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
Exoskeleton Blues
I.
It’s that time of the month again—
the moon is bulging out of its socket.
My fillings shriek with pain and everything
is an insult: the skirt that no longer zips,
the door that says pull that won’t open
when I push it, the coworker who insists
on ending my name with an ‘i’ like some kind
of porn star when my email signature clearly
shows I spell it with an ‘ie.’ I want to be
Alexandra, the patron saint of not giving
a fuck, but the creatures with shells are
suffering and I can’t take this anymore.
II.
I am one with the invertebrates, hoping
for chitin and barnacles, armor of my own.
I walk with my belly to my enemies, the only
barrier between softness and the world is
a pair of Spanx one size too small, waistband
chewing a ring around my middle, telling
my lovers “look how small I made myself for
you,” while the tell-tale stomach roll flaps
smugly in the breeze. We are all crustaceans
in the bedroom, and when I am in front of you
I feel too big for this skin, wishing I could molt.
III.
The moon, that big old slut, pulls at the tides
and in turn the tides pull on me. My body swells
and deflates, bellwether of blood to come.
I am always surprised at the elasticity of my skin,
the network of silver stretch marks across my hip
a map, literally, of how far I’ve come. It’s the human
body’s largest organ, and every seven years
years it regenerates into something new. A lobster
lives for seven years, and will shed its exoskeleton
twenty to twenty-five times. The things that I could do
if I was given fresh armor over two dozen times.
How to Make Him Love You
First, you must wait:
desire will become dilute, inoffensive,
the last dregs of a drink on the rocks left
to sit and melt. This isn’t weakness; this
is patience, an arithmetic of cat and mouse.
Don’t become disappointed: this thrill is
evergreen. Soon, you will be held captive, knock-kneed
with wanting. With enough practice, your mouth will fill
with the taste of almonds and milk, your breath will honey
with the rhapsody of absence.
You are strong enough to survive on vapor,
yet you feel a fresh collision beginning
within. When you find him, lost and gasping
in the coatracks, draw him in with your nectar.
You are still soft and ripe, a peach.
An Obligated Woman
I stagger around you in this empty room,
a breathy vortex of wanting, incapable of
naming this grief shifting inside me, smooth
and heavy like a stone inside a pocket.
The old bat is clanging in the belfry, unable
to see the humane through my own dark lens.
I would sink into your body if it could
provide me any consolation:
I would eat you alive at the crossroads if I thought
the taste would help me swallow this sorrow.
Post-Post Modernism
I’m trying to call you but you won’t pick up.
The 911 operator told me it wasn’t an emergency,
wouldn’t be for at least three more days. Then maybe,
I could try filing a Missing Persons report, but what’s
the point when no one misses you except for me?
I threw out the hair dryer in protest. I filled the bathtub
with seltzer. Maybe I can lead you to carbonated water,
but believe me, I know I can’t make you drink. I’ll rise to
this challenge. I’ll wait here ’til my eyelashes fall out, if
that’s what it takes. Was my morning breath really that bad?
I’m sorry I didn’t wear that fancy bra. The underwire stuck
into my ribs, and it made me feel like Jesus’ slutty little sister.
You know I already have a martyr complex. Did you really
want to feed into that? I’ll put it back on if it makes you happy,
you know, but I’ll have to call you Judas if that’s the case.
I eat spicy things just to feel now. I’m so lonely I put on
the kettle just to have someone to talk to. Even the cat thinks
I’m eccentric. Won’t you just come back? The internet is a cold
and lonely place where everyone is wrong, always, and besides, can’t you
hear the siren call of my knee socks? I am wearing them just for you.
Echoes
I fall into you like skinned knees:
sticky meat, red oozing to surface,
your mouth like cold air on a wound.
Blow on it. Anyone who’s telling you
they don’t like the twinge is lying to
you. We all want that tingle from pain,
then the heady release of analgesic,
how we edge close to oblivion with
pain’s fading. If you’re truly lucky,
old wounds don’t heal right, and you
feel their echoes with the right amount
of pressure; barometric changing.
I press against you at different angles,
seeking out the sweet spot. It occurs
to me in the midst of this hungry
coupling that you are unaware that
this is what I am doing.
A psychic on the Long Island Railroad once told Alexandra Smyth she was “going to be like Sylvia Plath, but you know, without the whole suicide thing.” She will earn her MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York in February 2014. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, PoetsArtists, and District Lines, among others. She is the 2013 recipient of the Jerome Lowell Dejur award in poetry.