Poetry Winter 2022 fiction all issues
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Cover
Li Zhang
Ana Reisens
Pam asked about Europe
& other poems
Krystle May Statler
To the Slow Burn
& other poems
Kristina Cecka
On Remodeling
& other poems
Belinda Roddie
Bless The Bones Of California
& other poems
Summer Rand
Alexander tells me how he'd like to be buried
& other poems
Alexander Perez
Toward the Rainbow
& other poems
Karo Ska
self-portrait of compassion…
& other poems
David Southward
The Pelican
& other poems
George Longenecker
Stamp Collection
& other poems
Mary Keating
Salty
& other poems
Talya Jankovits
Imagine A World Without Raging Hormones
& other poems
Laurie Holding
Sonnet to Mr. Frost
& other poems
David Ruekberg
A Short Essay on Love
& other poems
Elaine Greenwood
There’s a thick, quiet Angel
& other poems
Richard Baldo
Carry On Caretaker
& other poems
Jefferson Singer
Dave Righetti’s No-Hitter…
& other poems
Diane Ayer
A Fan
& other poems
Kaecey McCormick
Meditation Before Desert Monsoon
& other poems
Meg Whelan
Resubstantiation
& other poems
Katherine B. Arthaud
Possible
& other poems
Aaron Glover
On Transformation
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
[I'm crying in a sandwich shop reading Diane Seuss' sonnets]
& other poems
Holly Cian
Untitled
& other poems
Kimberly Russo
Selective Memories are the Only Gift of Dementia
& other poems
Steven Monte
Larkin
& other poems
Mervyn Seivwright
Fear Mountain
& other poems
Laurie Holding
Rabbit Dreams
You snore on the couch with eyes open wide.
Now and then, after rabbit dreams, you turn
to reposition on a new, cool, side
and growl. It’s a groan of pain, and I’ve learned
to pat your head, make sounds that say I see
your old heart’s worries, the way sadness bites
up what life’s become. You gaze into me,
closing rheumy eyes, giving up the fight.
Maybe you’re just wondering where they’ve gone,
children of your left behind backyard play.
Their newfound taillights are making you yawn,
not of boredom but of upset, the days
splayed out before you, no sprinkler or balls
or promise of school bus sounds in the street,
no one showing you baseball cards or dolls,
no more races or under table treats.
When it smells good, like bird, some will come back
to tell you new secrets, hug you and hold
your head on their laps. But you’ve watched them pack.
Again, the driveway says it all. You fold
with a sigh, watch that enemy, the street.
They say goodbye with a flick of high beams.
Do they hold dear the balls, the dolls, the treats?
Or are memories just more rabbit dreams?
The Last Father’s Day
That spring we watched as white oaks fell, with rain
that weighed their branches down and snapped their boles.
Now settled on the ground, just one remained.
We made our ways around those fallen souls
to find the wound once hidden from our view,
a secret rot, and now a living space
for groundhogs, possums, mice, or coons, who knew.
The tree man came and sliced it off earth’s face.
That Father’s Day, so sick, but still you stood
and wobbled back and forth like in a game,
as if to show us all that nothing could
uproot our father’s strong, athletic frame.
“You see?” you said. “I stand just like your tree.
No one can see that Death’s devouring me.”
Bridges
You are what made my childhood a childhood.
We’d clasp hands
and let other girls walk beneath our bridge.
We’d sing: Falling down, falling down.
We’d trap them and laugh.
Or there were games in our mothers’ cars:
Hold your breath past the graveyard,
and while you’re crossing that Fifth Street Bridge,
lift your feet!
Suspended over time, suddenly what matters is below,
what passes beneath. All that water.
You are just a shadow in my life,
but one of the longest shadows, at that.
As far apart as we can be and still be in this country together,
I can hear your laughter like it’s coming from my backyard.
Oh, to climb a plum tree again!
To eat until we’re sick, then move to an apple tree to eat some more,
to lift the creek’s mossy stones for hidden crawdads,
to let our Easter ducks swim free there, then
to return the next day to feed them and call them by name.
To jump rope,
to hit a tether ball,
to freeze in the beam of a flashlight.
to fall over laughing.
To hold our breath past that graveyard, hearts pounding.
To hide,
to seek.
I do all these things, still.
I seek you out and meet you many nights on the bridge,
to help still my ancient heart, my racing brain.
I become nine again.
I hide behind you.
Then I sleep.
Sonnet to Mr. Frost
When I see golden buses on the hill,
I like to think some big dog sits and waits.
On board, some school-tired boy shields eyes until
he spots the dog beyond the neighbor’s gates.
The friends take off, their path a jagged line,
and flowers dip their golden heads to watch,
as does the screened-in woman, drinking wine.
She throws the boy a candy, butterscotch.
It’s when the world has weighed me so far down
that boys and dogs and wine and golden field
acquaint me with those treasures not yet brown,
and years from now these memories will yield
a lesson straight and true: While gold can’t stay,
it’s worth its weight in daydreams, anyway.
Midnight Walk
On a whim, we meet at the old house,
to walk the walk we walked
when you were just a son
and I was just your mom.
We’ve picked a pearl of a night,
the kind where the moon swims behind giant swaths of cloud,
and like strippers, the stars show only a portion of their constellations,
but enough to be revealing.
“There’s his belt!” you whisper up at Orion.
Your backpack holds just a couple of Coronas.
Nothing like the burden of beers we used to carry,
night after night as we walked away
the grief of losing my father,
your grandfather,
your girlfriend,
our dog.
Now, at last, we are both grown-ups
who are learning to walk without stumbling.
After a mile’s circle, we look up at the old house again.
The new people have learned to string the Christmas lights
up and up and up the split rail fence
for its full sixth-of-a-mile stretch.
You laugh and give me the look.
All right, then. A tenth of a mile.
We tell stories of shoveling that godforsaken
driveway, the snow breaking my back,
your nose dripping like a fountain.
Funny how you can miss something
that was so much work.
I miss you,
the wonder and worry of you,
the work of washing, drying, folding,
the waking up production of our mornings,
the wee-hour-waiting for you.
But most of all, I miss our walk,
when the neighbors were long asleep,
when the work was done,
when all that was left of the day was the moon and the stars
and the beers in the backpack.
Laurie Holding
lives in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. Several of her poems have placed or won in Writer’s Digest Annual Poetry Contest, the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, Goodreads Poetry Forum, and Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition. She is planning on a chapbook release, Sonnets and Their Shadows, in 2023. Holding is the author of two children’s books, Tyrion’s Tale and Tyrion’s Town. She released her first novel, Planted on Perry Street, in 2021.