Poetry Summer 2015 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Hannah Lansburgh
Jennifer Leigh Stevenson
For Your Own Good
& other poems
Marianne S. Johnson
Tortious
& other poems
Kate Magill
Nest Study #1
& other poems
Karen Kraco
Studio
& other poems
Matt Daly
Beneath Your Bark
& other poems
Paulette Guerin
Emergence
& other poems
Hank Hudepohl
Crossed Words
& other poems
Alma Eppchez
At the Back of the Road Atlas
& other poems
Jim Burrows
At the Megachurch
& other poems
Rachel Stolzman Gullo
Lioness
& other poems
Yana Lyandres
New York Transplant
& other poems
Heather Katzoff
Start
& other poems
Tom Yori
Cana
& other poems
Barth Landor
What Is Left
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
Never So Still
& other poems
George Longenecker
Polar Bears Drowning
& other poems
Ben Cromwell
Sometimes a Flock of Birds
& other poems
Robert Mammano
the way the ground shakes
& other poems
Janet Smith
Rocket Ship
& other poems
Gina Loring
Dementia
& other poems
J. Lee Strickland
Minoan Elegy
& other poems
Toni Hanner
Catching the Baby
& other poems
Heather Katzoff
Start
Lining up near a throng
of other little girls
striped knee socks rising
from velcro sneakers of pink
and purple clashing with camp
shirts orange and white
we waited on dead grass
no longer green until
a whistle broke through
the air, startling our crowd
into motion, and in the middle
of the pack, with whipping
ponytails blinding sight
with elbows and knees
building barriers
locking us like puzzle pieces
keeping the herd together
I found my way out
and flew toward a splintered
makeshift totem pole finish
line upon discovering
that I could run.
Into the West
highway transformations
criss-cross the country
turnpike entrances
dot the states
places recounted
by parkway exits
co-gen plants
give way
to corn fields
to the continental
divide
there exists a point
after industry
before complacency
where scenic overlooks
become contemplations
of prairie grasses
the journey
begins at a toll booth
entrance ramps
gas stations
rest stops
mile markers
of the passage of time
interstitial spaces
with roadside sculpture
and memorial crosses
replace mini-malls
and truck depots
where antelope
really do play
against barbed wire backdrops
and the unnatural
beauty
of a smog-inspired
neon pink sun
melting
into the horizon
but before I-80
dead ends
into the ocean
before you reach the salt flats
that were once
vast seas
before tumbleweed
adheres to the front
bumper
we
have already passed
into the west
Desire
I want your lips,
lips that are mine
neither by birth
nor commitment,
I want them to kiss places
with no proper names
in the annals of anatomy.
We will name them
together.
We will baptize those places
with our breath
the order of consonants and vowels
secret
and idiosyncratic
and shared
in silence.
I want your eyes.
I want to claim them
in a way that I cannot.
I want them on me
following me
feeling their gaze move and rest
in time with my hips
and I want to see what I look like
inside them.
The Naming of Things
We dance around the vocabulary
but there isn’t a word
to suit
and all the ones tested
sit ill on tongue
and teeth
neither of us certain
that a words exists
to define our relationship
one to the other
neither of us certain
we need definition
Adam went about the garden
telling every bird and beast
what it ought to be called
ignoring the fact
that they were what they were
whether He liked it
or not
ignoring the fact
that the snake
would charm
and then bite
no matter what name
He gave him
Eastbound
The wind chill
made the air
feel 14 degrees
below
when I left this morning
before the sun
showed its face
to a sky of perfect
sapphire
blue
and the sky is punctuated with stars
too bright and too many to name
and I want you
to tell me which ones they are
but I leave while you still sleep
gently kissing your forehead goodbye
and though you stir
your snoring continues
I drive east
and watch the sun
work its magic
on the Pennsylvania landscape
the colors of it breaking
my heart
over and over
I see the spectrum
everywhere
in fields of snow
on the rock walls
lining the highway
in the memory of your hair
as it catches the moonlight
before you wake
After an on-again/off-again relationship with higher education and a decade working in retail management, 
Heather Katzoff returned to school and now holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and an MFA in poetry, both from Rutgers University. Her work has appeared in the Paterson Literary Review and online at Selfies in Ink. She currently teaches at the Harrisburg Area Community College in central Pennsylvania.