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
Janet Smith
Rocket Ship
Emery Park had a pretend rocket ship.
We walked there in the afternoon, and I,
legs straight, palms flat, dropped down
the metal slide onto the cold sand.
My mother made me wear dresses;
they fluttered up like frightened birds.
I wanted to walk by myself, but I was seven.
One man in a torn jacket stood by the fountain,
hands in his pockets, eyeing the merry-go-round.
“Don’t talk to him,” my mother said.
I wouldn’t even talk to the girl my age,
who held a sucker in her mouth as she
slid down after me. That was dangerous.
Later, we walked across the street
to Crawford’s Market. I stuck my hot, dry
hand deep into the barrel of hard candy.
The store clerk glowered over her counter.
Watch your children, a sign shaped like
a pointing finger warned.
I unwrapped the candy Mother bought me
one by one, placed each on my tongue,
and moved so the wrappers in my sweater
pocket rustled. A red disk burned my mouth.
I spat it on the sidewalk. That was wrong.
We walked home past the park, and my mother
grabbed my hand.. The rocket ship
exploded with boys, yelling and hitting.
Be Good
I once was pointed to the corner
of a room where the curtains swooned.
Red-eyed, hands tight as buds, I held
the pink tissue mother gave me.
She and father agreed, I was bad.
Dust motes drifting through daylight
fell on my head.
Puzzle box unlocked and smashed,
I moved into a fragment of myself.
Later they allowed me to set foot
where the lamps shone upon doilies
bright as lilies. Be good, they said.
The dark boughs of my woods still
thrash upon themselves.
Pockets
My mother sewed the pockets
of coats. She called it piecework.
After her shift, she slept on top
of the bedspread in her clothes
so as not to mess the covers.
Then the bed was straightened.
We went to a coffee shop called Earl’s.
The meals came with cake or rice
pudding. She wore bright lipstick,
hairdo arrowed with bobby pins,
an ironed blouse with the dime store
brooch like a medal on her chest.
Practical daylight fell upon her things—
the nylon scarf, the curlers and the pins,
the pennies saved inside a jelly jar—
but it was the beige slip that slid
like a rattlesnake off the chair
onto the floor that scared me. She said
a slip stopped boys from looking
at the outline between your legs.
Smooth and supple as flayed skin,
the beige slip told me how my mother
became the red-lipped ghost. Listen,
she’d say, here’s a coupon, a hairnet,
a pad, a needle and some thread.
The dresser and the nightstand
each adorned with scarves depicting
rosebuds, bluebirds, a shepherdess,
and a leering doe with red lips.
Where was the interior life?
So many pockets, and nothing
but bare hands to hide. I was told
to never touch the sharp scissors
she had honed. She wore dresses
with no sleeves in summer, arms freckled,
warm, and fat as rising loaves.
The change on the dresser
never added up. The nylon briefs
and bras lay cool and folded
in a narrow drawer that stuck.
She smiled at me as if her mouth
held straight pins. Here’s a hanky,
a spare key, a dime for emergencies.
Stop eating cookies or you won’t eat
your dinner. There’s no one
now to accuse or defend her,
except me—her most loyal prisoner.
It Surprises You
It could be a cold Wednesday.
Moving your feet along the ground,
shouldering through the air
is pleasure. Your heart fastens
on a house you always pass
that now needs looking at.
You love the nape of your own neck.
When you were seven and wandered
from your parents’ sight,
this was how you saw the world:
every edge hardened with reality.
That’s why you drew lines
around the pictures before you filled
them in in your coloring book.
You begged for a pet, even a fish
or a bird, because you loved the world
and needed a body to put that in.
One day you stared out your bedroom
window: roofs, stars, moon,
the crowns of trees reached for you.
You were already falling.
The days dream us and the nights
wake in our ears. Today, sitting
at a desk or driving a car,
you wonder, what was all that childhood
longing about? When you enter
the black room of your aloneness,
nothing bad happens after all.
Nobody walks more solitary
than a child. You could ask now
for a piece of that slow waiting
that married you to your hunger.
An hour might spring on you with
a daydream hidden in its claws,
your old loneliness in its mouth.
Fireworks over Chain Lake
One July 4th I stayed at your house
on Chain Lake. We opened
two bottles of pinot noir and put
swimsuits on. Across the water,
fireworks exploded like cannons
aimed upon us. I woke at 3 AM
to rain splashing against the house.
You were asleep downstairs
in your wet swimsuit with the TV on.
When the first bursts exploded,
light fell like pollen on our heads.
We jumped up and down on the dock,
drunk and shouting. Why have we
waited so long to be found good enough?
As children we loved any tree,
any mountain, any sky.
Others appeared. They yelled for us.
We hid. We went hungry.
Janet Smith
began college at thirty-five after a string of jobs in Yosemite National Park. She graduated with an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Minnesota in 2001. She is a past recipient of a Nevada Arts Board Fellowship in poetry and the Guy Owens Prize. Her first book of poetry, All of a Sudden Nothing Happened, was published in 2010. She is on faculty in the English Department at Lake Tahoe Community College.