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
Despite Horrifying Sadness, the Birth of the World Again and Again
for A and Alain Badiou
Three days after the world failed to end
the sun soaks in.
We joke about our lives
as an echo—the bottom coil
of a slinky dropped from our window
by hands and smiles that are also ours.
Later, I’ll remember the faint click
of rosaries. The sun will continue
to shine, birds will trill and coo,
and something like God will flash
and disintegrate and all will be
as the wind chimes tell it:
soft, bright clashes. Feeling what is far away,
by proxy, no invasion was necessary. Though
we are crushed and growing
despite the weight. A river runs nearby.
The trees and bulbs bloom,
again and again,
as we walk past
and out of the scene
with an exchange of letters,
sly kisses,
we pretend to understand
are necessary.
How lovely to know
such things can be carved
from our hands. Each touch leaving
a new map. Every blood-pure desire
another direction the mind takes
to see the world
breathe—
and there you are
and there the sun
and every lovely thing
choked down
one spin at a time.
Y(t) = A*sin(wt + φ)
That sounds wonderful,
to break
in this clean division so many speak
so fondly of.
Our trend lines in homeostasis.
No longer crushed, just balanced, into splinters. Naturalized beyond help
like a physics equation or baby grand piano with our fingers’ blood not yet dry
on the keys. And the more I think of Zeno
the more I move
from horror to parody.
I love you—
loving me loving you loving another
epiphany that breaks my throat into grace. Feeling exhumed
then crushed by this expanse we exist in
it should not be so easy to be
happy with the sunset.
Both Renascence and the morning after.
Like trying to explain thinking of you thinking of you thinking of your cat thinking,
I stare at the couch attaching words to an emptiness.
How many times did I not understand
when you said good morning?
How many times
did our footprints fill in
with snow until it looked like the world
erased us?
Of course, we keep
moving, stamping new prints
until, behind us, holier
and holier, the page
disintegrates.
Like the Ganges, Our Mouths
She broke in with the spring rain.
The whispers in thousands of erupting drops—
loud, then hushed, then another
unremembered voice for the world.
Now it’s just her and the glittering
sun beam rebar smashing in
from our windows. We live in color.
We talk over crocus
and kiss goodbye with an orange
in my fist. Even our shouting
is hushed with pink blossoms.
Silly, this indifferent storm and then our silence
again—like stepping with red robes into
the Ganges and filth
only to rise with eyes leaking out the sight’s
ecstatic rupturing and singing praises with howls
and arms akimbo—our words
tossed into air and told to fly.
•
But the weight grows,
our baptisms continue,
our bodies drink from the world
until we have no choice but
to hurt. Look at the feet, the legs,
our fingers—look at the stones. Watch
the blossoms sift and pile around us
like a statue of the Buddha
in one of Issa’s poems—the air cool
after the children’s games have ended,
as the Earth’s cold shoulder
to the sun begins,
and the curious songbirds
have left—like our own desire to move—
this terrible, small hope.
Daniel Sinderson
is a gas station attendant living in Portland, OR, with his partner and cat. He received his BA in Anthropology last year and will shortly be traveling to Sardinia to study the Bronze Age Nuragic culture. His poems have appeared in The Dirty Napkin, Metazen, and Rufous City Review. He received the Kay Snow Award for Poetry in 2009.