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
Inadvertent Landscape
Two voices,
two black rectangles of voice,
one little lung, carpet.
They’re changing the garbage in the lobby
behind him. I disagree.
The word doesn’t do that.
There are Places Where
We are Unwelcome
My scapula twitched and burned like a cymbal
the night she put her tongue in my ear.
The room had charisma, small appliances, nice drapes.
I forget the times she called me an asshole
And it begins to rain disfigured little faces outside.
I worry the forecast, paltry glasswares, stomach pumps,
I worry ticket stubs.
My lip cracks and bleeds on my beer can.
The black walnut tree sheds all over the lawn.
Everyone at the party smells like turpentine.
Later it feels like we’re sleeping but when I close my eyes
I wake up and all I can think of is pale skin,
scissors, a playful thorn inside a quiet word,
the bird outside, one squawk of possession,
of unknowing narcissism, of breath.
Armed Only With Our Sense
of Degradation as Human Beings
Our hands hold the vase that holds the train together for just
this moment before the train shatters and the clasp
is no longer a human clasp. It’s a beast, or the outline of a person,
or the idea of a self as a shattered line of a wrecking train.
I feel like the vagrant who left the stolen bicycle on the tracks
to derail the train while I pissed into the screaming brush.
We Want to Have Been
Cormorant,
this word of you, afterthought of stolen
second-hand clothing, this soft public address
concerns my lungs. You’re kinked neck in flight
spills the ghosts of Shane’s open, soft hand,
of empty Fairbanks bottles, Stephanie’s
blind eye, all over the couch. I keep slipping on them.
I wish they loved us. They used to be us:
dissolved into stretched-out moments, eating salads.
We lean on the barrel of nights’ waiting tantrums.
We feel, want to become, or to have been the ghosts,
to scavenge some before-man groan of waking
under the sad little fruit trees.
Horizon
the small way the power lines divide the white-orange trees
the small way of a car alarm— distant guard-rail thin, and mad
near the overpass— a woman pulling hard on her
own hair in the breeze-pocket of a train station
Abraham Moore
is a poet originally from central Indiana. He currently lives and works in San Diego.