Poetry Winter 2017 fiction all issues
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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
M. Underwood
My Small Song to Your Great Heart
(Chinese Dissident Who Won Nobel While Jailed, Dies at 61. “New York Times,” July 13, 2017)
You’re going somewhere new. Don’t be afraid of getting lost. . . . The dark is something to sound out too.
—Colum McCann
You have gone somewhere new, Liu Xiaobo,
though we still need you, with your rare
courage, in these dark times. Your prison cell
and your hospital bed, where your cancer’s care
came too late to pretend to make you well,
are now as empty as your Nobel chair.
(And we, unprisoned as we are, face that fate
bestowed by senators who have said—to our faces—
that “no one’s died for lack of healthcare.”)
To that end they bound your mouth
and your body in medical parole—
kept from speaking and in pain—
in a hospital in Shenyang,
a shoddy pretense meant to fool
the world now watching, which also heard
your wife’s video to a friend:
there is nothing left to do. Your wife, who was kept
an imprisoned cricket in a bamboo cage,
in the home you’d shared, and there she wept,
the wedding photo in her hands, your smiles with no end.
You wrote to her, when allowed, and without rage:
Even if I am crushed into powder,
I will embrace you with ashes.
And so it is and you are gone,
but your name and face are known
to the world, another martyr to the cause of peace,
who vowed to stay in place, to earn the right to speak,
and shared the terror of staring down tanks—
with matching flags unfurled—with young idealists from whose ranks
was written the charter which showed the way
toward democracy and change.
Thank you, Liu Xiaobo,
for your courage and your light,
and the model to try our own,
to honor you by standing firm,
in the face of fear, for what is right,
and to vow to keep the voice of hate
from poisoning the very fight.
Whistle and Rasp
For Sally, in gratitude
Don’t waste a moment in dread,
Feeling the burn of the rope
As it passes through your palms
As you grip it tight to hold
The ship fast, the whole tipping world
From slipping on its axis. You know
What to do: Stop. Listen to the whistle
Of your breath as it enters your body
And the rasp of it as it leaves. Then hear
The sound of fledging sparrows—
Think how hard it is to learn to fly!
Sit outside—it is only July,
Though your mind leaps ahead
To what is coming. Right now, it is July.
And look: there are hummingbirds, two,
So tiny, they are minute
Because they are new
And even they are learning how
To deftly maneuver in time and space
And in all directions. But they are trapped,
Having mistaken porch blue for sky
And the light for sun—grasp each one
Loosely in your opened fists—
Then release, into true sky.
The Seal on the Sardine Tin
The word stench—
think canning factory,
conveyor belt of sardines,
a steadily rolling mercury
silver on matte black, flashing slivers
of former life with bones too thin to ossify—
stench is like the clinch
of an unwanted hug—there is music,
but not the music you like; it is work
to be here now, to grip
the slippery fish with thin-gloved fingers
and tip them head to tail into the tin
which, sealed, vanishes, a kind of magic,
into the empty next, which is where
you want to be, want to know,
to scissor a paper square of blue and white
and carefully wrap each tin,
your life within it, the gift,
and on it the small seal centered,
silently barking in the snow.
In Other Words
It’s opening mail with either industry
or indifference that distracts from the danger—
not of heartache or news
of debt or sudden and unexpected loss
that serves to sucker punch the thoughtless breath—
but that other danger that with as swift a kick
aligns our past and future with now
the way pain and fear can do with ease.
Either way we are distracted when it happens—
in a flash, as sharp as a shard of broken glass,
followed by a disbelieving pause . . .
Then pain that briefly sears like flame.
A tree can kill or maim with falling limbs
or crushing trunks, with massive splinters and with fire,
but this, this thin edge of pulp refined to fiber,
cut from starched white rolls,
folded, gummed, and sealed
with the stuff of life: bills
for phone, heat, house, and health,
a condolence note or birthday card.
It’s these we nick our fingers on,
under the nail or along the length
of the thumb’s soft pad.
And though it happens again
and again the ebony giraffe
stands unused and penned
in the chipped ceramic corral of pens,
leans long neck forward,
legs and ears canted back
against an invisible sirocco,
its soft blade ready to pierce or bless,
or simply bear the role of witness.
Litany: And We Will
For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost,
something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed.
—Mary Oliver
We are an army of poets
with holes in our socks
and sorrow in our hearts
and we will take you on
and we will match you
and like samurai use syllables
to slice through deception;
the volume of our outcry
will be like bagpipes
on the clifftops,
keening for the fallen
and reminding the standing
of the meaning of fortitude;
and we will march forth
emerging from solitude
bearing banners and pennants
and we will not be daunted
by sly stratagems or guns;
we will not cower or cover
our words with our hands
but proclaim them with courage
and hear each other out
and have each other’s backs
and persevere in the darkness
lighting our way with our words.
M. Underwood
According to great aunt Eleanor, who smoked when it was forbidden to women and wrote poetry on the sly, M. Underwood’s ancestors were all preachers, teachers, and horse thieves. M. Underwood is only one of those things but also writes poetry on the sly while living in Vermont in the company of several furry and winged creatures.