Dotted Line Dotted Line

Poetry Winter 2013    fiction    all issues

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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

Philip Jackey

Garage drinking after 1989

Her world will spiral like a merry-go-round in the belly of storms.

The matches and lighter fluid she’ll buy at Walmart

will seem a lot less dangerous than they did before—

well as the cheap vodka that’ll burn within her throat,

and after the fifth or sixth shot, it won’t burn anymore.


Cobwebs will surround her; in all corners they’ll spread like lies.

Spiders will fuck other spiders; their egg sacs swaying

with momentum like a Newton’s cradle.


And with her back turned, few feet away,

an industrial fan will spin at its highest speed.

She hates the heat; it sweats out the alcohol,

and nothing smells worse than the depths of disease


protruding through stale fragrance that will embed,

into vintage tank tops with Mickey Mouse on the front,

over a pink bra and blue denim shorts bathed

in Giorgio perfume—wrinkled and creased, and

crammed in a cardboard box on top another cardboard box:

the furthest decade she’s able to reach without a step stool—

the last one she’ll ever trust, to rational thinking.


Only stigmas will remain—of oil and antifreeze,

Fieros and Firenzas, Madonna in the tape deck—

the beaming of the headlights unfolding

the shadows that ascend to the ceiling.

Hanging hacksaws will warp into sharp fangs.

Lawn rakes into claws.


And the storm will come. Her gutters will surely give,

to pouring rain under black clouds, blacker than their predecessors,

bringing bad fortune through meandering felines.

Soaking black Maine Coons take shelter with lemon-marble eyes

gouged from years of sidewalk disputes, and yet to purr thereafter.

Instead they will stay still, struggle to see,

their eyes slowly dimming like a wicker candle.


And she will feel pity—for whom or what, she won’t know,

just enough to understand belligerence will not kill the pain.

A lit match to methanol works best.



Swimming at night in suburbia

The pool shines mercury beneath the moonlight,

where young girls jump off of diving boards into the deep,

somewhat ashamed as only their bikini tops break the surface,

spilling polka-dots, some amber, others amaranth.

And the boys can’t see, only touch, because chlorine

burns their eyes the same way liquor does their virgin throats,

sinking ten feet to the bottom, haggling air through a kiss—

sealed, the radio drowns by a thousand pin drops,

and the girls allow to be touched with pruny fingers.

Subterranean lights beam bright,

outlining shapes, the shadows: a frog

who gave his life in the skimmer, a thousand

ripples projected on a white painted fence, and silhouettes,

all different sizes as they watch their former selves,

slide off eachother, poor attempts at a carnal act,

squeezing the air out of inflatable rafts,

on such a night where fireflies dress their best,

and luminesce the pungent air.



Granny and Papa’s house

And for sure this house is haunted;

it moans at night like papa did,

when he wasn’t papa anymore,

rather a sad story of children and their children

and pestilent cancer cells, his sunken cheeks pale,

and white as the ghosts who live here.

If you listen close, you still hear his son,

been dead since ’72—

plastered to a tree, killed instantly,

thrown out the window like a sack of shit,

the same way most repudiated

his mendacious words of advice.

And you can still smell the menthols,

almost if she hadn’t lost to the stroke

ten years prior, my granny,

who smoked before you could die from smoking,

turning the walls to dirt, stained dull yellow

like the nicotine on papa’s teeth.

And granny’s the kind of gal papa read poems about,

and papa didn’t read poems, he was more

a hands on kind of man,

who preferred using fists when he’s pissed off, scared,

and even in love because granny swears

that one of the holes papa punched through the closet door

was in the perfect shape of a heart.

And you could see right thru,

skeletons stacked on skeletons.


Philip Jackey, a Midwest poet, was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana. His work is heavily influenced by human trial and tribulations, as he strives to portray realism in everyday life. He currently resides in Elkhart, Indiana, with wife Stephanie, two boys, and a brand new beautiful baby girl. His work has appeared in journals such as Torrid Literature, The Write Place at the Write Time, Sundog Lit, and Agave Magazine.

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