Poetry Winter 2013 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Alysse Kathleen McCanna
Pentimento
& other poems
Peter Nash
Shooting Star
& other poems
Katherine Smith
House of Cards
& other poems
David Sloan
On the Rocks
& other poems
Alexandra Smyth
Exoskeleton Blues
& other poems
John Glowney
The Bus Stop Outside Ajax Bail Bonds
& other poems
Andrea Jurjević O’Rourke
It Was a Large Wardrobe...
& other poems
Lisa DeSiro
Babel Tree
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Reptiles
& other poems
Michael Berkowitz
As regards the tattoo on your wrist
& other poems
Michael Brokos
Landscape without Rest
& other poems
Michael H. Lythgoe
Orpheus In Asheville
& other poems
John Wentworth
morning people
& other poems
Christopher Jelley
Double Exposure
& other poems
Catherine Dierker
dinner party
& other poems
William Doreski
Hate the Sinner, Not the Sin
& other poems
Robert Barasch
Loons
& other poems
Rande Mack
bear
& other poems
Susan Marie Powers
Red Bird
& other poems
Anne Graue
Sky
& other poems
Mariah Blankenship
Tub Restoration
& other poems
Paul R. Davis
Landscape
& other poems
Philip Jackey
Garage drinking after 1989
& other poems
Karen Hoy
A Naturalist in New York
& other poems
Gary Sokolow
Underworld Goddess
& other poems
Michal Mechlovitz
The Early
& other poems
Henry Graziano
Last Apple
& other poems
Stephanie L. Harper
Unvoiced
& other poems
Roger Desy
anhinga
& other poems
R. G. Evans
Hangoverman
& other poems
Frederick L. Shiels
Driving Past the Oliver House
& other poems
Richard Sime
Berry Eater
& other poems
Jennifer Popoli
Generations in a wine dark sea
& other poems
Hate the Sinner, Not the Sin
Reading Dante has taught me
to hate the sinner, not the sin.
An hour before dawn the mirror
in the bathroom confirms that pride
defines and defiles me, the pores
of my parchment hide opened
to flattery I never receive.
I should replace myself with lust,
with the smirk of the lecher;
but you with your usual beauty
would find that expression comic
on me, a Halloween mask
two weeks early. Our barred owl
hoots his tedious medley,
each note thick as a woolen scarf.
Stars rattle loose in their sockets,
and one goes down with a shriek.
Or is that the neighbor’s rooster?
Pride offends me enough to cut
my throat, but I can’t afford
to waste an expensive razor blade
by indulging a little vengeance.
Besides, you’d have to clean up
after me, and I know you hate that.
The microwave oven beeps
that apologetic little beep
and the cat’s breakfast is done.
The kettle boils water for coffee.
I should swallow my pride in doses
modest enough to fully digest,
but the famous portrait of Dante
with limber nose and oval mien
leers on a paperback cover
to confirm how clumsy I look
unshaven and fluffy with sleep.
I pour hot water over grounds
and realize this is punishment
enough, the daily unraveling
of ego in bite-sized chores, each
modest enough to kill me.
Post-Neoclassical Poem
The blond forest undressing
leaf by leaf reminds me
how you’ve courted every man
who’s leaned even slightly your way.
Two brooks converge. A boulder
overlooks the pool where nymphs
bathe on summer nights while humans
indulge in mortal dream lives.
I’d like to creep here in the dark
and watch moonlight catch a glimpse
of metallic bodies flashing.
I’d like to compare their grasp
of the classics with your own;
but with your mastery of legal
Latin you’d probably snuff me
under a heap of edicts and writs
to enjoin me from remembering
how frankly naked you could be.
Of course you don’t want to contrast
your old-fashioned body with theirs.
Of course the brooks flushing down
from the twin monadnocks have chilled,
dispersing mythic creatures
until the next two seasons pass.
