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
Veteran’s Park
I walked there at daybreak
to view the colossal bronze
of a young ensign, bereft, his rifle
capped with another’s helmet.
May thirty-first. This was once
observed as Decoration Day
but today there are no starry pennants
or tri-colored sashes pinned across
men and women who rise from folding
chairs to gingerly salute. This place is empty,
almost. A teenager is learning to drive.
Sparrows make their ablutions in the sand.
And there. My dead father, standing away,
teeth and glasses restored since I saw him last.
But it’s someone else, of course,
some other elder serviceman
yet to be taken Over There.
Bicycle parts and a broken cement
culvert lay in the creek—mortar and caisson.
Struck by its lanyard, a flag pole is ringing.
Somewhere a lawnmower idles—
my father’s song—the droning made dulcet
by distance and wind and how I like to imagine
it is the sound made by the morning star.
This Week
Our daughter lost her incisor.
It rattled in the plastic bite-size
treasure chest her school supplies.
Baptists examine their thirty
foot steeple taken down
for repair. It rests on its side
across the parking lot.
Instead of sleeping on it
she buried her tooth in the yard.
Soiled fingernails, a red gap
between thorn canines,
like a novice vampire
interring a fang.
Without its mitre, the house
of God resembles any other
middle class dwelling.
On the church roof, spotlights
hit a white spire of moths.
My wife found only sleeping hands
tucked under the pillow.
Regardless, the tooth fairy left a dollar.
After work I drive
past the church.
Sideways, the steeple
points the way home.
The Game
The drill team built a half-time prop,
some sort of rickety fuselage parked
in front of Wildcats spelled with Solo
cups pushed into chain link fence.
Wind carries the clatter of drum practice
across the street to this coffee house
buzzing with after-school girls.
A petite scholar pouts for a boy on her laptop,
hands cupping her au lait, taking the brew
like a philter. Bedheads peruse an art book
trying hard to be unimpressed by 1000 nudes.
When an unfamiliar classmate enters
they turn but pretend they don’t see her,
even though they are dying to be noticed.
There is a father sitting with his very little girl
who’s eager to greet them all but it’s time
to leave for the game. As he helps put on her coat
he recites, with each button, an oracle
assuring his daughter that every closure
will bring something unexpected and new:
a gift
a ghost
a friend
a foe
a letter to come
a journey to go
Green Ghost
Her hand made spontaneous scribble
of things to come. On the grocery list
our grandmother wrote no not him
not the one. Moments later Oswald
shot the president.
She miscarried seven times.
She claimed their spirits awoke
and could be heard after dark.
At dusk she smelled cigarettes,
said the revenant of a smoking paramour
had come to her kitchen window.
She once pursued a sad infatuation
to Mexico, returned with a photo
of the catholic priest and a devil mask
she hung above her bed.
She put grandchildren in the guest bed
to sleep but we stayed awake to play
the board game stored underneath.
The glowing phantom spinner pointed
its finger at whoever had a turn but
we never learned to play. We just watched
Green Ghost spin phosphorescent
then jumped into bed before our grandmother
looked in, dabbing her red-rimmed eyes,
muttering about missing pieces,
the lack of rules and small voices
in the night.
December 13th
She wears a pair of pink strap-on
marabou wings and whatever she’s staring at
is something most of us hope we never see.
I recognize her from Cora street’s wildflower
median. She knelt there for days last summer
and announced Do Not Mow—
repeating the posted phrase as if to teach
a bird to talk. She looks like she grew up
from a fifth grade classmate I remember,
one who skipped cracks to save her mothers
back, a girl with boy’s glasses and breasts
too soon. Shoppers skirt the sidewalk
where she stands this evening in a stained
white formal, a store window at her back
as if she’s part of the display. Her perpetual grin
reminds me why mannequin smiles show no teeth.
This displaced bridesmaid shuffles into the street
where her damp hair gleams red with Christmas light
and she becomes someone else. A serene ingenue,
ecstatic in her ordeal—Saint Lucy, unaware
she has been crowned and the crown is fire.
David A. Bart
is a writer from Arlington, Texas. His poetry appears in the journals Poet Lore, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Margie, Cider Press Review, Illya’s Honey and The Weight of Addition (Mutabilis Press).