Poetry Summer 2018 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Michael Lønfeldt
Carol Lischau
Son
& other poems
Noreen Ellis
Jesus Measured
& other poems
Amanda Moore
Learning to Surf
& other poems
Adin Zeviel Leavitt
Harvest
& other poems
Jim Pascual Agustin
Stay a Minute, the Light is Beautiful
& other poems
Timothy Walsh
The Wellfleet Oyster
& other poems
Anna Hernandez-French
Watermelon Love
& other poems
J. L. Grothe
Six Pregnancies
& other poems
Sue Fagalde Lick
Beauty Confesses
& other poems
Abby Johnson
Finding Yourself on Google Maps
& other poems
Marisa Silva-Dunbar
Frisson
& other poems
Merre Larkin
Sensing June
& other poems
Savannah Grant
Saint
& other poems
Andrew Kuhn
Plains Weather
& other poems
Catherine Wald
Against Aubade
& other poems
Joe Couillard
Like New Houses Settling
& other poems
Faleeha Hassan
In Nights of War
& other poems
Olivia Dorsey Peacock
Thelma: ii
& other poems
Sarah Louise
Tremors
& other poems
Kimberly Russo
Inherent Injustice
& other poems
Frannie Deckas
Child for Sale
& other poems
Jacqueline Schaalje
Mouthings
& other poems
Nancy Rakoczy
Her Face
& other poems
Ashton Vaughn
Contrition
& other poems
Jacqueline Schaalje
Dante’s Lines
If Dante dyed his hair, he would be terrifically delayed on a Saturday morning,
half an hour bombed to read and write in,
which would result in one less line.
maybe two.
If Dante polished his nails, he would dedicate half an hour to this tedious task
(including scrubbing and buffing), every two-three weeks,
or more often if he got tired of the color,
or in the event
[Line lost.]
where the composition of his dress would be all-important.
Each of those primping parties where he’d be seen and wooed
would cost him one or two lines. Although
when you dye your hair or polish your nails, lines, like
lines under your eyes, may also be gained.
In all likelihood, they would pop up in Dante’s brain,
effortlessly, quite independently
from his slow, purposeful actions,
that could be banal like nail polishing.
The polishing causing and not causing a fist ramming lightning antithesis in his gut’s dark wood.
Okay then.
Never underestimate the nail polishers.
It’s so easy to poke fun at them.
[Line lost.]
If Dante divided the tasks of childrearing equally with his wife,
he would have spent a few hours on this every day, which would mean fewer lines.
If he hadn’t been a powerful Ghelf, on the receiving side of the political divide,
the darling of the Pope and Charles of Valois, and hadn’t been
up to his single-covered eyeballs in debate,
would it have been possible at all that he took up a dishwashing brush,
just to help the wife out now and then, or at least his housekeeper,
for he surely kept one to keep his posh chambers neat?
And if he hadn’t fallen from office would he have brought back his chalice to the kitchen,
avoiding to look at the ruby drops he lost on the way, but the lines,
the lines,
that left his hand trembling, while his
head kept busy with all this menial nonsense?
Not being able to do things simultaneously.
Hell, think and write?
[Line lost.]
Enter Beatrice, the antidote to Dante’s housekeeping fetish: she became the dote.
Beatrice, she wasn’t a time-suck: on the few occasions he glimpsed her,
she made Dante’s poetic zen zip aloft and run gloriously turbo,
until he crashed down and found himself backtracking over the same painful
dishwashing brush.
And in the endless fretting and throes of blessed passion
he likely lost a few more lines that were true and felt—
Oh blessed mother, you angel,
that takes away my boondoggle from me, let’s
have done with our mourning.
I will make you famous.
Mouthings
Your winter coat from Prague. Thermo-patched, dove-cuirass
Lays down blond fur corona, buckled forward for a kiss.
Bubble gum encroaches, making mad with riddle—
I ask is that cleanser tea, that scent your collar keeps in.
Beatific with your husky halo, devourer of chicken breast,
you resist so many who would have you—
I can only envy you, sculptor of heart muscles. Lightning.
Geranium lips curling with expectance, the first toppings.
A pearly rain drips in the overlit, plum parking lot.
In the boudoir of our seaming hoods it’s moist and warm,
leaning back lucky into hovercraft, spice of spittle,
you’re taking after the baby. I start to dream.
In this protectionism of permeable yearning we control our
import. I like the things that you don’t like in you.
You trust your loss, that pain contrasted; bubbling like lava,
I follow your censer. The plated car cracks open
to stay put until midnight. The organs swell and luxuriate:
bitter, blooming, I have done this ad nauseam.
Newbie divorcé, I meet your eye to see
and there is more. With the drama sketched in,
the routines you work seem marvelously new.
If You Know Snow
If you know snow only from a book
you can be alone, or make a snowperson
and create anything under your gloved hands.
If you know snow only from a book
you can have white, quiet mornings
and mysterious, shivery evenings.
In the wide tide of shimmering
icicles might trick you
and propose a beauty overhaul.
Unseen, you can have hundreds of words for it
your children will have a feeble grasp of,
unless you make them read.
If you know snow only from a book
you stand looking out, flailing,
not the easiest words melting against your palate.
You must listen to witnesses of snow
but beware, don’t take over their words—
The words must be yours.
If you know snow only from a book
you won’t ever use sand to efface it.
Snow sphinx sounds like a dope idea.
If you know snow only from a book
you can make a movie out of it,
add some blue light.
Reassembly
The decision not fleshed out,
so small it didn’t really exist.
Could I resist its shadow
and feel affection for its parent?
That I could give it dreams, maybe bad
ones that I caused?
Sometimes I imagine going shopping
for gaudy rags at Primark
and screaming at the top of our lungs.
So small it is crazy that I flushed it,
it would have been a you now, wan
youth, but of my growing own.
So undefined, I’m shy to ever
look you in the eye—all purpose, not
one to disturb. What good is a shadow
if not created? A partner only
at parties? I’ve looked at your profile
and thought you resembled me, the shape
I’d been trying to recollect for
when I’ll grow weaker, so to speak.
You keep with me, child, tiny
again, so I can hold you in my belly.
I talk to you, quietly,
give you a little pat now and then.
The City with a Heart
You know the city where you went to on the cheap,
the city that had positive buzz, said your friends;
see this cozy cafe, salad with pomegranate;
the city where once upon a time they bombed its heart
out, and now you find yourself wandering, looking
for where it could be; maybe it is in that street,
behind that mall, palace with its sunburst sign and turrets—
kind of cool, but clearly not authentic, is it?
Still, it’s nice here, and warm, because I make that effort.
The museum has a model that recreates sacrifice
after the showdown. It turns out the city never had
a heroic gush of glory, if you discount war. After it closed,
orphans were recruited by clergy, passing buckets
with rubble from the spire. I have trouble putting myself
in the place of a stricken, bow-tied daughter. Then,
that monk was smiling, avuncular. In his past of past,
his parents fed him black bread and potatoes, deloused
his fine hair and lovingly coiled his earlock, before they
sent him along, a slap on his cold, dull cheek. What can
he say now to those cute kids? More pictures roll
past. Bedraggled beggars schlep along pony walls.
Who knows that if I had a daughter I would tell her
the city we visit, it has a heart still, and gradually
I would have her discover she can slip in.
Jacqueline Schaalje
(MA English from the University of Amsterdam) has published stories in On the Premises and The Massachusetts Review. Another story was a finalist for the Epiphany Prize, and in the New Guard Competition. She went to the Southampton Writers Conference (NY) last summer to work on a novel. A poem has just been published by Sky Island Journal and some are forthcoming in Sixfold.