Poetry Winter 2018 fiction all issues
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Cover Elena Koycheva
Bryce Emley
Asking Father What’s at the End
& other poems
AJ Powell
Butterfly-minded
& other poems
Faith Shearin
Biology
& other poems
Claire Van Winkle
Admitting
& other poems
Sarah W. Bartlett
Summer Cycles
& other poems
Nooshin Ghanbari
Vincent
& other poems
Meli Broderick Eaton
The Afterlives of Leaves
& other poems
Jeddie Sophronius
Refugees
& other poems
Paula Bonnell
In Winter, By Rail
& other poems
Addison Van Auken Waters
Girls
& other poems
Daniel Sinderson
Hallelujah
& other poems
Andrew Allport
All Nature Will Fable
& other poems
Marte Stuart
What an Insult Time Is
& other poems
Matthew Parsons
My Father as an Inuit Hunter
& other poems
Emily Bauer
Gently, Gently
& other poems
Bruce Marsland
A once lovelorn bard’s final journey
& other poems
Beatrix Bondor
Night Makers
& other poems
Isabella Skovira
Lawless Conservation
& other poems
Juan Pablo González
Colombia, 1928
& other poems
Molly Pines
The Pillbug
& other poems
Jamie Marie
On the Lake
& other poems
William A. Greenfield
If You Show Me Yours
& other poems
Bill Newby
Tuesdays at The Seagate's Atlantic Grille
& other poems
Elder Gideon
Male Initiation Rites
& other poems
Joel Holland
Dear Gi-Gi
& other poems
Martha R. Jones
How Lewis Carroll Met Edgar Allan Poe
& other poems
William A. Greenfield
Heat
A tall bad boy
with perfect round holes in his earlobes
she flaunted an intricate butterfly
from shoulder to shoulder
they intertwined like some alien
performing reverse meiosis
hands and arms in a moving and
feeling frenzy that
bordered on public
indecency condemning
them to a future of disappointment
when the thrill of living is gone.
In a booth eating was an
interruption like
a draft that cools the flame
like dinner with family
that torturous imposition that
only serves
to stoke the raging fire
If You Show Me Yours
It’s a game we played when
Bugs and Daffy became passé.
When the best part of the Sears
catalog was no longer Lincoln
Logs and chemistry sets, we
exchanged peach fuzz peeks
behind clapboard garages or
under schoolyard elm trees.
There were rules.
We had to be normal children
just under the curious influence
of estrogen and testosterone.
We had to have working parents
who gave us lunch money and
took us bowling on our birthday.
We had to be mainstreamed
with goals that went beyond
tomorrow’s ride on the small bus.
If we were overtaken by this spell;
If our lustful simplicity suggested
that a clueless child should handle
our ripening fruit, we would
surely be put somewhere.
And, of course, there had to be
an invitation, a furtive glance
from the girl painting her toe
nails on the back porch steps.
Sonder After Dark
I don’t know if this word should find itself in The Dictionary
of Obscure Sorrows, but since the author attempted to write poetry,
I will acquiesce to his definition, although I may not find sorrow
in the face of the retired policeman as he has his last smoke
late at night. Yesterday, he brought home a Table Talk pie
and tried to remember the last time he ate beef.
When I see him at the window, I know I’m not alone.
His life is a simple one; he eats, he plays, he watches
his wife undress. But his thoughts are complicated.
I don’t know why I think this. And here we have the
rub, like when you see the small Mexican man blowing
leaves across the asphalt. How do you explain your
connection to him, your acceptance that he may also be
watching you and wondering if your wife is as beautiful
as his. Mr. Koenig has attempted to “fill a hole in the language.”
There is more work to do, as it seems the hole is ever widening.
The river of emotions runs deep.
The Old Woman Sitting Beneath
a Weeping Willow
I’m certain it was my mother because I
put her there; I guided her down the porch
stairs because her knees could no longer
bear her weight. I gave her this tree on
these grounds so she no longer had to
point out its elegant beauty from the
old red station wagon as we passed
farms and groundhogs along the parkway;
she no longer had to covet the polished
pine and ivy vine she saw in picture books.
I served her sliced strawberries with whipped
cream in the shade while she whimsically
reached for the tears of rain left by an
early morning shower. And I gave her a
dream. She climbs upon a spirited appaloosa
and wraps her arms tightly around
The Marlboro Man, weathered and full
of western bravado. She wants to pen
a romance novel about the cowboy of
her other dreams, the one who sings to her
on AM radio. She sings to herself now,
beneath this tree of wisdom. She sings
the same song she sang to me as a child,
when I thought she would, one day, have
her own porch to laze upon, her own
horse to feed sugar cubes to, and maybe
a cowboy to share her dreams with.
William A. Greenfield
is a youth advocate worker and a fairly good poker player. He resides in Liberty, NY, with his wife, son, and a dog. His poems have appeared in dozens of journals, including The Westchester Review, Tar River Poetry, and many others. In 2012, he won Storyteller Magazine’s People’s Choice award. He was a finalist in The New Guard Literary Review’s 2016 Knightville Poetry Contest. His chapbook, “Momma’s Boy Gone Bad”, was published in February 2017 by Finishing Line Press.