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Poetry Summer 2013    fiction    all issues

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Sharron Singleton
Five Poems

Sarah Giragosian
Five Poems

Jenna Kilic
Five Poems

Kristina McDonald
Five Poems

Toni Hanner
Five Poems

Annie Mascorro
Five Poems

Brittney Corrigan
Three Poems

S. E. Hudgens
Four Poems

Ali Doerscher
Four Poems

David Sloan
Three Poems

Olivia Cole
Five Poems

Lucy M. Logsdon
Four Poems

Marc Pietrzykowski
Four Poems

Donna Levine Gershon
Five Poems

Eva Heisler
The Olden Days

Stephanie Rose Adams
Five Poems

Jill Kelly
Five Encounters

Ben Bever
Five Poems

Michael Hugh Lythgoe
Five Poems

Arlene Zide
Three Poems

Harry Bauld
Five Poems

Lisa Zerkle
Four Poems

Peter Mishler
Five Poems

Tim Hawkins
Five Poems

Marqus Bobesich
Four Poems

Abigail Templeton-Greene
Five Poems

Eric Duenez
Five Poems

Anne Graue
Five Poems

Susan Laughter Meyers
Five Poems

Peter Kahn
Two Poems

D. Ellis Phelps
Five Poems

Linda Sonia Miller
The Kingdom

Nicklaus Wenzel
Skagit River

Holly Cian
Five Poems

Susan Morse
Five Poems

Daniel Lassell
Five Poems

Svetlana Lavochkina
Temperate Zones

Daniel Sinderson
Three Poems

Catherine Garland
Five Poems

Michael Fleming
Five Poems

Marqus Bobesich

the billow and the blast

that violent subway to your house—

its tin mermaids wailing and

singing us to the next stop

jostling our mouths, our hooves,

the milk of our collective brains.


we are a people tunneling hard,

(getting out of our own way, even)

with no time for all this

sentimental rock.


and what of the afterburn of paper and

hot trash, still floating in our tracks,

saluting us in jest

as we scream for more light,

for some ice hole of hope in

this subterranean mess.



Ask me things

irretrievable, dynamite brain

an evening never goes the way you want it”

 

suppose we cheat the season

with our nervous

airline fuel.

cheat death, cheat altitude

through the heavy beast of a

window seat.

yell at the engines

(one, now two)

that we’re strangers

still curious about the world.

 

but life had better be what they say;

we’re seven times the target age

fighting the glare of the sun

fighting what photos can

do to us.

 

it’s memories that fly this thing

not keeping us grounded

towels too hot (to face)

exfoliate

this skin, this bird

making good come from bad,

cups of tea from your bath water.

 

“if you want to sympathize, empathize, or

be near anyone’s thighs

let’s drop this nothingness

we’ve got going on, and aim for grace.”



Flora and fauna

Salesman says we’ll lose the

war on bugs

that they outnumber us 5 million to one

with plenty more hatching as we speak—

in our heating ducts, our pillows,

the walls of our warm intestines.


underneath us all the time, like the

rats they ride like horses

waiting to roll our skulls across their

million backs, like buckets in a

fire brigade, like quarry slabs rolled out to

make the pyramids.


We’ve got to call up our guts,

confront those turtles and snails on

their own terms,

crunch them on their own crooked door stoops.


We have logic on our side

and those dumbstruck spiders who will never

learn to warn the others:

that a smooth-gloss bathtub is the

death of them, a purgatory,

a record needle gushing over the same

goddamn groove.



upkeep

who do we thank for a 24-hour anything?

for a drugstore always standing guard,

its treasure box of lotions, potions,

and creams.


we feel cleaner even walking in,

comforted in our upkeep of the body,

its clues and answers stacked and

neatly labeled.


we’ve got a good feeling about this one;

that we’re adding miles to our one and only life


that somewhere on these shelves we might

experience a greater joy,

a stronger one

(and faster)


what we would trade for an easier go,

for cravings gone mute,

for steps on a jeweled dance floor,


a lightness to this need that never sleeps.


Marqus Bobesich received his BFA from York University, majoring in visual arts. His poems have appeared in Northwind Magazine, Word Riot, and Contemporary Verse 2. He is also the author of three independent chapbooks: “The Night of a Thousand Snowsuits,” “Dirty Pretty Halloween,” and “The Humans Are Singing.” He works in Toronto as an actor and musician. www.myspace.com/poormarqus

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