Dotted Line Dotted Line

Poetry Fall 2013    fiction    all issues

whitespacefiller

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

Abraham Moore

Inadvertent Landscape

Two voices,

two black rectangles of voice,

one little lung, carpet.

They’re changing the garbage in the lobby

behind him. I disagree.

The word doesn’t do that.



There are Places Where
We are Unwelcome


My scapula twitched and burned like a cymbal

the night she put her tongue in my ear.

The room had charisma, small appliances, nice drapes.


I forget the times she called me an asshole

And it begins to rain disfigured little faces outside.

I worry the forecast, paltry glasswares, stomach pumps,

I worry ticket stubs.


My lip cracks and bleeds on my beer can.

The black walnut tree sheds all over the lawn.

Everyone at the party smells like turpentine.


Later it feels like we’re sleeping but when I close my eyes

I wake up and all I can think of is pale skin,

scissors, a playful thorn inside a quiet word,

the bird outside, one squawk of possession,

of unknowing narcissism, of breath.



Armed Only With Our Sense
of Degradation as Human Beings


Our hands hold the vase that holds the train together for just

this moment before the train shatters and the clasp

is no longer a human clasp. It’s a beast, or the outline of a person,

or the idea of a self as a shattered line of a wrecking train.


I feel like the vagrant who left the stolen bicycle on the tracks

to derail the train while I pissed into the screaming brush.



We Want to Have Been

Cormorant,

this word of you, afterthought of stolen

second-hand clothing, this soft public address

concerns my lungs. You’re kinked neck in flight

spills the ghosts of Shane’s open, soft hand,

of empty Fairbanks bottles, Stephanie’s

blind eye, all over the couch. I keep slipping on them.


I wish they loved us. They used to be us:

dissolved into stretched-out moments, eating salads.

We lean on the barrel of nights’ waiting tantrums.

We feel, want to become, or to have been the ghosts,

to scavenge some before-man groan of waking

under the sad little fruit trees.



Horizon

the small way the power lines divide the white-orange trees

the small way of a car alarm— distant guard-rail thin, and mad

near the overpass— a woman pulling hard on her

own hair in the breeze-pocket of a train station


Abraham Moore is a poet originally from central Indiana. He currently lives and works in San Diego.

Dotted Line