Poetry Summer 2020 fiction all issues
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Cover Vecteezy
Rodrigo Dela Peña
If a Wound is an Entrance for Light
& other poems
Shellie Harwood
Early Evening, Late September
& other poems
William A. Greenfield
The Deacon’s Lament
& other poems
J. H. Hall
Immersion
& other poems
Kimberly Sailor
Two Aphids
& other poems
Sugar le Fae
Bagging
& other poems
Lauren Sartor
Shopping Cart Woman
& other poems
Nathaniel Cairney
Mushroom Hunting, Jackson County, Kansas
& other poems
Elisa Carlsen
Cormorant
& other poems
Daniel Gorman
The Boy Achilles
& other poems
Samara Hill
I Look for Her Mostly Everywhere
& other poems
Nicole Justine Reid
Returning to Sensual
& other poems
David Ginsberg
Butterfly Wings
& other poems
Katherine B. Arthaud
Café Sant Ambroeus
& other poems
George R. Kramer
Young Odysseus
& other poems
Amy Swain
In Praise of Trees
& other poems
Frederick Shiels
Bad October: 2016
& other poems
Matthew A. Hamilton
Summer of '89
& other poems
Chris Kleinfelter
Getting from There to Here
& other poems
Martin Conte
Ghazal for the Shipwrecked
& other poems
Natalie LaFrance-Slack
I Do Not Owe You My Beauty
& other poems
Susan Marie Powers
Dark Water
& other poems
Katherine B. Arthaud
Café Sant Ambroeus
Across the yellow omelet and the lightly sugared,
sectioned half of grapefruit
and the pancake stack with a whipped cream crown,
across the heap of tawny hash browns and the tiny pats of butter
like golden gifts under a tree, my son sits tall and still.
I tell him he has crossed a line, seems better than before.
He says, I am still crossing the line (a line I see as a ribbon, or
neon on a road at night).
He opens his phone to show me a photograph:
a monarch butterfly on a frosted leaf against snow.
In the next booth, a woman—black beehive hairdo, face pale
as an ice rink—orders café au lait.
I summon the waiter.
My son bends to fetch a fallen napkin.
He disappears from sight beneath the table.
I startle as though touched by sudden rain.
I take nothing for granted.
the ant
high up above the madness of the green lawn
there is a flat chair and a small table and a glass of water
this is my secret not even the dogs are welcome here
yesterday I watched an ant carry in his pincers a green
sprig as big as its body across the boards toward the place
the roof connects another ant came around and ran a few
circles and the ant with the leaf wobbled on with great
strength and perseverance as I talked on the phone to my friend
who is a counselor for refugees and I told her this ant
could be a metaphor for all she was saying and she
laughed and agreed and the sun kept shining though
less and less so as night came on and we all of us
settled into ourselves somewhere in this world
while the ant family either did or did not welcome
their glistening brother with his offering and his long endeavor
and mighty unswerving determination to get back to them with
the bright green thing which once grew also but no more
and the sky turned slightly lavender because this is the gift
we get over and over whoever we are whatever we carry
at the barn
why are old people afraid of horses
young people are not thinking
about death and broken bones
they are galloping around the indoor ring
and jumping over tires while birds
sing in the rafters
even when the snow slides
off the roof and makes a sound like thunder
they are not afraid
but when the world is warm and the sky
is blue and the sun hovers
like a good nanny
the old people tack up
and circle the outdoor ring
their tall black horses startle
at the crows and the deer that
come down from the forest
the young people do not understand the old people
and the old people don’t remember being young
back when the world was red and crisp as an apple
and lust was a cushion as well as a thing to gallop
through shaggy shivering trees
o but you will find
us all at the fountain afterwards
washing the horses in the cool water
you will find us all at the fence
feeding them carrots and clover
soft whiskered nostrils quivering
it will be night by then
and the world cold as a bit
smelling slightly of leather
and grass
brown manes flaring in wind
lacy lazy silhouettes against a dying sun
with nothing to hold and no reason
to hold on.
POETRY SLAM
A dark man in rubber boots stands center stage, introducing.
The first, in boots and a lavender tutu, tangles language, says
she does not know who she is alone.
The second raps, and bounces on his toes.
The third sings, discordant, about his divorced parents.
He wants to crush them like a glass he can’t part with.
A young woman with a headscarf tells: the history
of black people does not begin with slaves.
It was so cold out when we left our eyelashes froze.
It was so cold.
But my brain felt like a Van Gogh painting,
garish and stellar, messed up, singing with paint and light.
Paddle Tennis
We thought you were friends,
playful as otters in the sun,
even in the cold, with the mountains
blue and peaked with snow
in the distance. We thought
of you as friends. But today, Kay,
your pupils were pinpoints
against a watery blue—
and your words in the warming hut: blaming and cruel,
while Genevieve stared at her knees
and seemed to agree
with everything you stated, nodding her chin,
her hair black, slicked back, fixed and firm
with a floral fleece-lined headband. We
tried to explain, but you didn’t want to hear
from us, were not willing to discuss
the past, which held the fuller truth like a crockpot
in a kitchen. You wanted to talk only
about the future and your need for us
to change. Backed up against the window in our parkas,
we were not expecting this, and then
we went out in the cold and not to waste the afternoon,
we played, game after game, Julie and I determined to win,
reclaim lost dignity and ground. But
something was finished, forever gone, like land
eroded by a wind. And yet,
and yet, we raised our mittened hands into the air,
while a neon ball ripped through the graying sky,
a dislodged planet, a friendship unseated wobbling
in a new and troubling orbit. Hey,
will we have an end-of-year party this spring
or do we hang this up
like one of the old dented paddles
that dangle, obsolete, against the wooden wall?
And so,
where does this go, my friends, as life and time play onward
with or without us.
Where does this go, as hair turns gray and wispy,
breath condensing in winter’s air, laughter’s echoes
fading against the frozen hills, smiles thawing
in other rooms.
Trivial, eternal, cruel, this battle shimmers—
shimmers like hope and rage and everything that has ever
shimmered on this shimmering complicated nearly ruined earth.
Katherine Arthaud
has been writing poetry for many years. She is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and currently serving as a UCC pastor in northern Vermont. She has studied with Howard Nemerov, Dave Smith, and Stephen Sandy, but that was years ago. James Merrill, Sharon Olds, Anne Sexton, Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, and Sylvia Plath are some of her influences. She lives in Vermont with three mostly grown children who are sometimes home, sometimes not, and some dogs, and a mad cat.