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 Petal
The roses in the pitcher open
their gradient of desire.
My flesh blooms, too, and I travel
its gradations: fulfillment,
need, silence. The white
at the height of the curve, what
comes after speech.
After petals come
loose in the hand.
Without the fruiting
body, the red hip
violent against winter’s
shushing monochrome, tart and disdainful.
Muscle, also pink,
also loosening, clenches
its last bud. Releases its last bloom of blood.
What We Don’t See When We Witness
Twice, I sang with nine other women,
all older than me, beneath the shadow
of the stage, behind the orchestra’s last row.
The bassoons, the fourth violins, the harp.
Just back and above I could hear the feet
rustling and thumping down. Titania,
Bottom, Puck, the pas de deux, the local
ballet school girls all dressed
as tiny fairies—I would see them after,
leaving with their parents, cheeks flushed like
the flowers they were supposed to be.
Three hundred dollars was enough
to take the train up and stay in my old
bedroom, regress in age and occupation,
be the chorus girl again, without spot
lights, in matte black like stage hands,
singing only a small part while the story’s
feet in worn pointe shoes tattooed its
old tune behind me, in the lights.
Three years ago this winter J took E
to the emergency room, late and in the
cold dark of old December, two days
back from their honeymoon. Her breath
came short in the car, shorter, and he
left her at the bay doors to park the car.
No E when he ran back, no breath.
Just the halogen lighting and the scrubs
and the obscene gift shop.
Was it looking back or not
that lost Orpheus his wife?
I never knew any ballet better than
the one I never saw.
Atomic Oneiromancy
We see the bomb in the distance, knowing
the radiation comes. We can’t
just crawl into a lead-lined refrigerator like Indiana
Jones, and come out adjusting our fedoras.
First, nausea. Weariness, blurred
eyesight. Then, the dreaded hair
on the pillow, coming loose at the root.
The cells of the stomach and intestines
slough off like a glove peeled
inside out. Can’t eat, can’t drink,
veins thin under skin like dry
river beds. Isn’t that far enough
to go?
Or is it worse to live past the present
crisis, to imagine all our little half buried
codes clicking on in the genome,
like land mines waiting for the pressure
trigger, precious inheritance
passed down for generations, all
the rigors of natural selection
switched on at once as we
flick the light on over our heads,
and watch it rain down, alpha,
beta, gamma, the alphabet
of our unmaking. If not this,
then something else.
Enthymeme
All enzymes are catalysts, therefore they battle entropy.
You enter the house enumerating your domestic sins,
trying not to envy the dancers jumping high in their entrechat—
remember, their toes look like hamburger.
During the entr’acte they shoot up their feet with Novocain and cry.
Such is beauty.
You get all entangled in the entourage of your insecurities,
but the pruned redbud trees are never too mangled
to put out the tiny cilia of their good looks come March.
You are not entitled to any more entropy than the rest of us.
Pause. Make your entrance.
Entertain the guests. Envelop them in your hearty
goodwill. Enunciate their names, making eye contact.
They will remember how you reached out your hand,
your enthusiasm for their chatter.
It’s better to find comfort in their enthrallment, the canapés,
the gossips picking through the absent players’
entrails, than to be on stage, ensnared in the one spot light,
waiting for your partner in the pas de deux.
He’ll never show.
There’s only the entreaty of the crowd and the ensuing silence.
The creak of the worn wood boards.
Did you think your waiting would entrance all these
entrenched carnivores? You’re an entrepreneur in a desert,
a seamstress in a nudist colony, a chauffeur
in an automobile museum, a museum on the moon.
You are entombed in your own environs
and your patrons applaud when you fold down,
fetal, under the sodium lights, and press your entire body to the stage.
Phoebe Reeves
earned her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, and now teaches English at the University of Cincinnati’s Clermont College, in Southern Ohio. Her poems have recently appeared in Versal, Third Coast, Quarterly West, and Memorious. Her manuscript, Helen of Bikini, was recently named as a finalist in the Sarabande Books Kathryn A. Morton Prize, and a semi-finalist in the Waywiser Press Anthony Hecht Prize.