Poetry Summer 2014 fiction all issues
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Anne Rankin-Kotchek
Letter to the World
from a Dying Woman
& other poems
Sara Graybeal
Ghetto City
& other poems
Tee Iseminger
Construction
& other poems
Lisa Beth Fulgham
After They Sold the Cows...
& other poems
Mary Mills
The Practical Knowledge
of Women
& other poems
Monika Cassel
Waldschatten, Muttersprache
& other poems
Michael Fleming
To a Fighter
& other poems
Daniel Stewart
January
& other poems
John Glowney
Cigarettes
& other poems
Hannah Callahan
The Ptarmigan Suite
& other poems
Lee Kisling
How the Music Came
to My Father
& other poems
Jose A. Alcantara
Finding the God Particle
& other poems
David A. Bart
Veteran’s Park
& other poems
Greg Grummer
War Reportage
& other poems
Rande Mack
rat
& other poems
J. K. Kitchen
Anger Kills Himself
& other poems
Jim Pascual Agustin
The Man Who Wished
He Was Lego
& other poems
Jessica M. Lockhart
Scylla of the Alabama
& other poems
James P. Leveque
Three Films of Jean Painlevé
& other poems
Kelsey Charles
Autobiography
& other poems
Therese L. Broderick
Polly
& other poems
Lane Falcon
Touch
& other poems
Ricky Ray
The Bird
& other poems
Phoebe Reeves
Every Petal
& other poems
David Livingstone Fore
Eternity is a very long time...
& other poems
Tim Hawkins
Northern Idyll
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
On the Pillow Where You Lie
& other poems
Joey DeSantis
Baby Names
& other poems
Cameron Price
Every Morning
& other poems
David Walker
Sestina for Housesitting
& other poems
Helen R. Peterson
Ablaut
& other poems
Finding the God Particle
When we are finally standing face to face
and flesh to flesh, remind me that I want
more than your body, more than your mind.
Remind me that I want the infinite sweep of you
the full onrushing charge of you
the m-c-squared of you, the big bang of you.
Remind me to give you the indivisible parts of me
the strange quarks of me, the charm of me
the up and down of me.
And though 95% of everything else is darkness
let us be nothing but a tangle of vibrating strings
caught in the claws of a curious cat.
Alone
I fell asleep by the river again.
Thirty-eight degrees. The Stranger
in my lap. How is it that the same sun
that gives this sweet lethargy
brings another man to murder?
A single shot, a pause, then four more.
As I watch the ducks drop into the eddies
I know the sun is not to blame, nor the moon,
the fires, the droughts, or the surging tides.
We act. We do what we want.
Sometimes we get away with it.
Sometimes we pay a price.
A Day in the Life
It’s her birthday.
She opens a tiny black box
bound in a blue bow.
A billion billion stars tumble out
some yellow, some red
some big, some small.
They fall, in all directions
into a bottomless black bowl
where they burn burn burn
until she makes a wish
and with her cold breath
blows them out.
Jose A. Alcantara
lives in Carbondale, Colorado. He started writing poetry four years ago after a quasi-mystical experience in a graveyard involving Dante, a dead woman named Guadalupe, melting frost, a raven, and some church bells. He was the recipient of a 2013 Fishtrap Fellowship in Poetry and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.