Poetry Summer 2015 fiction all issues
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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
George Longenecker
Polar Bears Drowning
the news isn’t so bad today
two crows perch on a large stone in the meadow
then fly off looking for a few morsels
but the pasture is barren
the war isn’t going as badly as it could
meanwhile I wait for the tax refund
which a lot of people will get this year
except people who have no income
but it’s not so bad since they pay no taxes
the two crows perch on the stone again
haven’t there been worse wars
I really don’t mind reading the news
as much as most people
many more people have died in other wars
that’s good news
this coffee isn’t too bad
and the weather isn’t as bad today
so the mail probably won’t be too late
it’s not as bad here as in some countries
polar bears drowning on page four
probably the president will do something
I think he cares about bears
the war isn’t going so badly now
the check will be in the mail
if it comes today
those crows haven’t moved
but one flaps its black wings
so it must be okay
A Protest Rally for the
Bold-faced Hyphen
Protest the extinction
of the Bold-faced Hyphen!
The once-numerous hyphen
is all but extinct.
I have seen them
flying together in pairs,
making a mad dash
to safety—
fly, fly away quickly,
before you too become extinct
and forgotten—
or held captive and misused,
for that is the apostrophe’s fate—
held prisoner in plurals,
on road signs,
in mis-punctuated ads.
Mourn the apostrophe’s demise.
Solidarity!
Save the apostrophe
Save the hyphen
Free them from their sentences
Now!
Free the apostrophe
Now!
Save the Bold-faced Hyphen
Now!
The Garter Snake
lies coiled on quartzite
high on Worcester Mountain
it’s barely warm enough
for a reptile to emerge
onto its favorite stone
coiled facing west
in April sun
waiting for flies
for months he’s waited
sheltered in a granite crevice
covered by three feet of snow
now he’s ready for sun
who knows why people hate snakes
but human hatred runs deep as Genesis
hard as quartzite veins in stone
this year new people to hate
with the same old swords, nooses and missiles
his long beige stripe is still
his brown scales barely quiver
he watches me but doesn’t
even flick his tongue
when hate’s all around
and it gets too cold
I’d like to leave it all
crawl into a crevice
with the garter snake
maybe someday when the sun’s warm again
slither out across stone
onto the mountain
Alligators
Around the bend in the canal
we startle an enormous alligator
sunning, awakened by the clack
of our canoe paddles, he splashes
into dark water and slides beneath the canoe.
My heart beats faster—you were scared
she says—well he was only six feet away—
but other alligators ignore us, barely
turning their cloudy eyes, unwilling
to relinquish their sunny places.
Alligators are accustomed to daily
canoeists paddling the Loxahatchee,
maybe they know it’s Sunday and surely
they know east, where the first sun warms
their cold hides as they slither to the bank
to bask—I offer him coffee from my thermos—
Coffee with sugar, alligator?
Sugar plantations and suburbs
have drained the Everglades and the Loxahatchee
nearly killing off the Seminole and the alligators
who now emblazon football pennants, sweatshirts
and coffee mugs: Gators! Seminoles!
The alligator basks and smiles,
he knows who’s drifting to extinction first—
we canoe around the bend where five
more alligators sleep in the sun.
I Want To Be Your Tom
Each night I climb your fence
I want to yowl at the moon
to growl and hiss at any other male
to crawl into your bed
I want to purr and lick inside your ears
to sniff you all over
to look in your eyes
to smell you so strongly there’s no other scent
I want to lay with you and put my paws around you
to lap you until you cry mrow tdrow
to feel you in heat, to feel you purr and yelp
I want you to dig your claws into my fur
And if you’ll have me across your fence
I want us to have ten kittens
I hope you dodge every car and dog
I want us to curl up together and purr when our fur is gray
George Longenecker
’s recent poetry can be found in Atlanta Review, Penumbra and Santa Fe Review. He likes to find absurdity and surprises in daily life and turn these into evocative poetry. Much of his inspiration comes from the news and from the forest which surrounds his home in Middlesex, Vermont.