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
Nathaniel Cairney
There in the Wet Autumn Leaves
October’s last apples
warp slender limbs, bending
them like an old man’s back
when my son, looking down,
spies a rotting Braeburn
lurking in wet red leaves.
I fling it toward heaven.
We hear it carom off
the metal stable roof
then noiseless it descends
into nettle groves where
cats hunt fat compost rats
while moles burrow beneath
pastures that masquerade
as playgrounds for children
who appeared like April
blossoms on fragile stems
never suspecting we
were simply fruit meant to
nourish the dark earth.
At Night the Borders Disappear
From here I dream flat earth bends
toward river bluffs where four lanes
of cracked asphalt stretch ghostly
past all the places we once haunted—
the dry cleaner, the meat locker,
the seminary, your garden store.
Recession summer steals in as I breeze
past half-stocked Belgian grocery store
shelves until settling at last on bulk sumac
plentiful as memory and blazing red
like your father’s final wish and at once
I am on the little street that led to
a window’s worth of slim branches
dancing over shattered barn roof tiles
where heavy trucks lay abandoned
to riotous green shocks of saw-toothed
stinging nettles and the gazes
of two immigrants unclenching our fists
to sigh together toward the past.
Even as it inched toward ruin, you asked
how can I not love the place where
I learned to love? When you turned to ash,
when slate gray sky dawned and I woke,
I said, too late, of course I love what’s broken.
Mushroom Hunting,
Jackson County, Kansas
I blunder through
root and thistle, lost
in the implication
of rotting wood,
withered ivy,
abandoned dens and
bleached bones
when it appears—
an April morel,
substantial like prey,
pulling me
earthward
to see what majesty
springs from decay.
Four Trips to the National Forest,
November 2016
1.
Pine needles, billions deep, covered soft earth.
When elk were near, I could smell them
and they could smell me,
a stranger driven by helplessness into groves
where cows and calves stalked valleys and ridges,
ears alert, skittish and tense.
But the bull, in mid-November, at dusk,
in the thick of the rut, a forest king with a king’s power,
glared at me from one hard charge away.
He snorted a warning, and I looked about wildly.
A climbing tree towered to the right.
My only ally.
2.
Two coyotes lolled in golden grass.
A male, the larger of the two, sprang to his feet when he saw me,
ears raised, long jaw beautiful and deadly,
eyes betraying nothing,
unaware that I was there to fling myself against the wilderness
because it was the only thing capable of swallowing my sorrow.
The female rose a few seconds later,
uncaring that her presence as a predator
banished humans from my mind
for the first time since that night
forced me, weeping, to the floor.
I clapped my hands to remind them
I was a creature who had hands to clap.
They glanced toward a thicket of scrub brush,
an invisible pack unimpressed
with opposable thumbs that could make noise.
I strode quickly away,
looking back every chance I got.
3.
I had long since abandoned the footpath
when I stumbled across traces of humans—
a fence, a blue plastic water barrel,
a brown house hewn from logs,
murky windows, rectangles and frames
and a dirt lane rutted by fuel-burning metal machines
with crushing black tires.
In the presence of people,
neighbors but still strangers,
ancient fear spiked the base of my neck.
Despite sharp hooves and killing teeth,
the beasts of the forest
do not own pistols.
4.
I brought them with me at last,
their small dirty sneakers stamping faint imprints
as we wound deep into the darkening wild.
We dropped from the smooth skeleton of
a long-dead pine giant, ducking hardened roots
torn whole from shallow soil before
pausing to press our hands
against the ruggedness of living alligator juniper.
Singsong voices,
incapable of betrayal,
chirped wonder at the crescent moon
chasing sun to darkness, softening
the edges of everything made jagged.
Punching Permanent Ink
With a thick black marker our gloved hands scrawled pain
on red canvas—the Polish boy who broke your heart,
my aching knees, your cancelled trip to Paris.
We corralled phantoms and named them like fugitives
on wanted posters: fear of making mistakes,
fear of disappointing others, faithless friends, dying.
I first taught you to throw a punch during the age of living
room dances, horse rides and long blonde ponytails.
Nothing seemed unmendable then, but now here we are
in this frigid garage, fists balled, taking aim, on an edge—
no, I warn, arms up, don’t ever let them hit your face,
head back, eyes forward. The heavy bag hangs still
as you step into warmth and light, where glad voices
welcome you. You ask me if I’ll be okay remaining
in the cold darkness, where the floor needs to be swept
and the jump rope stowed. Yes, yes, I murmur: always.
Nathaniel Cairney
lives with his family in Belgium, where he writes, cooks and hosts podcasts. Originally from the U.S. Midwest, his poems have been published or are forthcoming in Midwest Review, Broad River Review, Sixfold, California Quarterly, and others. He holds an M.A. in English Literature from Kansas State University.