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
Marte Stuart
Watercolour
Reclined at home,
bathed in water,
you must have watched
mesmerized, as your blood
let out in ribboned rivulets,
warm tendrils of you swirling
until the dissolved dizziness
was mixed monochrome
and you were dead.
Only last week you lay languid
too, this time on your belly
with sheet-entangled feet,
staring into a morning coffee,
oblivious to my slick salty trace
mucking your thigh.
You twirled a spoon
in lazy dips, hypnotized
by the surrender of cream
to black, while a cigarette thread
roiled and collapsed in the air
behind your head.
Wet on wet, with painter’s ease,
I captured you then—
my brush, a tongue, traced
the crushing line of your hip.
Watery hues brimmed
at the curved edge
of a sketched boundary,
until a crimson pool burst
your delicate pecan form,
as though your bleeding-out
were inevitable.
Generation Snowflake
Each sculpture manifest
by a wavering thermal flux,
presumption at the crux,
entitled and crystalline,
crafted by a million
well-meant imperfections.
Take no offence,
precious little snowflake,
fragile beauty
tumbling cherished
from the sky,
you are no match
for this wet street.
Lost
Just behind the house,
close to home,
is the forest where we got lost,
certain our snowy prints
would bring us back.
The regular rise and fall
of undulating land,
this tree stand, another,
different only for failed light.
Before the rocky outcrop,
we veered sharply left.
I think that’s where we went off.
Minds disoriented
by the pull-push
of what I said, you said,
the return ground shifted,
you arguing,
the sun’s low angle,
my boots dug-in,
our familiar turn, missed.
awaiting the biopsy
each moment
the river drifts
no part twice
the same
now
and now again
now
what comes
passes
dragon boats
blocked ducts
stuck dams
lumps
water
under a bridge
runs elusive
this
not captured
as it is
as it is
as it is
Marte Stuart
gravitates toward poems with scientific and/or theological underbellies. Her current fav is A Backwards Journey by P. K. Page. Often lost, she believes “being led backwards through the eye of the mind” to be a helpful space-time practice, or observing a river. Her best life work has been devoted to two perfect snowflakes, yet in free-fall.