems

Joe Freeman
In a Wood
& other poems

George Longenecker
Bear Lake
& other poems

Benjamin Dombroski
South of Paris
& other poems

Ryan Kerr
Pulp
& other poems

Josh Flaccavento
Glen Canyon Dam
& other poems
& other poems

Christine Stroud
Grandmother
& other poems

Abraham Moore
Inadvertent Landscape
& other poems

Chris Haug
Cow with Parasol
& other poems

Mariah Blankenship
Fiberglass Madonna
& other poems

Emily Hyland
The Hit
& other poems

Sam Pittman
Growth Memory
& other poems

Alex Linden
The Blues of In-Between
& other poems

Bobby Lynn Taylor
Lift
& other poems

D. Ellis Phelps
Five Poems

Alia Neaton
Cosmogony I
& other poems

Elisa Albo
Each Day More
& other poems

Noah B. Salamon
Sanctuary
& other poems

Writer's Site

Josh Flaccavento

Glen Canyon Dam

Wherever there’s an Indian walking

backwards, she says, there’s rain. Rachel

on the nametag. Navajo. Some of this land

must be hers, somehow.


You’re from Virginia, she says, do you know

West Virginia? The New Gorge River? Their

bridge is like ours, ours is second

only to theirs. New

River Gorge, I say. Yes.


Design and style. We’re all

standing here—spillways

tunnels turbines tracks

for massive gantry crane—because

of design and style, she

tells us. Thin man, Midwestern, plus

wife. British couple, pensioners. Three

German boys, no good

English. Sister. Self. Last

tour of the day.


Please do not take pictures

of security. Do you need that #

in in. ft. mi. lbs?

Volumes. Pressures. Rates of flow in

m/s. Yes, you may

photograph this observation gallery. See

the water pooling in corners floors

on concrete? It is constantly

analyzed, an engineered

leak.


Grass like golf

course, not

orchard. No trees

here. These men

most highly skilled in the world.

Please observe their images. Ask

me any questions you want about

power water Western

space the science

of how this land was

reclaimed the science

of control.



I Sing Now of This

highway, commonplace and

deadly as time. Signs

mark the miles. They are my

companions and we are

gentlemen of the road. Seconds

crushed under the tires. Blood


and fur punctuate its

interminable sentence, the

flat expanse of hours

black yellow stabbed through

with rain and neon. Curves of


unrequited space pull at my eyes

drag hands and arms, entire

bodies. Calamity of place

less

ness, trauma of location

ripped pulled stretched.

Jagged stroke of light exposing


once-dark innards of mountain

range, spikes of valley ridge

scape. I sing its limit

less

ness, eternity of

motion hurtling tumbling over

boneyards ruins bridges, under

cloud-shadows and sundogs.


If I must burn the world to be free

then burn.



We reserve the right
to refuse service to anyone


Here’s what’s gonna happen, she

shouts over jukebox country, 1 a.m.

Renegade bar, Beaver, Utah.

Anybody I ain’t servin

is goin home. That’s

fucking

it. I’ve

had

enough. Need me

to walk you to the door?


Old cowboys a few fat

Latinos antagonists

of this one-woman

shift. She’d rather

the table of ladies

in the back, brother

boys with skateboards

balanced by the door


or us, perhaps, two

out-of-town kids, quiet

polite, silent laughter and six

dollar tip. Just

smoke, ghosts

passing through Patty’s

Friday night

leaving without

a trace.



A scrape

One of dozens, almost

indistinguishable at first

glance. A wound

got in fun, a simple

mistake. You

should’ve known better than

slowing stopping braking raw tips of

white fingers versus river current

Rio Grande Algodones after

noon. Now


new cut new scrape new

wound of what

type laceration avulsion

pulled-back flap of flesh hiding

interiors of blood and nervous

the actual finger the stuff of all fingers

can’t fight tides with fingers, not these

picked-over pulled-at peeled plucked the places


of dozens of simple wounds,

mistakes. Indistinct anxiety

made manifest.


Josh Flaccavento holds a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College and an MA in Literature from Clark University. He is from northeast Tennessee by way of southwest Virginia, but his poems in Sixfold are about the West, where he spent some time working on farms. He enjoys referring to himself in the third person, Norse mythology, and martial arts.

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