Poetry Summer 2014 fiction all issues
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Anne Rankin-Kotchek
Letter to the World
from a Dying Woman
& other poems
Sara Graybeal
Ghetto City
& other poems
Tee Iseminger
Construction
& other poems
Lisa Beth Fulgham
After They Sold the Cows...
& other poems
Mary Mills
The Practical Knowledge
of Women
& other poems
Monika Cassel
Waldschatten, Muttersprache
& other poems
Michael Fleming
To a Fighter
& other poems
Daniel Stewart
January
& other poems
John Glowney
Cigarettes
& other poems
Hannah Callahan
The Ptarmigan Suite
& other poems
Lee Kisling
How the Music Came
to My Father
& other poems
Jose A. Alcantara
Finding the God Particle
& other poems
David A. Bart
Veteran’s Park
& other poems
Greg Grummer
War Reportage
& other poems
Rande Mack
rat
& other poems
J. K. Kitchen
Anger Kills Himself
& other poems
Jim Pascual Agustin
The Man Who Wished
He Was Lego
& other poems
Jessica M. Lockhart
Scylla of the Alabama
& other poems
James P. Leveque
Three Films of Jean Painlevé
& other poems
Kelsey Charles
Autobiography
& other poems
Therese L. Broderick
Polly
& other poems
Lane Falcon
Touch
& other poems
Ricky Ray
The Bird
& other poems
Phoebe Reeves
Every Petal
& other poems
David Livingstone Fore
Eternity is a very long time...
& other poems
Tim Hawkins
Northern Idyll
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
On the Pillow Where You Lie
& other poems
Joey DeSantis
Baby Names
& other poems
Cameron Price
Every Morning
& other poems
David Walker
Sestina for Housesitting
& other poems
Helen R. Peterson
Ablaut
& other poems
Ablaut
In the company cafeteria the man
murmurs a tune to his daughter,
alone except for a woman
reading a book by the window.
The toddler rings back the words
out of tune. He rocks the child,
diverts her attention to the tvs
the fact that they’re all on CNN
makes her giggle.
He is relieved to quiet the song
until a photo of a child, newly dead
flashes on screen. “Look Daddy.”
his daughter cries, attracted
as children are to people
their own age. “Yes, very pretty”
The father says, and rocks his child
“Isn’t she a pretty girl?”
Mageirocophobia
When grunions make their run to mate
the male sliding his body around the female, her tail
dug deep in the sand, they are unconcerned
about the parasites slipping between their scales
the scummiest of waters flowing through their open mouths
and seeping, filtered, from their gills. They don’t know
salad bars are more likely to make a body sick than sushi,
or that Aunt Mae will someday scrape the mold from their bodies,
bury them deep in a tomb of batter, fry them crisp
in oil that will leap at her wattled arms.
Helen R. Peterson
, from Eaton Rapids, Michigan, writes poetry and fiction and is coeditor of The Waterhouse Review. Melons and Memory, her first full-length book of poetry, was published in November 2011 from Little Red Tree Press. Her work has appeared in over 100 publications, both nationally and abroad, and she has read at the Bowery Poetry Club, the Out of the Blue Gallery in Cambridge, the Walt Whitman Homestead, and Rio’s in Glasgow, Scotland, amongst others.