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
Every Morning
New moons fade to longing,
filling the air with transfusions of autumn light.
In the crevices of sleep, the world dreams
of tossing a coin :
heads, we wake up // tails, we keep sleeping.
It is always tails, the doldrums of the covers.
(listen) every morning a clear white note
breaks out over the land : it’s the snap of a
dream sundering.
In that moment, everything wakes up :
moss undulates in a breeze that
is not there;
the mice collect twigs and hair
to build palaces;
the deer gather to search out the
most delicate rosebushes to plunder.
And then it ends.
Things revert to rising slowly, as from
a daze or stupor.
Some things feel more hopeless than others :
maybe your back aches mysteriously or you
worry habitually about the bills.
But yet there is still that moment, every morning,
when everything pulses at once, tributary to
one rhythmic source.
Don’t blink // don’t sleep.
We must try to rise and feel it every morning,
to remember who we are.
The Silence of The Dead
The final cessation is
a tomb, a stone cup, a chorus,
flung far into a dream
of black water and the rushing
of exhausted exits.
This is the hymn of listening,
a secret hid from the world.
In this cavern, cut smooth
by centuries of bitter water,
I find a pool of gaping shadow.
The bones of every being that came before me
sleep submerged and wait for a sign :
they, too, listen
for a revelation on the other side of the silence.
I tread the stones around the edge,
and watch the brittle hands of the dead wave
like kelp in a secret current.
I kneel and lean my face down to the water
to kiss the menagerie of bones
arranged in grooves of sleep.
A slender finger bent in cold yearning
reaches for my lips
and their memory of warmth :
a frigid caress.
The wait rolls on in constant flow,
in this tomb, this holy cup,
the chorus of the dead :
This is the hymn of listening,
A secret hid from the world.
Now I, too, wait and reach
for lips that come to kiss the dead,
the waiting,
waiting for the end of silence,
for the tomb to break open,
for hope to break open,
and breathe.
L’Ancien Chanson d’Hiver
A thousand yards of linen are not long enough to record this story,
written on the skins of onions in yellow thread,
sewn by fingers of light.
I am in a place, existing in liminal spaces,
like a shred of yesterday lingering in a patch of morning shadow,
fleeing the noon eye.
I am the concrete road, splayed like a compass,
pointing towards your future : walk on.
I am open, split like the gaping mouths of lions,
my strength laying in the multiplicity of my pieces,
the hydra of my being : I live.
Come to this place, warm and humming :
the perfume of a hornet’s nest in June,
the smell of honey in a tree, raw and woody.
Find me there, between the gaps of leafless trees,
waiting like the smell of smoke,
in dappled puddles on a wet path.
I wait there writing my story,
on the backs of beetles and the fingers of bats.
I am there singing this poem through the pores of a leaf,
the mouth of a dandelion.
I am there like a thought, the memory of a still pond in winter,
the sadness of the night passed away.
So wait : be my friend.
Sing this song with me in the hollow of my open hand.
Add to my fullness, find me in the ancient song of winter:
Attende-moi, aime-moi, et chante, mon cher, cher ami.
Cameron Price
is a poet living in Ann Arbor, MI. His poetry and experimental film work has appeared in Humble Pie and Small Po[r]tions, respectively. He is the design and visual art editor at Duende, a new online journal of art and literature.