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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

Catherine Garland

Childhood Dreams :

Parachinar, Punjab, the Hindu Kush—

Deliciously the words roll in my mouth,

and melt like butter curls and memories.


Early mornings, before the midday heat,

my mother sat with me under a chinar tree

and taught me how to read the newspaper,

just like a grownup, and how to spell

Chrysanthemum.


At night I lay in a small white room

on a narrow cot strung with cords

and slept and dreamed my childhood dreams

while the bantam chicks poked for worms

in the weeds outside.


They tell me that Parachinar,

my childhood home,

is home to Al-Qaeda now,

a Madrassah training camp.


Who sleeps now in the small white room,

on the narrow cot strung with cords,

and do dreams still float in space

while the bantam chicks poke for worms

in the weeds outside?



Portrait in Black and White :

A grand clutter of magpies

in judges’ robes flutters to fill

the bone-bare branches

of winter trees. They stare

at me, then burst into mad

crackles of raucous laughter.

What, I ask them, is the joke?

The heavy load of winter snow

that slid sharply off the roof,

just missing me? The small cat

dashing by with piteous mews

to disappear into an open door?

The magpies do not answer.

Again in unison, abruptly they

cease their clatter to fly away,

bright plumage shining black

and white in icy winter light.



A Resting Place :

(Newspaper headline reads Baby’s Foot Found in Desert Cave)


Air crackles with dry heat. My tongue swells and wants to

fill my mouth, choke out my life. Above, the noonday sun

glares, indifferent to whether we mortals survive or not

in this empty, arid desert, fit for neither foolish man nor beast.


Dark shadowed space ahead invites me in and I lurch forward

to seek relief from heat become unbearable. I squeeze into

the small hollow and give thanks for rest and cooler

air. My body, sensing it will live to see another day,


relaxes and I lean back, grateful. Off to my side I glimpse

a small pink object. It seems to glow. Am I hallucinating?

I peer more closely, and in amazement see that small

pink object is a foot, a tiny foot, a tiny baby’s foot. Just the


foot is there, no small ankle, chubby leg, nor rounded baby’s

body. The toes are slightly curled as if in pleasure at some

private glee and the sole rests lightly, lightly on the sandy floor,

too light to leave a mark or slight imprint of its brief passage.


My mind reels and wants to vault into the horror of the unknown

Hows and Whys, but instead I take a moment to worship at the altar

of this small and unprotected foot, so brave in its aloneness, and somehow

still alive, that waits silently (for what?) in the cool shadow of the cave.



E-mail from my friend Tom on his birthday :

My birthday today and I am 67 and full

of love for you and for the snow geese,

hundreds rising white against the sky blue

of a corn field flooded with melted winter

snow. They circle like floating snowflakes,

fluorescent in the still air, and glide gently back

to water, honking, splashing, a mini snowstorm

turning the blue waters white again.


Tonight a hockey play-off with pizza afterward,

The pizza is good and I will eat too much.

The beer is cold and I will drink too much—but it’s my

birthday and I like pizza better than cake anyways.

But nobody will bring candles.


And I like being 67 and full of love for you and for

fluorescent snow geese that float like snowflakes

in the still air. And I thank the great creator for

these drifts of white snow geese, and for loving you.



In Memory of Tom—The First Time :

I do not remember the details

of the first time we made love,

only the moment of melting naked

into naked and the opening yes

and   oh   yes   oh   oh


I remember no feeling but the strong

pulse of your thrust reaching up

and into my heart opening

and then falling and the slippery

swirling wetness of rising

deep and wide and down

to the first coming.


And then lying still,

imprinted.


Catherine Garland I was born many years ago in a small town high in the mountains of the Himalayas, and I have lived my adult life in a small town high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. The many years in between then and now have been filled with beauty and the attempt to capture the wonder of all aspects of life in the wonder of words.

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