Poetry Summer 2014 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
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
January
I defy you this year with a smile
less one tooth
extracted because the bone
that anchored it
dissolved. Neglect born
of neglect. A mother loves one
son but not the other. A goose will kill
its smallest, lamest mouth
for the sake of other hungers.
We endure
inversion-gummed air, The Gap
and I, ignore
side streets rutted with snow
marbled like foam on a latte.
More than halfway through
my forties I know
better, January. If the boss I’d fire
your ice; shove your single digits up your
aurora borealis. I heart you
like a clogged artery, stroke you
like a pulse-burst. You’ve struck the sky
of birds, strung the smog
with tinsel. The frost-fringed dead
limbs of the trees fool the kids
but I’m lost
as the starlings. Such garish
garnish crowns you the grandest, damnedest
widow. You suck
me dry. My hands crack
and flake. My lips need
a balm. A stranger reached
into me and wrenched
out a tooth. He numbed me
first—I felt nothing—but the cracking
was like ice fallen through.
I’ve fallen through you,
January. Your frozen fist will wreck a face.
I turn my cheek for you to kiss.
April
The white top reanimates, little stranglers
haloed with petals. I thought I killed
them all last year with poison, with my bare
hands dragging them out of the graves
they were digging in the lawn. Weeds
always return. You never
will. The neighbors started gardens but I’ve been
wary, haven’t even tilled the weedy soil. Dandelions
roar neon wounds. Wind riots
in the budding plum, the frantic
blossoms your absence. Sky an ache
of angles through awkward branches. The poppies
under fatten and stir.
Bent, I spray white top and crabgrass; crush
cheat; I resist. You insist
the sky’s schizophrenic with clouds. The sky
pales the way a face
drains. The wind’s scouring tears
eyes (a reflex) that reflect only the ordinary
light. Mid-April, and frost expected after midnight.
Corvette
As if Cancer was a giant
vampire that broke off the blackened
fang it sucked the blood
from my family with & left
it in the flesh to fester.
The white
skeleton stretched grey
skin into a yellowed
grin, waved its claw
like a magician
performing a trick.
Stripes
our Brindle/Pit mix
whined and sniffed a chrome
wheel, lifted leg to piss
but found Dad’s foot & curse
up his ass instead.
My brother
hooted & drooled, lusted
over the two-seater trap.
Never good at math, Dad:
We were four, not counting
the dog.
Splinter, I thought. Stab. Then:
Dick.
Told my brother he could pull it out
of the garage. Turned to me
O meat of him, grey-tinged pink with rotting, said:
You get to wash it.
Midnighting
I like to do it while I’m drunk.
I like to do it when I’m starved.
Slick out under a fat
moon dressed in black,
even the shoes.
Some nights call
for hooves to clatter
through quelled neighborhoods
(The sleeping flinch
while dreaming),
others stripped
naked as a wish
to be helpless, to be
holy.
Others, lonely.
Or, fashion paws
from cat hair and nail parings
to match the mask
filched from the raccoon
hunkered under
the shed—paws
ideal
for scrambling
up streetlights—now
varmint stupid
for starlight—pale
as a secret
no one burns to know,
breath molecular
chaos I marry
to wind and go.
17th
August you give me a canker
my periodontalist wants to biopsy
you send me flailing into rush hour
you ding my fender
you unfriend me
you terrorize my mother out of language
you berate her with dialysis
you castigate her with leukemia
you accuse us with fires
you plaque the valley in smoke
you cast deformed shadows
you bully us into prayer
Are you prone to canker sores
You have a history
of smoking (sinning)
Do you suck hard candy
Do you suck anything
What about cinnamon
what about turmeric coriander why
is curry so expensive
what about lemons
what about getting darker instead of dusk
What about Egypt Iraq Iran Syria
Our lust
for quinoa
disempowers Bolivians
On the Internet
I saw a man eat another man’s heart
I saw a man immolate himself
You unveil the olinguito
then beach hundreds of dolphins
Thunder after midnight explodes
me from dream
shudders the windows
catapults the cats
casts serpents seething
through the barren plum tree
the shriveled raspberry
a respite
August
your hard hot rain
on my wet hapless face
Daniel Stewart
is the author of a collection of poems, The Imaginary World. Since 1999 he has been a teaching-writer for the Writers in the Schools. A variety of print and online publications have featured his poems, including Educe, Puerto Del Sol, Prairie Schooner, and Rattle. Recent work may be found in the anthologies REduce, and Thrush Poetry Journal: an anthology of the first two years.