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
The Rusty Buddha
On the barnyard grass,
camouflaged in its setting
of weeds and dirt, its metal tarnished
from weather, rain and sun washing
together, the hands hold
a string of beads and a flask, as the eyes
of the God stare into the distance.
I smell strawberry-rhubarb pie.
There is an apple tree growing rotten
apples hanging heavy in the air,
the branches bend with the weight. There
is a hint of spiceberry.
Buddha sits, stoic and understanding,
knowing more than I know, knowing
how to make strawberry-rhubarb pie,
transforming the rotten apple smell into the one
that used to waft from my Grandma’s oven: the
crisp sugar on the brown crust
covered the sweet heat of strawberries.
Rhubarb adds pungency, and
brings me back to the scientific
Buddha, sitting
in the grass in front of the old
spicy brown barn, the dark molasses
of the outside walls holding the roof, but only
for one more season. Even Buddha won’t be
able to stop it.
Night falls and here
I sit ogling the Buddha as if
it will give me some kind of sign,
something to go on
that will take me
out of myself.
There’s a Van Morrison song playing in my head,
crooning, telling me
where the Buddha is, I know it,
where the spicy smell of apples sits
next to the strawberry-rhubarb pie.
The sweet & sour smells mingle
with the music, and the oxidized Buddha
waits for my prayer, but
I have none, nothing to pray for, only
that I could possibly be sent
back in time where I decided
not to go, but came here instead,
with the Buddha, the barnyard, the
apple tree rotting, the music & the sorrow
sinking down into my feet.
Roots
The roots that I am digging
Are tough, pulling me in.
The earth smells so fertile;
It does not give them up so easily.
Tough, pulling me in,
The roots are like memories,
Not given up so easily;
They’re unwilling to yield the answers.
The roots are like memories—
I have to pull on them hard.
They’re unwilling to yield the answers,
Or anything that can help in this life.
I have to pull on them hard,
Through dirty gloves wearing thin.
Is there anything that can help in this life?
I’m still hoping that there is.
Through dirty gloves, wearing thin,
I feel sinews of memory tug.
I’m still hoping that there is
A piece of my heart at the end.
I feel sinews of memory tug
At all of the emotions inside me.
There’s a piece of my heart at the end;
The roots are so deep in the earth.
With all of the emotions inside me,
The earth smells so fertile.
The roots are so deep in the earth,
The roots that I am digging.
The End of My Life
The bees nearly took me with them.
They came from nowhere like water
trickling from a rusted faucet, too cold,
or from a pump, like the one attached
to the wooden floor in the back room
of my grandmother’s house.
I would imagine
how far down the well was dug
beneath the graying floorboards;
I would step away
into the kitchen, safe.
Clouds and men were
gathering, circling, and
keeping me from my children.
They could not see
what I saw, the white wind
swirling near the stairs,
the wind I saw just as surely as I saw
the rain barrel behind my grand-
mother’s house where I drank cold
black water from a rusted cup, dipped under
the disturbed surface, tasted metallic, and
wondered if everything would be okay.
Morning
sunlight kissing the top
of the lilac
the dogwood
now sleeping in autumn
standing still
for the onslaught of winter
the waking to work
to good mornings and
breakfast and rushing
out of the house
the holding on to
images that last but
cannot last in this our
ephemeral way of life
the clinging to aphorisms
of the dead that
somehow
comfort us in our
living through each
day as it comes
crashing or seeping
or running us down
somehow we are comforted
knowing that we die
and are dying
every day in the tides
that ebb and crash,
standing until we cannot.
Separation
The bones are separating from the skin
of an animal freshly found, after death,
with weather and cruelties surrounding and closing in.
Layers shred away with pain and a memory in
the recesses of the cavity left without a breath.
The bones are separating from the skin.
The moments of decay remember the nature of the sin
of moving closer and closer, approaching death;
with weather and cruelties surrounding and closing in.
I lean close again to see if I can win
a chance to alter the process of the vulture’s breath;
but the bones are separating from the skin
of what I cannot define or, knowing, look within
to see if what is left is truly dead,
with weather and cruelties surrounding and closing in.
My mind is blank and racing above the skin
that melts and pushes its way to death.
The bones are separating from the skin,
with weather and cruelties surrounding and closing in.
Anne Graue
lives, writes, and teaches online for two universities from her home in New York’s Hudson Valley. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Kansas State University and an MA in Teaching English from Columbia Teachers College. Her poems have appeared in Paradigm, Compass Rose, and The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly, and she was a finalist in the Patrica Dobler Poetry Award for 2013. She is a reviewer for NewPages.com