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
Childhood Dreams :
Parachinar, Punjab, the Hindu Kush—
Deliciously the words roll in my mouth,
and melt like butter curls and memories.
Early mornings, before the midday heat,
my mother sat with me under a chinar tree
and taught me how to read the newspaper,
just like a grownup, and how to spell
Chrysanthemum.
At night I lay in a small white room
on a narrow cot strung with cords
and slept and dreamed my childhood dreams
while the bantam chicks poked for worms
in the weeds outside.
They tell me that Parachinar,
my childhood home,
is home to Al-Qaeda now,
a Madrassah training camp.
Who sleeps now in the small white room,
on the narrow cot strung with cords,
and do dreams still float in space
while the bantam chicks poke for worms
in the weeds outside?
Portrait in Black and White :
A grand clutter of magpies
in judges’ robes flutters to fill
the bone-bare branches
of winter trees. They stare
at me, then burst into mad
crackles of raucous laughter.
What, I ask them, is the joke?
The heavy load of winter snow
that slid sharply off the roof,
just missing me? The small cat
dashing by with piteous mews
to disappear into an open door?
The magpies do not answer.
Again in unison, abruptly they
cease their clatter to fly away,
bright plumage shining black
and white in icy winter light.
A Resting Place :
(Newspaper headline reads Baby’s Foot Found in Desert Cave)
Air crackles with dry heat. My tongue swells and wants to
fill my mouth, choke out my life. Above, the noonday sun
glares, indifferent to whether we mortals survive or not
in this empty, arid desert, fit for neither foolish man nor beast.
Dark shadowed space ahead invites me in and I lurch forward
to seek relief from heat become unbearable. I squeeze into
the small hollow and give thanks for rest and cooler
air. My body, sensing it will live to see another day,
relaxes and I lean back, grateful. Off to my side I glimpse
a small pink object. It seems to glow. Am I hallucinating?
I peer more closely, and in amazement see that small
pink object is a foot, a tiny foot, a tiny baby’s foot. Just the
foot is there, no small ankle, chubby leg, nor rounded baby’s
body. The toes are slightly curled as if in pleasure at some
private glee and the sole rests lightly, lightly on the sandy floor,
too light to leave a mark or slight imprint of its brief passage.
My mind reels and wants to vault into the horror of the unknown
Hows and Whys, but instead I take a moment to worship at the altar
of this small and unprotected foot, so brave in its aloneness, and somehow
still alive, that waits silently (for what?) in the cool shadow of the cave.
E-mail from my friend Tom on his birthday :
My birthday today and I am 67 and full
of love for you and for the snow geese,
hundreds rising white against the sky blue
of a corn field flooded with melted winter
snow. They circle like floating snowflakes,
fluorescent in the still air, and glide gently back
to water, honking, splashing, a mini snowstorm
turning the blue waters white again.
Tonight a hockey play-off with pizza afterward,
The pizza is good and I will eat too much.
The beer is cold and I will drink too much—but it’s my
birthday and I like pizza better than cake anyways.
But nobody will bring candles.
And I like being 67 and full of love for you and for
fluorescent snow geese that float like snowflakes
in the still air. And I thank the great creator for
these drifts of white snow geese, and for loving you.
In Memory of Tom—The First Time :
I do not remember the details
of the first time we made love,
only the moment of melting naked
into naked and the opening yes
and oh yes oh oh
I remember no feeling but the strong
pulse of your thrust reaching up
and into my heart opening
and then falling and the slippery
swirling wetness of rising
deep and wide and down
to the first coming.
And then lying still,
imprinted.
Catherine Garland
I was born many years ago in a small town high in the mountains of the Himalayas, and I have lived my adult life in a small town high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. The many years in between then and now have been filled with beauty and the attempt to capture the wonder of all aspects of life in the wonder of words.