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
Icarus’ Father
Daedalus never understood the danger of joy.
He was imprisoned for this misunderstanding,
for making a device for the Queen’s pleasure
when the King had ceased to please her.
The architects of pleasure are wingless
and short-sighted. The waxy geometry
of flight does not account for the angle
of wind against the skin or the sum
of sunlight. Logarithms of desire,
the delirious arithmetics of living,
dividing the sky between the sun
which will devour all our days
and the cold, blue sea. We fly akimbo
skimming the irreconcilable balance,
neither bird or fish enough to navigate
those distances. When I fall (and I will
fall) I know my father will fly on
without me. There are more sons
to be fathered on an unarrived shore.
Tomorrow is a margin in a ledger.
Baba Yaga
three times this house turned its back
to the sea and its door toward me
what choice did I have but enter
the hunger outburned any hope or risk
outweighed the distance
I came to know as regret
what choice did I have but lay
my chin on the shelf beside yours
filling the room with our far-flung bodies
stretched as deliberate as sleep
my memory of our arms and legs open
fills the house—your head in the kitchen ,
hands flung into closets, one foot in the garage,
the heel of the other furrowing the yard
these rooms could not contain what we filled it with
and seemed to grow smaller around us
my house is still filled with the sounds of our sleeping
this was Baba Yaga’s dream: that I was a hunger
you could never satisfy and not the woman
who followed the top she sent spinning
into forests, toward other houses
the truth is you were that hunger I fed myself to
until not even bones remained
and so had nothing left of myself for you
Relentless Blue
I look for you in this poem with both hands
every word like the fingers of a blind sculptor
searching for your familiar face in the sightless clay.
If I were a painter, what I want to say
to you would be a shade of blue that couldn’t be bought
only blended by loving curiosity and relentless patience
blue as sun rising on the ocean after a storm
blue as dawn, obsidian about to shatter
in a wet cacophony of color. Azure
love. Sapphire uncertainty.
Hungers marbled turquoise and lapis lazuli.
If I were a sailor, this poem would be
a hundred days at sea.
Lips cracked with salt and silence.
Above me—in the wet, endless sky—clouds row by
with a cargohold of storms and birds for barnacles.
Gulls shriek like lonely women.
Every star is an omen, I navigate by touch.
Below me—in the wet, endless sea—is everything
I dare imagine, everything that will ever
and will never be: wide and spiny as puffer fish
infinitely blue and filled with stones, fish, and sunken
treasure; the skeletons of clouds, birds, and stars;
sharks, mermaids, and the myriad of scuttling mysteries.
This poem is adrift in tomorrow’s current
somewhere off the coast of yesterday.
Your hand on this page is bone china,
the pottery buried with Pharoahs, Klimt’s
yellow kiss, swollen mouthed as O’Keefe flowers.
Your hand on this page is the woman who waits
in a cottage overlooking the sea
where every hundred-day journey hopes to end.
Award-winning poet 
G. L. Morrison writes, teaches, and nests in Portland, Oregon. Her writing has migrated into Sinister Wisdom, Evergreen Chronicles, Girlburn, The Advocate, Manzanita Quarterly, Alternet, Sexis, and into anthologies including Best of Best Women’s Erotica (Cleis Press), Mom: Candid Memoirs (Alyson Books), and How Can You Say We’re Not Related (Scurfpea Publishing). Her poetry collection Chiaroscuro Kisses (Headmistress Press) will be released later this year.