Poetry Summer 2019
fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Antoine Petitteville
Laura Apol
Easter Morning
& other poems
Taylor Dibble
A Masterpiece in Progress
& other poems
Julia Roth
Lessons From My Menstrual Cup
& other poems
Jamie Ross
Ceaseless Wind. The Drying Sheaves
& other poems
Nicole Yackley
Mea Culpa
& other poems
George Longenecker
I’m sentimental for the Paleolithic
& other poems
Taylor Gardner
Short Observations by Angels
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
No Thomas Hardy
& other poems
Joanne Monte
War Casualties
& other poems
Nathaniel Cairney
Potato Harvest
& other poems
Steven Dale Davison
Wordsmouth Harbor Founder
& other poems
Heather 'Byrd' Roberts
How I Named Her
& other poems
Greenheart
sunny ex
& other poems
Ashton Vaughn
Through the Valley of Mount Chimaera
& other poems
Linda Speckhals
Borderlands
& other poems
Lucy Griffith
Breathing Room
& other poems
Steven Valentine
Written
& other poems
Emily Varvel
B is for Boys and G is for Guys
& other poems
Jhazalyn Prince
Priceless Body
& other poems
Marte Stuart
Generation Snowflake
& other poems
S.J. Enloe
Kale Soup
& other poems
Meghan Dunsmuir
Our Path
& other poems
Steven Dale Davison
A Sleepless Sense of Found
Fog gathers all night on the oak above us,
in the meadow all around us.
As the stars step back behind the mist,
the curled brown wetted leaves
stitter down through the branches of the tree.
We lie close together in our bags, talking.
We steep there, we sink deeper into the share
as points of correspondence pile up
in layers from our stories.
My hungry tongue and lips turn demure,
my wonder rises without peak
until a sleepless sense of found enfolds me.
Sowise
In cooldim of greygreen a beenman
is grinseen, a newway to followfoot.
The woodsing a feeltune. The moonroots
of shoots an liveseed are wingloose
and bringhymn to yourside in loomlight
in mineseye. Tremblesure, our wesong
is heartlong, rises in treebreezes and leaves,
is strong and sowise, so . . .
You Are Leaving
This monstrous looming,
distant but oncoming,
like the smoke of a burning
village cloaking the landscape,
promises a razing.
Ash falls,
thickening in the non-light
in a courtyard deserted of footfalls.
The fountain is dry.
Night draws nigh.
The scent of ends chokes out “Soon, too.”
O My Heart
You and I will be very good.
We will let her get round the corner,
wait two beats, maybe three—long enough
to know for sure she’s not coming back.
(Then I don’t care what she hears.)
You will lunge, then, I know.
And I will throw my arms around your neck
and grapple your howling desperation
until I’ve reattached the chain.
But I won’t let you go; no,
I will murmur something soothing,
some wordless, tuneless, hopeless—.
I will cling to your quivering
until I feel it’s safe to merely rest there
with my face buried to the tears
in your familiar must. The long,
long night we will sleeplessly entrust
the darkness with our pain
and wait to see: does the wrong
depart with the sunrise,
or cruelly taunt us
from the limit of your run?
But, O my heart, I promise:
I will not desert you.
I will not leave you all alone.
Wordsmouth Harbor Founder
I rage into the phone.
Heedless? No. I feel
the windlash crack the lines,
I bid the waves crash me ’gainst the pier.
The wordstorm pounds with sounds
my lips curl to form, I exult
as I hurl the handset down
into the consequences,
at last past any caring
that the relationship is sheering
its moorings and plunging
into forsaken haven danger.
(Ill the fell tongue tastes after anger
jettisons the heaviest cargo,
while the unlashed chests careen
across the lightless decks below.)
As I turn from the phone stand,
the ghost-ship heels toward the maelstrom,
rudderless, sails shredded by the gale.
As I walk down the hall, the empty hull
tips over the grimace lips and shudders
as it surrenders to the swirl.
Wracked and groaning,
cracked open past mending,
way past hailing any rescue,
I sink. I drink past drowning
the deep oblivion overhead.
I slowly settle on the bed.
I listen in the darkness to the echo
of all the reckless things I’ve said.
Steven Dale Davison
has published poems in a number of journals. He has written plays in both verse and prose, some of which have been produced. He has written both short and long fiction and has published a number of nonfiction essays and book chapters. Mr. Davison worked for twenty years as a journalist and professional writer in the private sector and was awarded a writing scholarship by Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.