Poetry Summer 2019 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Antoine Petitteville
Laura Apol
Easter Morning
& other poems
Taylor Dibble
A Masterpiece in Progress
& other poems
Julia Roth
Lessons From My Menstrual Cup
& other poems
Jamie Ross
Ceaseless Wind. The Drying Sheaves
& other poems
Nicole Yackley
Mea Culpa
& other poems
George Longenecker
I’m sentimental for the Paleolithic
& other poems
Taylor Gardner
Short Observations by Angels
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
No Thomas Hardy
& other poems
Joanne Monte
War Casualties
& other poems
Nathaniel Cairney
Potato Harvest
& other poems
Steven Dale Davison
Wordsmouth Harbor Founder
& other poems
Heather 'Byrd' Roberts
How I Named Her
& other poems
Greenheart
sunny ex
& other poems
Ashton Vaughn
Through the Valley of Mount Chimaera
& other poems
Linda Speckhals
Borderlands
& other poems
Lucy Griffith
Breathing Room
& other poems
Steven Valentine
Written
& other poems
Emily Varvel
B is for Boys and G is for Guys
& other poems
Jhazalyn Prince
Priceless Body
& other poems
Marte Stuart
Generation Snowflake
& other poems
S.J. Enloe
Kale Soup
& other poems
Meghan Dunsmuir
Our Path
& other poems
Ashton Vaughn
Blackbird Looming
Who turns the hands of the clock,
fastidious and careful, over
and over again and again?
Who animates the chipmunk
that gently lifts himself out of the earth,
and once, twice, snaps his head to the sky
to peer at the sun he has forgotten?
What is it that moves in the wren
to urge her to sing—
what is it that calls forth the blackbirds,
year after year,
to flood the skies in raven waves
and leave the muddled face of Death
burnished like a sigil in our thought?
I know not why when the music begins
my feet turn to dancing and my voice to song,
but I do know there is something
lively and wild and wonderful
coursing through each life, each body,
and that every time I give myself over to it
I can once again feel the sun shining upon my face.
When the raven waves arrive,
and the song of the wren is diminished,
I think I shall be waiting,
not sitting—but dancing and singing,
ready to greet them with whatever song the Earth may have of me.
Through the Valley
of Mount Chimaera
If the silence breaks,
I hope your gold crumbles upon me like dust;
Caught between the cusp,
we tasted a brevity, not short and sweet,
but as consuming as the flame which burns
on testamented trust.
And as I glimmer, a newfound thing,
a burning blaze of aurum,
enshrouded in a majesty
like the decadence of boredom,
I twist against the agony
that looms like Hades’ quarry;
a flame to raze a man’s fell hope,
a prince’s claim to whoredom.
Toll the bells,
Death’s keeling knell
shall palpitate the earth.
March in robes of sanguine red
through obsidian gates of Hell.
Halcyon
Snakes slithering in the undergrowth,
gloomy murk and despair
and leaves blackened by rot;
Weeds reaching clumsily through the turned earth
—earthworms, those little tendrils of life,
spindling along like fibers of the mortal system;
Orchestral buzz of flies,
stagnant water and algal bloom
(which tells of death and life,
death and life;)
Upon the earth, like gravedirt turned,
onerous ants trail back and forth—
a machine stronger than any of man’s;
And among the swamp a heron stands,
tall as a tower, and just as mighty,
his cloudy down as soft and blue as wisdom:
This is another way of life.
Halcyon is a place in one’s mind;
here, the birds fly from the earth,
and back to the earth they must go.
here, the weeds die, and come back,
and die and die again.
They’re coming back as strong and as lovely as ever.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
as God Looked Away
Washed up from the bay:
I am driftwood.
I am bound and I am impermanent,
I am beautiful and I am careless.
Salty water seeps from my head into the earth
as I lie in the grass on the shore by the bay,
as I lie in the fields that are faded.
My hair is woven into the ground—
I am the roots!
and my fingertips are stems,
sprouting and growing
and searching for sunlight
in this faded field
on the shore by the bay,
Where I believe I am surrounded
by the company of friends
until I notice
that the skies are empty and the birds are quiet
and I lean to my side
to whisper to the resting wolf
that “the world has gone silent”
but the wolf has gone silent also
and beside him are the birds
who are absent from the sky
and their throats don’t hum
and their wings don’t flutter
but their feathers still hold
the luster of an old life’s glory,
and so I sit beside them
and I sing the songs that they can no longer sing for me.
Hallelujah.
Song of Solomon
I. Names inscribed on trees,
scratched along fences and bridges—
but we carved our names into the sky,
cut out the stars and kept them like secrets in our pockets.
II. The night I shed my clothes
you watched me.
You wouldn’t even show your face,
and later told me to get some sleep;
pixels glared back at an empty stare.
Y0u couldn’t show your face, so you watched instead.
III. The way the earth livens before the rain.
Melodies hummed softly, held between the lips.
Lavender.
Bumblebee.
Salt of the ocean.
Wildflowers, freshly cut and pressed.
IV. shatter,shatter, shatter, shatter, shatter, shatter, shatter, shatter, ,shatter, shatter .
V. I love my body but only in the dark.
VI. Did I ever carry you?
Slung over my shoulder, the wind in our hair,
running just for the hell of it?
Did I ever carry you?
VII. You see, love,
we were never creatures of permanence.
We douse our skin in ephemeral perfume,
laced with rose or violet
or whatever else was once new and beautiful,
and we make short love,
and then we wash ourselves of all of it
and begin again.
VIII. But I still hold on.
There is no desperate hope.
There is no foolish naivete.
There is only truth:
that when my lungs collapsed
and you were suffocating
I pulled you out
and I carefully pressed each of your blooms
inside the walls of my notebook
and now each pressed flower
I wear like a seal upon my arm and my heart,
stronger than death, the grave,
it’s jealousy diminishing the very flames of Hades.
IX. I loved my body, but only in the dark.
X. I left your body alone in my dark.
Ashton Vaughn
is an upcoming freshman at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR, studying environmental studies and international affairs. When he’s not writing music or poetry, he’s often meandering through nature. Despite soon moving to Portland, Vaughn spent his entire childhood in Birmingham, AL. Much of his poetry was influenced by his experience growing up as an LGBT youth in the heavily religious, conservative South.