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
Joanne Monte
Nowhere on the Map
We’re driving through
the plains of an untold story,
heading west into a country that is ours
and not ours, into a rural sense
of lost spirit. We pass cautionary signs
authorizing: “USE OF DEADLY FORCE,”
where in the distance, a chain-link fence
marks an underground silo not shown
on the map. We continue to follow
this road, looking ahead into the daylight
glaring back at us and the landscape,
our eyes excavating the bones
of one lone farm. We see the barn
stranded in the middle of nowhere
in the arms of a broken-down fence;
a one-time plow; contaminated well water;
and the old homestead, stripped bare,
and bending down in the dirt.
Every now and then the sun’s rays
will strike like a match; each one
a tiny bomb of flame bursting
in the wind and chill of lost promise;
a desire less visible, but scrolling
on either side of us through the archives
of faded color. We see the relics
of a ruined renaissance,
the machinations of the political
that were never put on record,
a ritual of too many mistakes
concealed in the evolving sorrow
of lost tribes. We are somewhere,
and nowhere in the heart
of sheer memorabilia lingering
on the corner of Main; the church
anointing the sick, the disabled,
the crumbling walls of the courthouse
and jail; and on the other side,
a school, no longer in use, but holding
within its walls the day’s lessons.
The Source of Our Power
Living with the havoc
of every generation:
annihilation
diffusing a blast of mushroom clouds,
unwanted testing grounds,
for years blitzed and salted with radiation,
the newsprint of the world tossed
on our front lawns, pages ripped out
by the gut, smeared on our hands, our shirts,
even our children
as they race through the past
flying airplanes and kites
with the earliest perception of power
stored in the genetic code.
Prior scenes had divulged—
as later scenes will—a race
to sharpen the implements of destruction.
In cool, white-washed laboratories,
stainless steel counters hold secrets
steaming in beakers, test tubes, crucibles—
these being the solutions
that defy the true source of our power.
War Casualties
I
When it was reported
in the news that rebels had been killed
in an ambush, and that cargo planes
from the north had bombed
that part of the country not protected
by barbed wire or walls,
two million people had already been lost
in a fire ignited by oil and water.
Many children had to crawl into a thorn forest.
Others were left under the scalding sun
of a war zone. A map of that country
had revealed nothing of its past but borders.
Cities had been founded and lost
where even the thorn bushes lay siege.
Below that wilderness, there exists another,
of dark and pastel greens to be burned
again and again until the day
it surrenders itself to the desert.
II
It’s been proven—to be proven again
that the clubs of outrage breaking windows,
ribs, the laws of continuity,
shall become the spades of history,
digging the ground to place us there—
and yes, we are still enslaved, chained,
overworked: a deck we stand on,
the rope we reel into the wind
like a clothesline to hang out our memories
of the white shirt our father wore,
ripped open and slashed with his blood,
the torn flesh in the overalls of childhood
that our mother wept over, clung to;
her blue dress whipped on the line with intensity,
still stained with sweat, blood, semen;
the dress in which she pleaded
on her knees; hid our faces in,
telling us to be still,
do not look back, do not . . .
III
Where it begins, it will end
with the torched house, the slaughtered cattle;
at the well, digesting the raw flesh of the children
in its subterranean gut; at the river
coughing up the mucus of toxic waste,
the garb of ethnic cleansing
scrubbed on its rocks.
It will end
at the cemetery in Dragodan;
in the village of a chosen language,
suffocating from smoke; in the fields
that have orphaned and killed our children—
it will end at the border of the imaginary line
drawn between the state and the shadow-state.
But what country is this
and what will it take?
Guns—(as in any country at war)
It will take guns . . .
Joanne Monte
is a poet and novelist. Many of her poems have appeared in highly acclaimed literary journals such as Poet Lore, The Raintown Review, The White Pelican Review and Bayou. She is also the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the Bordighera Poetry Book Award for her collection of poems, The Blue Light of Dawn. Her novel, The Day to Eternity has been described as a gripping narrative set during the Korean War and has been included in Reader’s Favorites. Much of her writing encompasses social, cultural and human rights issues. In 2005, the American Biographical Institute selected her as one of five hundred notable American women for her literary and humanitarian contributions.