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
Winner of $1000 for 1st-place-voted Poems
Sarah SansoloBedtime Stories
I.
I imagine my father
carrying boxes upstairs
in his too-skinny arms
and my mother, suitably
impressed. I don’t ask
for details, just the dog
he gave her for Valentine’s Day.
My mother wouldn’t give it up but she told me
about the breakup long enough
for her to love a man who was not
my father. It didn’t change the ending
I know by heart: gazebo, dress,
wedding.
II.
I can’t sanitize my stories for child
consumption, can’t have the stuffed
Valentine’s dog without the sex.
There was no true love in my dorm room
but on my twin bed Nicole found my G-spot,
loudly. In our future, I wanted
rings and flowers but my story is more
the original Grimm, wolves
under covers and blood in my shoes.
At the AA Meeting
You won’t believe I love you until I walk
from Thomas Circle down to Dupont;
up carpeted stairs, past walls
flagged with inspiration and lists of hours;
I enter close on your heels,
take a back-corner seat,
surrounded by girls who share the same secret
again and again and never,
never guess my secret,
that I don’t belong.
Every other word I write is a confession.
But here I can’t keep pace,
my tongue can’t form the words
“Hi Jessica” so fast.
I offer no memories here;
no blackouts or mommy issues.
I don’t repent, I don’t believe, I don’t
even like the feel of booze. I like the taste
of you. After prayers you show me
to your friends, buy me honey in a box.
Clytemnestra After the Murder
John Collier, 1882
I will never be a constellation. At night
I trace the stars into gods, heroes, men
who take—and women, victims all. I brush
Gemini, thumb caressing the brothers
who never once looked back.
I blot out Cygnus. I have no stomach
for swans. But I can stomach more
than these female forms reduced
to pinpoints, maidens dead for love,
daughters sacrificed—Andromeda,
Ariadne, Helle, Semele, Cassiopeia—
I will outshine every one. I am a woman
who takes back. There is bloody cloth
in the closet, a lover in the bed.
Better a murderess than a star.
On the First Morning After He Marries Another
“I languish for you . . . my sentiments for you are those of a woman.”
—Hans Christian Andersen to Edvard Collin
Lie to me—
I have learned to love untruths
when they’re all I have.
I learn to call them stories.
I write you in the margins:
prince and scoundrel.
Let me be the bride.
I dream of metamorphosis,
a shape to fit to yours,
legs to part and curves that give
beneath your hands—
soft as seafoam,
harsh as nettles.
Give me your ring,
be selfless just this once.
At sunrise, cut my fingers
at the knuckle,
take my tongue,
marry your girl in silence,
safety. Cut between my legs,
let me bleed out
red as this morning.
Remember this is nothing,
this is fiction, fantasy.
Remember that I’m lying.
Close the book.
Begin again.
Wanderer
I leave doors unlocked tonight
wanderer I open windows
wind in my curtains making
nightmare shapes I put on
the good sheets I put on
my best nightgown I brush out
my hair I lie down wanderer
I don’t sleep I don’t hide
don’t bunker myself tonight
to ward away bad men
because you wanderer are not
man what you are I can’t say
pixie or spirit nymph or maybe
just girl all I know wanderer
are your words your letters
your promises in the creases
for me your word wanderer
is enough come into my room
into me stay I left wine
on the sill mint on the pillow
Sarah Sansolo
is a graduate of the American University MFA program. Her poetry has recently appeared in Adanna, Big Lucks, and VIATOR, and will appear in an upcoming issue of District Lit. Her fiction has appeared in Flaunt Magazine and her nonfiction in The Rumpus. She was a finalist in the 2015 Bethesda Poetry Contest. Photo credit: Anna Carson DeWitt.