Poetry Summer 2014 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
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
To a Fighter
for Marti
InvocationsI. CAT Scan
And just what does the cat see
with his shining green eyes
as he skulks through the dark
warm jungle of your veins?
Let him pad silently back
to report that the wet, pulsing
miracle somehow continues.
II. Biopsy
May the surgeon
in her spotless apron
emerge smiling
from the kitchen
saying:
I had a little look
you’re not ready
the oven’s not
even hot.
III. PET Scan
It sounds so gentle—just a light caress,
nothing intrusive, nothing rude or rough,
just a feathery touch, a lover’s kiss,
a whisper barely there, barely enough
but enough all the same—you can’t say no.
Or a light knock on your door: open it.
A nice young man, clean as a Mormon, stands
there smiling brightly and asks: How many kittens?
Puppies? Tropical fish? And he hands
you a pamphlet, a rose—you can’t say no.
Think of these things when you’re in the machine:
the brush of a heron’s wing, the soft knock
of knuckles that have never known work, clean
sheets, clean slates, clean blood. And one day we’ll talk
of this and laugh, or cry—you can’t say no.
From Dartmouth-Hitchcock
I want to tell you:
they look like they know
what they’re doing here.
I want to tell you:
the man we met today,
he’ll be a sculptor in reverse—
a poet of perfect excision.
Just the one little pea, no more.
And then we’ll go back
to West West, to wood thrushes
and red-eyed vireos and the great
blue herons rising like pterodactyls
from ponds shaded by maples.
Maples—
they know how summer heals
those neatly bored tapholes
from early spring.
I want to tell you:
we wouldn’t have a damn
thing different.
Chemo
By now we know a thing or two about
fire, how it quickens everything alive
or dead or flickering between, and how
to conjure it from nothing, how to give
it what it needs, and no more—just enough
oxygen, just enough life. We love fire,
love to exult in our mastery, love
to amaze ourselves with borrowed power. By
rights we would be gods. But gods, they have their
troubles, too—all that incense, all that dark
insufferable mumbling, all that rain. Why
do we put up with it? We just do. Star-
crossed, marked for the burning at birth. Pain? By
now we know a thing or two about pain.
Picture This
Do you like a beach? Okay, then, a beach—
in fact, your favorite beach, favorite because
you’ve never been to this beach before—each
sensation beckons you, opens you, draws
you in, welcomes you to your beach—the sand
envelops the bare contours of your feet,
sunshine pours over you, here, where the land
yields itself to the sea. A waiter greets
you, hands you a glass of exquisite wine,
the taste is an aria, it unfolds
itself in your throat, your belly, the line
between you and universe is gone, golden
light floods through you, heals you, holds
you, whispers everything’s going to be fine.
The Champ
The Champ is down, cold-cocked. Seven. Eight. Nine.
( two heads faces backlit floating in smoke
floating in warm wet gauze unending wind
choirs of voices choirs of bells one face broken
one barking numbers the other gone
the other ) The Champ stirs, shakes, slowly rises,
staggers, steadies, blinks hard twice, unfreezes,
nods all-clear. By God, the Champ fights on,
tapping the gloves as if to strike a spark,
as if to pray ( the other ) and the crowd
is delirious, a heaving sea of darkness
and fists, cigars and fedoras, now
rapt, now roaring, now howling like a raw
nerve, electric, as the two of them dance
the dance of circling beasts, now grappling, now glancing
blows, now thunder—by God, the Champ fights on,
unrelenting (the other) a quick left,
a right, darting jabs, starting to connect,
at last the Kid is on the ropes, a deft
feint from the Champ, dauntless on the blood-flecked
mat (the other), that bed of mortal conflict,
the crowd’s madness is love, uppercut,
the Kid’s head flies back, rock-a-shock, eyes shut,
nimbus of sweat and blood—the Champ fights on,
by God ( the other ) and the Kid is through.
Carted off. And now the ref does his shtick,
the big-mike announcer does his bit, too,
the crowd trades backslaps and greenbacks. The fix
is on, someone mutters gravely. ( gone
never gone ) Echoes and laughter, house lights.
Janitors appear, disappear. The night
is over—and by God, the Champ fights on.
Michael Fleming
was born in San Francisco, raised in Wyoming, and has lived and learned and worked all around the world, from Thailand and England and Swaziland to Berkeley, New York City, and now Brattleboro, Vermont. He’s been a teacher, a grad student, a carpenter, and always a writer; for the past decade he has edited literary anthologies for W. W. Norton. (You can see some of Fleming’s own writing at: www.dutchgirl.com/foxpaws.)