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
Marte Stuart
Little House on the Prairie
Death’s entry awaits silence.
Gerda’s chest sucks at air
uneven and ragged,
breath’s undertone
hooks her here.
Listening is the last to go.
Friends croon old tunes for old times’ sake
’f you only knew, dear,
my entire yesteryear
reverberate into every cell,
a relief when finally still.
Free too, clock’s incessant itch.
Lay hush, the struggle to receive.
Turn the dial low, beyond off,
through the os, to be reborn
an amplifying instrument,
an expansive bass-note set
onnnnnnnn
The storybook read aloud echoes deep:
the girl blazes across an open field
of rustling prairie grass,
ears deafened with wind
blown from a limitless horizon.
Ploughs furrow creases in time.
Toil clamors just beyond the rise,
the din of measured work—
Pa’s calloused hands
pounding heartbeats.
Death’s resolute rap-tap-raps
send shingles to the wind.
Pack-up the covered wagon,
hitch-up the horses,
leave the old house behind.
Turn, wave goodbye
and keep looking back,
until you can’t see the barn off
Peach Death
Puckered and soft
clings yet to the branch,
its rose blush plump
in the sigh
of late summer’s heat.
The warm delight
of an afternoon’s play
upon its surface,
dangling just
for sweetness, say.
Luxuriating too
in loosening skin,
in gravity’s tease
at its grip. The moment
a blessed breeze
unhinges the—
pok
an easy release
and free fall,
trusting the rest
to its seed.
Variations on the Word Breathe
The bookmarked page left
beside your bed, like a secret
guide to your mind’s last lure,
held Atwood’s dreamy whispers
and likely drew you fully under
to the pit of your suffocation fear,
with no one there to whisper
the word of protection: breathe.
Beside me, your body lay lifeless.
Yet, you-in-the-room entered me
timeless, and I breathed for you
to allay all those strained years.
Gentle breaths, in and out,
bearing no clear distinction
of beginning or end;
taken only for the peace in it.
Mine, a gift of effortless breath,
while all-that-was-you filled me.
Yours, the small white flower
suspended in poem, to save me.
(A tribute to Margaret Atwood’s Variations on the Word Sleep)
What an Insult Time Is
What an insult time is
since you died.
Cruel even,
ticking away
on and on
following life.
No pause
for death’s
arresting nature.
Just more now,
the gap between
lengthening
like shadows
at sun’s fall.
Marte Stuart
gravitates toward poems with scientific and theological underbellies. Her current fav is “A Backwards Journey” by P. K. Page. Once while shipwrecked, Marte laboriously scratched words onto coconut husks and set them adrift, which initiated her writing craft and lessons in impermanence. Marte Stuart’s ongoing work is to continually notice her own perceived reality.