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
The Olden Days
1.
As soon as I turn off the light,
questions tumble
out of my four year-old daughter.
“What do dragons eat?”
“Can God ride a bicycle?”
I am tired and facing essays to grade,
last minute laundry,
a letter demanding immediate reply . . .
I am not quick to answer
and Zoe fills each pause
with another question.
“Where was I when you were a little girl?”
Each question delays my departure
and darkness.
“Why isn’t it the olden days anymore?”
But it is the olden days, I want to say.
At this very moment
we are on a journey
you will recount one night to your little girl.
Pay attention. Notice the light,
the shadows on your ceiling, my face—
remember
the face of your thirty-four-year-old mother;
one day you may long for these details
as I may long
for this distraction and exhaustion.
But instead I mutter “I don’t know”
and insist on silence and sleep.
Ask me tomorrow, I say. I promise
answers by morning. “But, Mama,”
my daughter wails as I slip from the room.
“In the morning I forget my questions.”
2.
In the dim light and chill of early morning,
I gather papers and books
while keeping an eye on the oatmeal
and reminding my daughter to get dressed
and, yes, she must go to school
and, no, she can’t wear the purple dress
for the third day in a row. And stop asking
because I will not buy Barbie cereal.
Sprawled on the floor
with panties on her head and socks on her hands,
my daughter holds one of my textbooks
upside down, pretending to read.
“Little Miss Muffet sat on a muffin,
eating
her
corduroy . . .”
I pull from Zoe’s hands The Rise of Puritanism.
How many times must I ask you to dress,
I say. And no,
I haven’t seen the purple dress.
My daughter turns her back to me
and picks up a magazine. “With one mighty shove,”
she reads, “Gretel kicked the wicked witch
headfirst into the oven.”
That’s it. I snatch
The New Yorker out of her hands.
I’m taking you to school
with panties on your head.
My daughter, reaching for the black pants
I dangle in front of her,
mutters under her breath,
“You are a wicked woman.” Slowly
she dresses—taking breaks
to also dress
her Cinderella paper dolls
scattered across the floor.
The stepmother paper doll,
with pointy shoes and grim expression,
wears my favorite colors (burgundy and gray),
and although my hair is not gray, I realize
that mine this morning
is pushed into a bun
not unlike that of the stepmother.
I am old and mean
and have no sympathy for Cinderella.
“Don’t forget to brush your hair,”
I say. All that polishing
and sweeping
taught Cinderella to take care of herself.
“When I have a little girl,”
my daughter informs me,
“I will take her to meetings
and to classes and out to lunch
and to toy stores. I will take her everywhere.”
I never intended to be the wicked stepmother.
Really, it’s easier for me
if she eats jelly beans for breakfast
and it’s less laundry
if she wears the same purple dress
to school and to bed . . .
But I am under a spell,
compelled to feed my daughter (burned) oatmeal
and in a rage
to hide the purple dress.
I open my arms
and in them are ugly shoes
and sour apples. Eat, my pretty;
this will make you grow
up and away.
As I stand at the backdoor,
muttering to myself
and making last minute changes
on an article due the day before,
my daughter (hair brushed
and decorated with a dozen barrettes)
tiptoes to me and lifts my shirt.
With her head, she nudges at my belly.
“Nibble, nibble, gnaw,” she whispers.
“You are my gingerbread house.”
Eva Heisler
has recently published two books of poems, Reading Emily Dickinson in Icelandic (Kore Press) and Drawing Water (Noctuary Press).