Poetry Fall 2013 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Chris Joyner
Wrestlemania III
& other poems
Carey Russell
Visiting Hours
& other poems
Marc Pietrzykowski
Cabinet of Wonders
& other poems
Jonathan Travelstead
Prayer of the K-12
& other poems
Jennifer Lowers Warren
Our Daughter's Skin
& other poems
Jeff Burt
The Mapmaker's Legend
& other poems
Patricia Percival
Giving in to What If
& other poems
Toni Hanner
1960—Lanny
& other poems
Christopher Dulaney
Uncle
& other poems
Suzanne Burns
Window Shopping
& other poems
Katherine Smith
Mountain Lion
& other poems
Peter Kent
Surliness in the Green Mountains
& other poems
William Doreski
Gathering Sea Lavender
& other poems
Huso Liszt
Fresco, The Forlorn Virgin...
& other poems
Clifford Hill
How natural you are
& other poems
R. G. Evans
Dungeoness
& other poems
David Kann
Dead Reckoning
& other poems
Ricky Ray
The Music of As Is
& other poems
Tori Jane Quante
Creatio ex Materia
& other poems
G. L. Morrison
Baba Yaga
& other poems
Joe Freeman
In a Wood
& other poems
George Longenecker
Bear Lake
& other poems
Benjamin Dombroski
South of Paris
& other poems
Ryan Kerr
Pulp
& other poems
Josh Flaccavento
Glen Canyon Dam
& other poems
& other poems
Christine Stroud
Grandmother
& other poems
Abraham Moore
Inadvertent Landscape
& other poems
Chris Haug
Cow with Parasol
& other poems
Mariah Blankenship
Fiberglass Madonna
& other poems
Emily Hyland
The Hit
& other poems
Sam Pittman
Growth Memory
& other poems
Alex Linden
The Blues of In-Between
& other poems
Bobby Lynn Taylor
Lift
& other poems
D. Ellis Phelps
Five Poems
Alia Neaton
Cosmogony I
& other poems
Elisa Albo
Each Day More
& other poems
Noah B. Salamon
Sanctuary
& other poems
Glen Canyon Dam
Wherever there’s an Indian walking
backwards, she says, there’s rain. Rachel
on the nametag. Navajo. Some of this land
must be hers, somehow.
You’re from Virginia, she says, do you know
West Virginia? The New Gorge River? Their
bridge is like ours, ours is second
only to theirs. New
River Gorge, I say. Yes.
Design and style. We’re all
standing here—spillways
tunnels turbines tracks
for massive gantry crane—because
of design and style, she
tells us. Thin man, Midwestern, plus
wife. British couple, pensioners. Three
German boys, no good
English. Sister. Self. Last
tour of the day.
Please do not take pictures
of security. Do you need that #
in in. ft. mi. lbs?
Volumes. Pressures. Rates of flow in
m/s. Yes, you may
photograph this observation gallery. See
the water pooling in corners floors
on concrete? It is constantly
analyzed, an engineered
leak.
Grass like golf
course, not
orchard. No trees
here. These men
most highly skilled in the world.
Please observe their images. Ask
me any questions you want about
power water Western
space the science
of how this land was
reclaimed the science
of control.
I Sing Now of This
highway, commonplace and
deadly as time. Signs
mark the miles. They are my
companions and we are
gentlemen of the road. Seconds
crushed under the tires. Blood
and fur punctuate its
interminable sentence, the
flat expanse of hours
black yellow stabbed through
with rain and neon. Curves of
unrequited space pull at my eyes
drag hands and arms, entire
bodies. Calamity of place
less
ness, trauma of location
ripped pulled stretched.
Jagged stroke of light exposing
once-dark innards of mountain
range, spikes of valley ridge
scape. I sing its limit
less
ness, eternity of
motion hurtling tumbling over
boneyards ruins bridges, under
cloud-shadows and sundogs.
If I must burn the world to be free
then burn.
We reserve the right
to refuse service to anyone
Here’s what’s gonna happen, she
shouts over jukebox country, 1 a.m.
Renegade bar, Beaver, Utah.
Anybody I ain’t servin
is goin home. That’s
fucking
it. I’ve
had
enough. Need me
to walk you to the door?
Old cowboys a few fat
Latinos antagonists
of this one-woman
shift. She’d rather
the table of ladies
in the back, brother
boys with skateboards
balanced by the door
or us, perhaps, two
out-of-town kids, quiet
polite, silent laughter and six
dollar tip. Just
smoke, ghosts
passing through Patty’s
Friday night
leaving without
a trace.
A scrape
One of dozens, almost
indistinguishable at first
glance. A wound
got in fun, a simple
mistake. You
should’ve known better than
slowing stopping braking raw tips of
white fingers versus river current
Rio Grande Algodones after
noon. Now
new cut new scrape new
wound of what
type laceration avulsion
pulled-back flap of flesh hiding
interiors of blood and nervous
the actual finger the stuff of all fingers
can’t fight tides with fingers, not these
picked-over pulled-at peeled plucked the places
of dozens of simple wounds,
mistakes. Indistinct anxiety
made manifest.
Josh Flaccavento
holds a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College and an MA in Literature from Clark University. He is from northeast Tennessee by way of southwest Virginia, but his poems in Sixfold are about the West, where he spent some time working on farms. He enjoys referring to himself in the third person, Norse mythology, and martial arts.