Poetry Winter 2017 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Thought-Forms
Laura Apol
On My Fiftieth Birthday I Return
& other poems
Jihyun Yun
Aubade
& other poems
Jamie Ross
Red Jetta
& other poems
Sarah Blanchard
Carolina Clay
& other poems
lauren a. boisvert
Save a Seat for Me in the Void
& other poems
Faith Shearin
A Pirate at Midlife
& other poems
Helen Yeoman-Shaw
Calling Long Distance
& other poems
Sarah B. Sullivan
Iris
& other poems
Timothy Walsh
Metro Messenger
& other poems
Gabriel Spera
Scratch
& other poems
Zoë Harrison
Pattee Creek
& other poems
AJ Powell
Blanket
& other poems
Alexa Poteet
The Man Who Got off the Train Between Madrid and Valencia
& other poems
Marcie McGuire
Still Birth
& other poems
Kim Drew Wright
Elephants Standing
& other poems
Michael Jenkins
The Garden Next Door
& other poems
Nicky Nicholson-Klingerman
Costume
& other poems
Doni Faber
Man Moth
& other poems
M. Underwood
In Other Words
& other poems
Carson Pynes
Diet Coke
& other poems
Bucky Ignatius
Something Old, . . .
& other poems
Violet Mitchell
Deleting Emails the Week After Kevin Died
& other poems
Sam Collier
Nocturne in an Empty Sea
& other poems
Meryl Natchez
Equivocal Activist
& other poems
William Godbey
A Corn Field in Los Angeles
& other poems
Carson Pynes
Diet Coke
For Ruth
She wakes,
too early each morning.
Drinks a cloud of cigarette
smoke,
a silver-lined
can of Coke.
No sugar,
just Aspartame,
the chemical name
of withdrawal,
headache,
craving.
Her once-blonde hair
is spiked gunmetal,
An ex-Marine-
turned-schoolteacher
with solder in her voice,
her mani-pedi,
her Oklahoma manners,
cursing
battery-acid blue
over imperfect
pancakes.
I’m awake,
too early
on a Saturday
hungover,
headache,
craving.
She’s lost one
breast to cancer,
an Amazon,
my best friend’s mother
is the sunrise
at the end of the world.
Honey, she says,
when life hands you lemons,
you paint that shit gold.
I Was a Teenage Mean Girl
For L, and for who we used to be
I don’t need your malicious charity,
a vile and multipurpose contraption
fake like the holographic portrait of Jesus Christ
for sale at a kiosk in the mall where we meet boys.
It’s hard to forget your face,
Sloppy, bland, (I fix your mascara)
violent and slick as you call me “whore”
a banshee screaming at a Halloween house party.
You: a bare-midriff baseball player,
me in booty shorts and butterfly wings.
How could I forget our years spent
living in, like, the high-school language ghetto?
The empty bottles of Bombay Sapphire,
your fake fingernails endlessly flashing like
witch-lights in the desert.
Then there was lunch at the Wildflower Cafe,
salmon caesar salad with capers and a lavender-peach smoothie,
while outside it was snowing and you offered me a cigarette
from a crumpled pack of 27’s. I inhaled,
and thought about the rhythm and blues of malfunctioning lungs.
Moonlighting
For Mom
When I was very small
you took me outside, at night,
to photograph the moon.
I wore duct-tape shoes,
you carried a tripod.
I have never told you this,
but with your lens pointed to the sky,
I thought you were taking a self-portrait.
I still believe that.
Carson Pynes
has a BA in English Literature from Northern Arizona University. She is an ESL educator currently living in South Korea. When she isn’t teaching English, she is usually writing elfpunk fantasy, or hula-hooping.