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
Cosmogony I
History tells us we
Climbed from the slime of
Phoenicia, dripping with
Disease and burning for
Change. In the cradle of
Civilization, deep
Ridges above our eyes,
We poured in what we
Could learn of the world,
Of how it was, we thought,
Thought of how it could be.
We couldn’t be stopped
Until the Fertile Crescent bulged
With words written, with
The glitter of glass, the spin
Of a rough wheel. We
Began in the womb of the
World, where subspecies
Died until progress rose and
Stood on shaky legs and
Surveyed the land and the
Scope of the sea and then
Wondered about it all.
What we believe dies
In flame, rises. History
Repeats to the scourge of
Sons. As soon as man saw
Man, they started fighting.
Soft glow, microscopic
Scaffold, double
Helix—our computed
Code: programming
Madness. The sun burns as
It falls behind New Jersey.
An Eastern Seaboard awash
With anger and sweat and the
Sting of the sea. When we dig
Into our past, we discover
Secrets. When we find
Truth, we are changed.
When we change, we burn.
Cosmogony II
In the lounge of the
Aurora House on
47th Street,
Commemoration
In art of those lost
To AIDS. A prayer
Wall of wounds, long gashes
Bleeding one into
The other. Each slip
Exposing someone
Else’s precious memory.
A massive wall of
Wishes, a wall holding
Up hope and despair,
Cracked plaster beneath
Broken bows of remembrance,
Of a community unloading
Their heavy hearts so that,
One-by-one,
They may be lifted.
Cosmogony III
Snow blotches
Spectral ground,
The stubborn,
Icy piles
Squatting still,
Reluctant
To let spring
In. A rat
Streaks across
The alley,
Over scraps
Of paper,
Glass, and the
Old tire-tread
Remains of
Another rat.
A woman
Stands, shadowed,
Inside her
Screen door. Smoke
Curls from her
Cigarette,
While the white
Cheshire moon
Smirks in the
Sky, trailed by
Two glowing
Planets—a
Kite tail of
Jupiter
And Venus,
Frozen ten,
Only ten,
Degrees a
Part in, a
Part of the
Celestial
Curtain that
Encloses
Us from the
Brittle chill
Of boundless,
Blackened
Horizon.
Cosmogony IV
A world away from me,
My blood burns in the sand.
A city in shambles and a family of one
Stand still on a dusty morning.
The blue sky lays shrouded in grey
And the streets are silent and strange.
Since yesterday’s dusk, the storm raged on.
Now the city doesn’t know her face.
There was a display outside.
Did we feel safe behind walls?
Across our city, a fire blazed,
And structures crumbled and fell.
The glass balcony glowed red,
Refracted auburn streaks shimmered,
Distorted on the panes.
Deep garnet splashed the bedroom
Bathing us in shades of fire and blood.
Cosmogony V
In what was a sunlit dining room,
The arc of time snaps.
As sure as I feel the smooth
Finish of wood table beneath
My hand, I know it is not
Real. A tangle of atoms
Held together by the mind
And what the mind conceives
As a table.
In what was a Tuesday afternoon,
Oak splinters and fades.
Raw matter bursts
Beneath my fingers—
Spectrum of color
And radiance, rays
Exploding outward,
Dissolving the impression
Of world around it. It is terrible and
Beautiful, the nature of this world.
The primal bay of anguish rises:
I cannot conceive a reality without him.
But then, I cannot conceive this reality at all.
Alia Neaton
is a writer and editor who received an MA in writing and publishing from DePaul University in 2013 and is thrilled to have her poems debut in Sixfold. She is currently working on her first full-length manuscript, an exploration of modern society’s dynamic relationship with food. She lives in Chicago with her husband; they are expecting their first child in February. www.alianeaton.com