Poetry Fall 2013 fiction all issues
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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
Growth Memory
A cluster of hungry cells on my chest racks a bill
Fit to pay for a martyr's resurrection. Conjecture
Alone could prove my innocence. Hive mind of the body.
My body is not my body when the hill is still raised
In my skin's memory. I'm poised, aching to pick
At phantom cancer, wanting to have hoed this row myself
But knowing one must unthink such ambition. To myself
I've mailed a letter, no return address. What works is to pick
A font I've never used. Anyway, I was raised
On shirtless pleas in cardboard California, where a body
Is worth what it can sell. But forgetting's all conjecture.
Besides, I'm in the mirror when the envelope arrives. It's a bill.
Another Stupid Question
Did the doctors sedate her or had she drugged herself?
The toaster starts talking in tongues and even I know
to risk a burnt ear to listen. The papers mention battle
but when the woman, a learned dropout, comes to,
she'll see signs meaning bottle. Had she read more
Agatha than Emily she would have said I imagined it,
said I was seeing things. Her monument in the closet,
a box the color of potatoes, or so many crushed insects,
or her memory the sound of a cannon traced in midair.
The lines “said I imagined it, / said I was seeing things” are borrowed from Agatha Christie’s Three Act Tragedy: “What does Mrs. Dacres say?” “Says I imagined it. Says I was ‘seeing things.’”
Imaginary Vigil for My Mother
In the city they go on about marriage.
The three-walled studio, a hollow darkroom
Where the same negative outlives each new bite
Of the shutter. 1: Tawny couch with hemp blankets.
2: Tented blankets of hemp over tawny couch. 3: Hemp
Blanketed, couch tawny. A swingtop full of vodka
Prisming the light before it reaches the urn.
She made sure to say this and that was vulgar.
If she knew I lived in the city and went on
About marriage, went on about marriage, went
On and on about marrying another man, surely,
Surely, this or that bottle would be close to empty.
Daily Burial
I am the urn
itself. As I wane
my cells eat
me up. Deep
belly pocket
hordes my body
in long quiet
vigil. Hunger of
phagocyte
army sucking
poison for good.
What prayer
stops intent
burn or flood
in dark empty
porcelain neck?
Flick of fast
dream ghost
from in my
boiling bellies.
Again the rote
swallow, sweep.
Again, blind
mouth, again.
A Brother’s Love
We’ll see what holds your interest.
I’ll lock the front, you the back,
making sure to leave no hair,
pubic, otherwise, or prints.
Take the pillow, whatever
you want to call it, to rest
the feet, the head: we don’t want
you overworked. Remember
the betting system? For all
we know this never happened.
When everyone leaves, you can
clean the room so it’s ready.
Sam Pittman
lives in Pittsburgh, PA, where he writes poetry and teaches composition, writing, and ESL. He has received awards from the Academy of American Poets and fellowships from the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Sperry Fund. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA from the University of California-Berkeley. Sam’s poems have also appeared in ditch,.