Poetry Summer 2016 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Carly Larsson
Sarah Sansolo
Bedtime Stories
& other poems
Miranda Cowley Heller
Things the Tide Has Discarded
& other poems
Alexa Poteet
Escobar's Hacienda Napoles
& other poems
Cynthia Robinson Young
Triple Dare
& other poems
Nicole Lachat
Of Infidelities
& other poems
Amy Nawrocki
Bad Girls
& other poems
Lawrence Hayes
Winter Climb
& other poems
AJ Powell
God the Baker
& other poems
Gisle Skeie
Rearranging
& other poems
Bruce Taylor
Always Expect a Train
& other poems
Ricky Ray
They Used to Be Things
& other poems
S. E. Ingraham
Storm Angels
& other poems
Laura Gamache
Outing
& other poems
Keighan Speer
It Rained Today
& other poems
Emma Atkinson
Grocery Stores Make Me Feel Mentally Ill
& other poems
Erin Lehrmann
Block
& other poems
D. H. Turtel
Margaret, Again
& other poems
Chris Haug
Bovine Paranoia
& other poems
Kimberly M. Russo
Definitive Definition
& other poems
Holly Walrath
A Tourist of Sorts
& other poems
Angel C. Dye
Beauty in Her Marrow
& other poems
Chris Haug
Bovine Paranoia
I’m sure it’s different for everyone,
but for me, it began like this: You’re scared,
but you tell the Angus beside you
anyway, and he just snorts dismissively
says that in profile
faces only look like they’re winking.
But you’re unconvinced,
and you don’t want to bring
it up again, but it keeps happening.
The sheep start doing it, and pigs
do it, too; then a farmer does it, then a tractor,
and the worries you feel about what
others will think are eventually outweighed
by what all of this means for you
if what you think you’re seeing
is actually happening. Your four stomachs
churn each time you catch someone’s eye,
until you finally can’t take it anymore,
and you dare to speak about this phenomena
with others, but of course, that psychotic
Guernsey pipes up and says
you’re the one who’s way off base.
And everyone laughs, but
no one knows what to do,
and you think, What else can you do,
but speak up? See, whether or not
you’ve accurately remembered
the moment last week when you saw
the wheat field winking at you
just before it began to rain . . .
you’re sure there was a flash
and then finally, definitively—
thunder. Yes, it now occurs to you
that the only thing that’s really true
is that you’re soggy and uneasy,
and that there is no way
you’re going to be able to spend
every single moment
of a lifetime of afternoons
like this.
Loss
It’s never how we imagine:
a daughter can, perhaps,
see her father returning
home from a long year
in a dusty place, his beard
matted with black blood,
his eyelids locked tight.
Though she knows
this won’t be how she will
actually see him when he returns,
it’s a way
to prepare herself.
But loss sneaks out
from the dark corners
of a Thursday morning
when her mother
doesn’t wake her
for school, and her hero
father comes back early
with his hair neatly trimmed
and his oaky legs unscarred.
Months pass in silence,
and she finds that the only things
her father can bring himself to touch
for more than just a moment
are the creamy shells of eggs
sleeping peacefully
as the dull kitchen lights
buzz somewhere overhead.
In Havelock’s Pub—Nairn, Scotland
I’m pretty sure it’s English
he’s speaking, but I can’t make out
a word, so I’m nodding
and drinking, trying to hide this fact.
His words are a deluge
and his eyebrows arc into caterpillars
as his leathered hand points
like a gun: forefinger at my empty
glass, thumb at the ceiling.
I nod, and a smile burrows out
from beneath his gray mustache.
He laughs as he bangs my pint glass
on the bar three times.
The bartender nods.
Apparently, I’ve just ordered
another drink.
I don’t know what he saying,
but I want to believe he’s telling me
how he survived the war
and how he learned to talk about it
once it was over, that he’s speaking
about how hard the rain fell
the day he met his wife, about how soft
her hands were the first time
she touched his shipwrecked face,
and that he’s confiding in me
that sometimes the sea
seems to unfold itself
only to him.
I Learn Prince Harry’s Junk is Going To Be in the Newspaper
—after Frank O’Hara
Apparently, he was gyrating away
and then suddenly he stopped singing
and dancing to flip off the camera
and you said there was thunder
from across the sea, the Queen’s anger
you said. And I said
but thunder pounds you in the chest
hard, so it was not really thunder
and there was no lightning,
but I was in such a panic about “news”
like this permeating the air
about how “society” was acting
precisely like the sea
churning and foaming
that I saw a newsman
levitating, mid-air
on a forty-foot television screen say,
“Prince Harry is naked in Vegas!”
And look, I know I haven’t been
to that many casinos,
but even I know saints aren’t canonized
at Caesar’s, and I know there are no comets
seen in the Bellagio’s bathroom.
I have, however, had my picture in the paper.
O Prince Harry, we love you
please put your clothes on.
Chris Haug
is a father, husband, and teacher. His poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in places like Silk Road, North American Review, Harpur Palate, Punchnel’s, and Potomac Review.