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
1960—Lanny
When I touched Lanny’s arm, up where her white sleeve
ended, there were bees humming beneath her warm skin.
When I smelled Lanny’s hair, her straightened hair
the dull black of asphalt, it was sweet, just on the edge of turning.
When I touched Lanny’s hair, smoothed my hand
over the rough surface so unlike my own black silk—
Lanny’s skin the color of Sanka in the jar, a stone
hot in the sun, flecks of glistening fool’s gold.
We took off our clothes and lay giggling in her bed.
We hid her brother’s magazines under the covers
and marveled at the pale women, their enormous breasts,
and marveled at each other’s flat chests,
her little buttons a color I had no name for.
I remember talking dirty, biting the pillows to keep
from screaming with laughter and something else. We had no idea
what any of it meant, all I knew was that I wanted my arms
around her thin little body I wanted to lie on top of her
with my face in the sweaty hollow between her neck and bony
shoulder, I wanted a world I would not learn
how to name until Lanny disappeared.
Catalina
for Gloria
How did we decide—you nodded right or left,
I followed. Did we tell our parents—how
did we get there neither of us
had a car or a license. In the photo we sit smoking
on a blanket on what must be a beach
although you can’t see the ocean—maybe
it’s a hotel swimming pool. Bikinis, my sly, shy
almond eyes. Your mouth prim, your body
already hatching your future. Seniors in high school,
college freshmen, I remember nothing
but being there, Catalina, 26 miles across the sea,
the Avalon Ballroom’s graceful decay lording it over
daytrippers like us. We took a rickshaw,
night came with the usual terrors. You
went out on a boat with a stranger,
he had a yacht or was pretending to be
a man with a yacht. I don’t remember where
I slept or how we got home. Just this photo,
smoke from my Lucky
a curtain drawn across my face.
On Funerals
Over the land bridge to Idaho,
when my father died we didn’t
it’s how the Eskimos got there
and the Portuguese, my aunt’s
family, rows of Berriochoas
in Shoshone, animate as dust
swirling above ground, but when
my father died we just went home.
Africa, the Great Wall, we re-hung
the wallpaper in the corner cathedral,
we swept up the dust from Chernobyl
and fed each other with eyedroppers.
Now they come so fast, it’s hard
to keep track, my brother my sister
eventual only eighty years ago, now ellipses
in my mother’s autobiography. Oh yes,
she started it, my mother, with her June
snowfall, the monks gathering in their yellow,
her purple bruises, her flesh too yielding,
as if she were melting there in the salt flats
now each flies off after her, massive wing-beats,
we are already forgotten.
Boxes
Sister, here is your box, it has no stairs.
I will take you out when I need a slide
rule, a compass. Brother, your box
is tall, you will need to stand. If you grow
tired, ring the bell and someone will come
to turn you onto your side.
If you see our father
please tell him his supper
is getting cold.
After Dreams of the Dead
All Night, My Father
I wake late, bones aching and stiff.
A busy night of dead sisters
and living sibyls, a mother
somewhere, stirring the pot.
My ignorant calendar tells me
to send my brother a birthday card.
He’d be 76 on Wednesday, catching up
with our sister, now both are ash. I bought
tiny cork-stoppered bottles, thinking to collect
everyone, line them up on the mantle,
now I’m not so sure, I have my father, maybe
he’s all I need, my blood,
my horse, shambling through family
in a flail, a smolder. The parentheses around
my father and me raising the hair
on the back of my neck, I conjure him,
he strides hobble-gaited through all the watchkeepers,
they can’t see him and if they did, he’d seem a fool.
Inside the pale gold glass, ash sticks
together, wanting to hold some form.
Toni Hanner
’s poems appear in Yellow Medicine Review, Alehouse, Calyx, Gargoyle, and others. She is a member of Eugene’s Red Sofa Poets and Port Townsend’s Madrona Writers. She had two books published in 2012: The Ravelling Braid from Tebot Bach, and a chapbook of surrealist poems, Gertrude Poems and Other Objects from Traprock Books. Gertrude was selected by Mary Jo Bang as a finalist for the 2013 Oregon Book Award.