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
Skagit River
I.
The wet earth
Littered with pine droppings
Green needles dying yellow
In the rootdappled mud
While limpid and lakish
Drops hang, suspended
Teasing, falling
From forked boughs—
Through the air
Through the bracken
And down into
The wet earth:
The underground woodlines:
Like train schedules of comings,
Goings . . .
Desolately
The gray buffalo clouds
Through the canopy,
Stampeding
Lazily by
Into the beards
Of fog
Haloing
Dark peaks.
Out here, days
Go by. Out here
Fire’s kind, from a cabin:
Burnt brush smoke.
II.
Gray, it
Courses at all sides
Laboring down from
The mountains.
And laboring down from
The banks, we
Move surefooted—
Still, tentative.
The rocks adjusting
Under our weight
Tumbling algaebacked
Loosing mud—
A sparse clacking
Buried in the lull.
The frothrills
Roll and swirl dirtily
Under the slag of
Sky: cold, and blindly
Rushing . . .
To brighter climes,
Less ashen, not so
Desolate.
Wading out ahead—
My travelling partner—
His khaki pants darkened,
His white T-shirt stuck pink and
Lucid against his back
Turning round to speak
In a human language,
Grinning . . .
The melted snow
And sediment, at all sides—
The pines slumbering
Darkly off the flume —
The campsite: miles behind,
Still casting its acrid smoke.
The round stones
Piled at riversedge,
Become wet, dappled—
An admonition: Find shelter . . .
Make a fire . . . wait it out.
Nicklaus Wenzel
was born in the Pacific Northwest in a suburb just outside of Seattle. He studied Russian and French literature at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.