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
The Early
Wind, sharp, dis-
tilled, washrag gray, hissing
at the shutters, a big
body with a small
voice, its over-
tones smashing the early buds, their cracked
faces, their violent,
lolling needles for
tongues puncture
December. False
intimacy, the chill
pushes their wide mouths open
and brittle. There was
a night when the heat
was broken and the windows
stuck- we couldn’t
close them, and you
brought me cold blossoms
that we kept in the bedroom, cold
blossoms that we kept in the bedroom.
Lumen
She wore a whisper
of a dress
an old pattern, but
transparent
like a cerebral daydream
of modesty
and when I opened
the shutter
of the bedroom in which
she danced
the exposure
of her legs
was the ambient light, and
my camera
the buffer
between us
as she held
spilling threads
in her thumbnails
the details
were phantoms
of ugliness between the non
living frames until
the hem
of her skirts
became wet
with acid
and in lavender
pixels she fell
away
“You are
really beautiful . . .
Do you think
you’re really beautiful?”
Horrible Aubade
With cupped hands
you search behind my collarbone,
dipping a crackling song under
the ladder of ribcage.
I come three times this way.
Undraped, I shuffle
off my pigment. The cut
shine that swabs my smile
with disinfectant,
I have no augmentation now
for laughter, no
aloe to chew
on for it’s healing
properties, and we fold
into a night slice.
We use specialized shadows of our voices.
There is a hum about this skin
lit room deeper than my radio wires
are used to picking up.
Daemons of melodies singe the walls
at the crooked corners,
floor to ceiling.
It is the alcohol
swab, the antiseptic, time
capsule of pain, that we dig up
in stale backyards
I wake before you,
count my pigments, shuffle
them again
and fold the clothes from off the floor.
Mi querido, I will sing you
to sleep each night
Hidden behind your negative space,
what do you find in her glowing hand?
A tone of white not from this century and
a foreign crease in the paper of his skyscape
What do you find in her glowing hand
that cradled all her misplaced children?
A foreign crease in the paper of his skyscape
folded over by wind, and a bottle of tequila
And what was the cradle for those misplaced children?
Those tiresome winged ones that cried and knew no comfort?
The folds in the wind and tequila sighed lullabies
that invoked nightmares worse than not sleeping at all
And those tired monsters never did learn comfort
but knew the geometry of a perfect sized grave
and how to measure the weight of a nightmare too heavy
before any of those winged ones learned to sing
The geometry of a perfect sized grave is
a tone of white not from this century and
before those droopy eyed winged ones learned to sing
they were hidden behind your negative space
Quick to Dark
The thinnest
line is the blood
line and I taste
it on your tongue.
Darkness is in the repetition
of paint
strokes, in seagulls
scraping
the top
of Brooklyn, with their crying, empty
gullets, I could
blacken your eyes with
my hair, I could
lap up
the ocean really
quickly. I’m
sorry I keep swiping at your eyes. The tapping noise
was nothing, just
a child
on the beach beating two bones
together. I’d dispute it
if you wanted, see, I love you and I’m desperate
to know
where your lines break.
Michal Mechlovitz
is a Brooklyn-based classical singer. A graduate of the Boston Conservatory, Michal served as Editor and President of the Boston Conservatory’s literary publication, The Garden. She has returned to her native Brooklyn to further her singing and writing pursuits. She loves sundresses and iced coffee.