Poetry Summer 2013 fiction all issues
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Sharron Singleton
Five Poems
Sarah Giragosian
Five Poems
Jenna Kilic
Five Poems
Kristina McDonald
Five Poems
Toni Hanner
Five Poems
Annie Mascorro
Five Poems
Brittney Corrigan
Three Poems
S. E. Hudgens
Four Poems
Ali Doerscher
Four Poems
David Sloan
Three Poems
Olivia Cole
Five Poems
Lucy M. Logsdon
Four Poems
Marc Pietrzykowski
Four Poems
Donna Levine Gershon
Five Poems
Eva Heisler
The Olden Days
Stephanie Rose Adams
Five Poems
Jill Kelly
Five Encounters
Ben Bever
Five Poems
Michael Hugh Lythgoe
Five Poems
Arlene Zide
Three Poems
Harry Bauld
Five Poems
Lisa Zerkle
Four Poems
Peter Mishler
Five Poems
Tim Hawkins
Five Poems
Marqus Bobesich
Four Poems
Abigail Templeton-Greene
Five Poems
Eric Duenez
Five Poems
Anne Graue
Five Poems
Susan Laughter Meyers
Five Poems
Peter Kahn
Two Poems
D. Ellis Phelps
Five Poems
Linda Sonia Miller
The Kingdom
Nicklaus Wenzel
Skagit River
Holly Cian
Five Poems
Susan Morse
Five Poems
Daniel Lassell
Five Poems
Svetlana Lavochkina
Temperate Zones
Daniel Sinderson
Three Poems
Catherine Garland
Five Poems
Michael Fleming
Five Poems
Learning the plum
Now I know what a plum
truly is. I have seen its heart.
Gnawed down to the naked core
of seed, I am poised with a knife
to break this thing open and know
its atoms, its lifeforce, its tiny strings
of being. I hold
the thing in my palm and wonder at its
strangeness, this spiny nut like a dragon’s
bone. It is my own curiosity, the child-scientist
who holds the blade like a scalpel, ready to learn.
Dead cats have taught me curb.
This could be a box named for chaos:
I could unravel my world by knowing
this fruit.
I decide
not to cut. It is enough perhaps
to hold this piece of the secret.
It is enough to know, perhaps,
that it grows.
poem for Trayvon Martin and other dead brown boys
The delight of the airplane
is what sticks in my eye:
ground-bound, but the sky
is a butterfly you’re cupping
in your palms.
Just a few more beats
of heart and wing
and you could have been
in the blue, arms or engine
pumping.
I want us all to live
in your eyes:
to see how
in one breath
a boy can be
dreaming
and in the next
be a leaf
fluttering
carried away
red,
then gray,
then gone.
For my lover, leaving
The lid is on:
your cipher is kept,
my name is safe and secret.
I who have lurked in Egyptian
cotton and warm water,
my nylon ghost
your busy burial.
I have sewn in the stitch
to shut my mouth,
I won’t screech
a sound.
My name is a quiet thing
you have expressed only
in Garamond, it is wet
skin wrapped in canvas.
You put it on your plate
with the drapes drawn.
This is not a war where lovers
carry likenesses in lapels.
Anyhow, there is only one to speak
of, and you guard it
from eyes and air. I fold
my hands and forget.
I am a girl who is sarcastic
about promises. I am a girl
who rolls her eyes at oaths
but dreads their not
being made. When the parts
don’t come together,
the laughter drains from lips.
Worse, when they do,
the eggshell is held gently
underfoot, waiting
for pressure.
Welcome. I sang you a song
about this long ago; your mind
may have been on something
else when I read you the lyrics.
I am a girl with a round
name who despises circles.
Let this at least be a square,
angular and abiding
by ancient rules.
The circle has no law.
It may go around
as many times as it wishes,
the eyes spinning along
its endless track.
Let this at least be a box.
Heavy, at least I know
what it contains.
Extinctathon
Let’s collect dead white things.
I cherish all evidence
that proves black
is not the only thing dying:
check: the white seal
and his ghostly impotence
check: the white wolf
and his icy violence
check: the white swan
the evil fellow of stork
check: the white horse
who has carried death for centuries.
Keep counting. Bless
the black things that are
sweet
and dark, and deep
not with ash
but with ask
palms stretched out
and smiling
Last lament
I have picked my way through a patch
of blackberries and come out
stained and scratched. This is the wild
kind; not the neat bush of agriculture
but a free-spilling mess of deep
juice in jungle. I can’t tell my skin
if she is black or if she is purple.
My fingers have found a knot
in my neck. I rub it out tonight
and find a walnut under my flesh
in the morning. This is love:
a problem solved in the dark,
and rerooted overnight into a skyward
beanstalk towering,
not tame.
Its trunk is thick and its branches
blot out the light. I am transformed
into a tunnel-creature. I am mole
and mother; murderer.
But I emerge. Through the bramble
at my back I have broken
a narrow path. I watch
for awhile and soon
a rabbit comes through,
small and brown.
I could smash his skull.
He has a delicate nose,
a twitching face, a body
made for escape.
He passes by, gently
crushing berries underfoot.
I let him go. The path closes
behind.
Olivia Cole
is a poet, author and activist in Chicago, IL. She recently finished a feminist science-fiction novel and started the sequel the next day. If you need her, she’s probably writing. Or eating. http://oliviaacole.wordpress.com/