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 Moment Before
For Daniel
On the inside of the windshield
he saw their reflections
and the blur of a coyote
on the horizon.
He knew then
that time slows down
when you are airborne
as if you are about to throw
your first punch,
or lean in to kiss a girl.
Underneath the sound
of crunching were sixty
years of song, a hundred
prayers made of cloud and dirt.
He wondered about saguaro cactuses
would they grow through upholstery,
would planted shards of glass
grow taller than a Durango Ficus,
would his daughters come to this spot,
place a cross on the side of the freeway
and scratch his name
into earth?
2009 Subaru Legacy
after Patricia Smith
I was equipped for journey, although I did not mean to fly
or end up inside out, a shell of my own purpose.
I am sorry for the twisting
that I caused, for the pavement I could not reach.
Now I know more than the veins on a map.
I know the ditches that accompany freeways.
I know the meaning of these freckled roads
adorned with wooden crosses and Virgin Mary murals.
I never was a shield.
I am a mass of metal.
I saved all I could that day.
Highway 15
I have always known blood. From Niño de Guzman to the steady chase of foyuca, heroin and marijuana. I am crammed with trucks, decorated with potholes, a black top scar that runs for 1,432 miles. When they speak of me they tell me what I’m not: undivided, unlighted, lacking shoulder. Without me it would all be bramble and naked desert hills. I connect Hermosillo to Guaymas, La Frontera to D.F. I am a prayer of convenience, un gracias, a whip of speed. I could tell you that I am cursed: shadowed by the Tropic of Cancer, littered with swollen dreams, haunted by promises of the undelivered. I toss and crumble. I shriek and slither. When the cars stack up I am silent, just a wail of wind on greedy, teethy track.
What is Left:
The quota and the libre,
cactus needles begging,
mountains that make shadows
out of landscape, sunrays
that drag their nails
through the dirt.
Old sneaker that ran too slow,
vein of tire tracks
slashing the earth, dust settling,
prickly pear blooming,
bottles emptying.
Nowhere dogs
searching for shade,
a car radio that zigzags through air,
frigit birds swooping like angles of water,
bristles sticking,
wounds scabbing.
Stars that swallow sky,
scattered bits of glass,
teeth clenching the surface,
wind scraping window panes
in hopes of getting in,
in hopes of escaping this land
with the sleeves cut off,
this land that is a rumbling of trumpets
a lake of caskets:
cracked and slivered.
Aftermath
When the jar of pasta sauce
hit linoleum floor,
it reminded her of windshield
with it’s splintered hands
ripping through skin.
When the blood of tomatoes
flashed across her cupboards,
it reminded her of earth,
of desert floor reaching inside
what was meant to be out.
She wiped up pulp
with a bathroom towel.
There were stones left
in between her teeth
asking: where to put this mess?
She felt bits of glass twisting
in her left hand like a key
in a door that does not open.
The scar looked like a lifeline
of too many children. A phone rang.
She wondered if there was any reason
to fill air with verbs where there was only
room for scrap metal. “Do words penetrate wind?”
She would ask if she knew no one would respond,
if she was positive that time moved backward
and that she could cook a simple
pasta dish without freeways
slicing through her kitchen,
without this howling at her feet.
Abigail Templeton-Greene
’s poetry has been published in McSweeneys, RATTLE, Pilgrimage, Two Hawks Quarterly, The Tulane Review, The Elixir, Pear Noir and several other journals. She has an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is a winner of the 2011 Lighthouse Writers Seven Deadly Sins Writing Contest. She was also recently nominated for the Friends of USP Writing Award. Abigail teaches Creative Writing at Florence Crittenton High School in Denver, Colorado.