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 Dock-Sitters
To sit on a dock which has
walked out on stiff legs
twelve to fifteen feet away
from the weedy shore,
one board after another
reaching outward, drawing
your gaze across the unblinking
eye of the lake whose color
deepens further out, to sit
on this dock which seems
to want to hold you, even
rock you a little, to dangle
your feet, whiter in the green
cool water, to gaze down
into that silent world where
minnows eddy around
your toes, where sand
has agreed to be shaped
by ripples of water,
where reeds and water lilies
witness to you as that
which endures. To look out
on that lake, as birds dip low,
as quiet men in boats peer
into the depths, cast
their lines searching for
what is shadowy, elusive;
to lie back on gray, splintery
sun-warmed boards
in the silence of light—
is to allow that tight band
constricting your breath
to loosen, is to quench
your dire thirst for
the present. To sit
on such a dock is one
of the forgotten beatitudes—
blessed are the dock-sitters,
for they shall soon feel
shriven, their humor restored
and their pant legs
cool and damp.
Praying Mantis
Arms folded, wedge-shaped head
bowed, body, a long thin leaf—
the praying mantis worships
in the rosemary bush, nods his head,
asserts how righteous his life is
as he crunches a cricket whose legs
still kick going down. He rotates
his head almost full circle, great
bulbous eyes, hundreds of lenses
in each because the world is so
rife with beauty and danger.
What would it be like to see one
hummingbird swoop down as if
it were legion, to see the thrust
of uncountable sharp bills into
your side as if they were hot blades,
to see your death fly at you
from every angle, your entire
vision refracting the jeweled blur
of a thousand lethal wings.
Pigs can see wind
it is red, say the Irish—
and we know that
aborigines hear stars singing.
Those hogs, dainty
cloven feet in muck,
lift their heads at dawn
to gaze with calm eyes
at red paling to a pink
swirl above corn fields
while the Carolinas
are ravished by
ninety miles an hour
of purple and blood red.
And the stars, of course
they sing—wouldn’t you
if your body was fire,
lit by an unknown hand,
seen from afar in a mantle
of trembling light?
Waiting in Line After Christmas
What if all things could
be exchanged equally—
that is, not money
for things but forgiveness
for a vowel no one has ever
heard before. What if I
gave you the iridescence
of the sun on the back
of a mallard and you gave me
the desire to tap dance again.
Give me your complete
attention and I’ll give you
the scent of mimosa for three
winter nights. Perhaps,
in plain brown wrapping,
the postman will bring you
faint chimes from the bells
Scheherazade wore on her ankles
if you would send back six
folded prayers. There might be
an exchange center so the grief
I gave you for the pain
he gave me might be turned in,
to wait like ice waits for fire, like
stone waits for water
like never waits for maybe.
On Narragansett Bay
We sail at night
through warm moist air,
sails’ bellies just full,
the only sound
the shush of water
against hull as we skim
the edge of the strange
black world.
The knot meter says
our progress is slow,
depth sounder pings
with warning
but behind us,
in the phosphorus wake
are tiny sea creatures,
original source
of energy gone, yet
buoyant, still bearing
their frail green light.
Sharron Singleton
Although I’ve been a social worker and community organizer, writing and teaching poetry is now my vocation. My poems have appeared in numerous journals. In 2009 I won the James River Writers Contest and was named Poet of 2010 by the journal Passager. I also won first-place prizes in 2010 and 2012 in the Poetry Society of Virginia annual contest and won first place in the MacGuffin Poet Hunt contest for 2012. My chapbook, A Thin Thread of Water, was published in 2010 by Finishing Line Press. What I love most about poetry is how it enables one to see small miracles and epiphanies in daily life and how economy, spareness and compression of language can reveal the extravagance and multiplicity in all of life.