At the ruined stone dam, two deer
startle and flee. The folding chair
left to rust many years ago
still invites me, so I sit.
The light seems smaller, too shy
to support complexities no painter
since Constable can endorse.
Three miles above, a jetliner
sears the air. It’s headed your way
with fuel enough to eat all three
thousand miles between us, leaving
only the faintest taste of ash.
Moustaches of Slaughtered Heroes
Framed in expressive black oak,
your watercolors stick to the wall
like leeches. Frost hikes its skirts
at the pond’s edge where geese chat
about flying to Kentucky.
Do I hear a drumroll enter
your small conversation? Do stones
at the bottom of the pond expect
to testify? Other events squeeze
from the tubes of paint arranged
by hue and cry. Brushes become
moustaches of slaughtered heroes.
In gusts of small talk you project
the naked retorts of the moons
of Saturn and Jupiter. Half mind,
half sun, you’re anything but flesh
now that flesh has lost its fashion.
Your horizons sport crows and jays
to herd away the geese that spangle
your lawn with gray wet droppings.
Yet the bird wars occur mainly
in literature you’re too proud to read.
I prop myself against a wall and wait
for the pond to freeze with tingling
and cries of pain. Your husband plans
to stay up all night and whisper
your fetishes to the stars. Why
should you care? Sparks roughed
from visiting boulders tender
light and heat enough to ease you
into those last gestures artists
require for their celestial fame.
Your water colors resist you
just enough to cling to three
or four dimensions, honoring
or more likely blaming you.
Naked Under Our Clothes
Naked under our clothes, we enter
the famous public library
as if unaware that even
avid old scholars possess
bodies as secret as ours.
You head for the gardening books
while I descend a floor to scour
the art books for Gauguin prints
to rip out and smuggle home.
The canned air smells chemical.
The librarians nod and smile
and wish they could step outside
fresh as King Lear in the rain.
While you read about designing
gardens with water features
to foster turtles and frogs, I bless
the tropics for inciting Gauguin
to portray such burly colors.
Later we’ll meet for lunch
at the oyster bar where lawyers
and their paralegals hunker
at small tables and plot their trysts.
Someone should paint their expressions,
which prove that they’re too aware
of how naked they could be
if circumstances should allow.
I find a couple of honest prints
but lack the strength or moral
fiber to tear them from the books.
Maybe I’ll copy them with flimsy
pencil sketches from my youth.
The lines shiver, stutter and fail,
but the effort relieves and renews me.
For a moment everyone’s naked
and tropical in hue, even upstairs
where you flirt with photos of gardens
Adam and Eve would have scorned.
A Hideous Verb
Self-condemned to adult camp
to punish my political self,
I weep with arts and crafts all day
and drink with friends all night.
The weather sighs like a bagpipe.
The horizons crumple and fold.
I miss you the way a bullfrog
misses his croak. I’d phone you,
but you’d hear the hangover creak
in my voice and disdain me.
I’ve sewn you a leather wallet
and crimped several blobs of jewelry.
I’ve even woven a wool rug
that isn’t quite rectangular.
When with my fellow campers
I walk to the village at dusk
I suspect you’re watching via
satellite TV. In local bars
we slurp cheap beer and play darts.
No fights, no politics, religion.
Only the slush of draft beer, kisses
with little force behind them,
promises to keep in touch.
Porous belief systems fail
in this crystalline atmosphere.
Dawn breaks the backs of couples
caught in narrow bunks. Such crimes
lack resonance. After breakfast
of groats, instructors apply
cobbler’s tools—hammer, awl, needle—
to leather, plastic and wood.
We follow step by step. Always
with you I’ve followed step by step,
but at last I’ve learned that “craft”
not only makes a hideous verb
but encourages useless skills.
William Doreski
lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and teaches at Keene State College. His most recent book of poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis (2013). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Massachusetts Review, Atlanta Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Worcester Review, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, and Natural Bridge.