Poetry Summer 2018 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Michael Lønfeldt
Carol Lischau
Son
& other poems
Noreen Ellis
Jesus Measured
& other poems
Amanda Moore
Learning to Surf
& other poems
Adin Zeviel Leavitt
Harvest
& other poems
Jim Pascual Agustin
Stay a Minute, the Light is Beautiful
& other poems
Timothy Walsh
The Wellfleet Oyster
& other poems
Anna Hernandez-French
Watermelon Love
& other poems
J. L. Grothe
Six Pregnancies
& other poems
Sue Fagalde Lick
Beauty Confesses
& other poems
Abby Johnson
Finding Yourself on Google Maps
& other poems
Marisa Silva-Dunbar
Frisson
& other poems
Merre Larkin
Sensing June
& other poems
Savannah Grant
Saint
& other poems
Andrew Kuhn
Plains Weather
& other poems
Catherine Wald
Against Aubade
& other poems
Joe Couillard
Like New Houses Settling
& other poems
Faleeha Hassan
In Nights of War
& other poems
Olivia Dorsey Peacock
Thelma: ii
& other poems
Sarah Louise
Tremors
& other poems
Kimberly Russo
Inherent Injustice
& other poems
Frannie Deckas
Child for Sale
& other poems
Jacqueline Schaalje
Mouthings
& other poems
Nancy Rakoczy
Her Face
& other poems
Ashton Vaughn
Contrition
& other poems
Noreen Ellis
The Feast-Maker
Of course it was me, the daughter,
neither prodigal nor inheritor
who killed and cooked the fatted calf.
There were servants, but it was my hand
against the young cow’s complacent cheek.
I sing in her ear, watch blood drain,
make the top cuts of her choicest meat,
cut strips and mix them with salt
and herbs, juice from the pomegranate,
my anger and my spit.
My eldest brother’s anger is
a hot wind. Empty clanging boasts
the all of him. He asked me once
for a goat to impress his friends.
I laughed at him and could not,
will not, fix or fill his need
with love or praise or beast.
He beat me, as I knew he would.
My brother’s envy is my secret delight,
the twist in our father’s heart.
And the old goat himself?
Father, Abba, Master.
His worth measured in gold, tents,
fields, cattle and obedient sons,
girls and servants not worth counting.
My rich lord knows no distinction
between loved and roughly used
the taste of male or female flesh.
I slaughtered a heifer.
They gorged on the herd’s future,
feasting the return of their prodigal son.
My brother, my beloved. I dream of him
in foreign lands—an artist, a merchant, a king.
I put him as a seal upon my heart,
I opened. I waited for him
to call, “Come away, my sister,
my bride, you have stolen my heart.”
Instead I kill and roast the fatted calf,
gather and cook bitter herbs.
I laugh, I burn, I cut, I sing.
I am the honey in the halvah,
and the hunger at the feast,
for now he is returned,
penniless and smelling of swine.
One more man for me to suffer.
Grace and the Big Men
They were once the big men on campus
football heroes, wrestlers, athletes
now turned tall and girthed
into mountains that dance
holding up their trousers
with elastic and ties. Sporting shorts
even in winter, to show off their
best features: muscled calves and
well-turned ankles. Ladders of muscle
wrapped in abundance, never falling when
they drink too much, a line of dance
partners waiting for them at parties and weddings.
They lead, pushing and pulling from solid strength,
turning sweethearts with heave and sway of hip
guiding would-be lovers with the ease of leg
pressed against joint and bone, between thighs
to beats of long-stepped fox trot and gliding waltz.
And, oh! How they rumba
on size 15 slip-on patent leather loafers,
on feet that seem impossibly dainty.
They mansprawl on bar stools pulling their women
into the mound of belly, tree-trunk of their arms
hands that cover like paper on rock,
a quilt in winter, the low clouds of distant
snow. To be his woman you learn to climb him
build up the strength and stamina to hold
his heft, his weight, your hands finding purchase
in his bulk—the dihedral where chest
meets shoulder, footholds at knees
and in the flattened mesa
of his outstretched palms. You glissade
along the long length
of his major muscle groups
skirr over the slope and massif
of his body, his hardness hidden
beneath a world of flesh,
no mere mountain,
a range, no an entire planet,
of him, creating gravity as he dances.
Jesus Measured
My mother measured the cooking time
for roasted lobsters in martinis: two.
Her carnelian cocktail ring mirrored their shells
placing the lobsters, a date night treat, still moving,
aluminum wrapped, butter patted, into the hot oven.
For her sons, the portion size of spaghetti: a quarter,
cooked and topped with braised meat, sausages, bread.
The weight of her devotion. For her daughters: a dime’s-width
tossed in lemon, black pepper and salt, a lesson
in simplicity, in want. The measure of backbone and hip.
She taught me pie-crust making from her deathbed,
bare, brittle fingers pinching each batch for the right mix
of fat and flour. Those that did not measure: four. Finally, a perfect
dough, dusted with sugar, baked unfilled. “Sugar pie for my sugar pie”
we sang, her hot hand on my face, eating it all, a final act of defiance.
The span of my lover’s hand measures the expanse
of my back, his long fingers tracing the short distance
from shoulder to flank, the sweep of hip to hip, grips the extra flesh
settled there, a saddle, a hillock, a baffle, at my waist, counting
the decades he has roamed this terrain, this body: three.
I count his words, his silences, his absences.
Tally his home comings, mix tempered yeast with flour and salt
measure the time of kneading dough: until stillness.
The quiet assurance of me alone, empty, strong
waiting to be filled by bread, by honey, by sugar, by him.
Even miracles can be quantified. Jesus measured
the hunger of the five thousand on the grass: two fishes, five loaves.
And the multitude was satisfied. Twelve baskets of leavings!
But I cannot square the sum, the rule, the reckoning of enough.
Cannot gauge the measure of eating, of loved, and be full.
Noreen Ellis
is a poet and chief communications officer at an engineering firm that designs and builds big public infrastructure projects. She geeks out about words, poems and bascule bridges. She is the recipient of a 2017 Troubadour International 25 for 20 Poetry prize and her poems have appeared in Cease, Cows, Poets Reading the News, Hanging Loose Press, and New Voices magazine.