Poetry Summer 2017 fiction all issues
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Cover Marija Zaric
Kathryn Merwin
For Aaron, Disenchanted
& other poems
William Stevens
Celestial Bodies
& other poems
Kendra Poole
Take-Off, or The Philosophy of Leaving
& other poems
AJ Powell
Mama Atlas
& other poems
Matt Farrell
Waves in the dark
& other poems
Timothy Walsh
Eating a Horsemeat Sandwich at Astana Airport
& other poems
Nancy Rakoczy
Adam
& other poems
Joshua Levy
Venezuela Evening
& other poems
Ryan Lawrence
Vegan Teen Daughter vs. Worthless Dad
& other poems
George Longenecker
Yard Sale
& other poems
Susanna Kittredge
My Heart
& other poems
Morgan Gilson
Dostoevsky
& other poems
Jim Pascual Agustin
The Annihilation of Bees
& other poems
Taylor Bell
Browsing Tinder in an Aldi
& other poems
David Anderson
Continental Rift
& other poems
Charles McGregor
The Boys That Don’t Know
& other poems
Cameron Scott
Ashes to Smashes, Dust to Rust
& other poems
Kenneth Homer
Inferno Redux
& other poems
Alice Ashe
lilith
& other poems
Kimberly Sailor
Marriage's Weekly Schedule
& other poems
Kim Alfred
Soul Eclipse
& other poems
Cameron Scott
Ashes to Smashes, Dust to Rust
Ashes when my lips consume sun.
Ashes when everything goes up in smoke.
Ashes when I walk through last night’s fire
and in their singing am singed, in their burning
burnt. Ashes to bless tomorrow’s tomorrow.
All this green world, ashes lifted from earth.
.
Smashes when I dream the dream of windows.
Shattered snippets of conversation.
Strawberries, blossoms of red, sonic booms.
Black holes. Broken bones. God is made of glass
and porcelain. Glasses of wine, wafer thin.
Smash the glass. I am waiting, waiting.
.
Again the dust, again ground down. Devils
twist in wind, wrap in the robes of saints.
A sudden thirst for lime and water. Mouth a husk
of bread and dust. Rising, falling, settling; binding,
blinding. Dust is the decoy of lesser gods.
Motes rise from every step like breath.
.
Rust as iron as softening as butter and flour.
Over time, fizzes, flakes. Over time tickles
freckles, curls tongues, locks jaws. To stretch
too far. To tumble into love’s numb after life.
To listen too much to Neil Young and Crazy Horse.
Live. Living. As good as an object of affection, rust.
Irrevocable Year of the Ranger
The world claims itself as a flat screen. My truck dies every night in the phantom
light and refuses to start in the morning. Kicking tires does nothing. Closed fist.
Open fist. Tinker’s fingers. A thousand false starts might mean a thousand more.
All I want at night is to be swept away in a birth of dreams. The morning is just
morning. Is just the sweet dreams of birth of a swept away night, of a thousand false
starts, of a fist hot as a small sun. Unable to open. Unable to close. Again to tinker
and turn into a kick-a-long tire. In the morning’s first refusal of phantom light
my truck is flat as a spatula and all I want at night is to be swept away by a round
world, in a round of dreams, in the phantom light of morning’s birth. But the world is
closed. Open. Flatly. Claims order. Claims disorder. Refuses to start, refuses not to.
Bus Poem Revisited
Dreams are born of common faces. This
bus an accordion which collapses on
corners as riders bury themselves in
electronic screens. How many hungry
gods live in our fingers? Each light’s fairy
luminescence, beneath each bridge a troll,
the innumerable scrawl of spray paint.
Who is an adept, which a plastic shell
among the blue velvet faces of the interred?
The Law of Averages
It washes over like waves, some wicked equation.
Breaking the overhead light while fluffing the comforter.
Fly rod snapping in half inside the ferrule.
Alternator dying three hours from the nearest tow truck.
So what? Appointments pass in twos, in threes,
in night sweats and tightening chest,
as prescription pills, parking tickets, no shows.
Toxins creep through pipes, accumulate. A hornet’s nest
or stroke or misstep. Everything wants transportation.
A creeper wave. A kind of awe. When it crashes upon us
we become drenched in a kind of magnetism.
The law of averages catches up, a spin cycle, an undertow.
Brief shimmers turned inside-out, nothing but lint, burs
stuck in laces, bodies left breathless in bed.
Bless the Last Words Standing
Bless missing s’s
how the wind carries us
impossible distances, (cats)
in brackets, questions without answers
and things that are broken
and broken-open in reverberation
like fists that find fingers
or misgivings in the heart
that flake apart like alfalfa.
Cameron Scott
was recently awarded The Blue Light Book Award for his second book of poetry, The Book of Cold Mountain. He received an MFA in poetry from the University of Arizona and currently implements Fishtrap Story Lab, www.fishtrap.org. In the summers he is a fly fishing guide for Taylor Creek Fly Shop in Basalt, Colorado. If you have leftovers, he will eat them.