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
Matthew A. Hamilton
Love Triangle
We parked in the driveway
and waited for the lights to go out
in your parent’s bedroom.
The house set back
from a quiet dirt road.
The surrounding woods
accepted the last light of the sun
before you cut off the ignition
and unhooked my seatbelt,
the smell of you a restless odor
pressing the inside of my upper lip.
We entered the house
and found your friend
waiting for us in the den.
Faint amber waves
of a corner lamp
hugged her exposed sex.
Your tongue pleased my ear
as your friend’s mouth
blew warm air down the trail
where sin travels like a controlled fire
clearing righteous undergrowth.
When we were finished,
we lay covered in blankets on the floor
and imitated the cautious actions
of Adam and Eve and Lilith.
We listened to heavy footsteps
march, in the cool morning,
down the miraculous staircase.
Summer of ’89
Jason dared me to touch you
down there in the garden of Eden
where the forbidden fruit ripened
on the tree that every boy wanted
to pick but could not because they
feared death, something I came
to desire after my father slugged
me so hard in the face I saw God.
Snubbing the consequences, I
touched you down there and you
said you liked it and you stuck
your tongue down my throat,
right down the essential conduit
of my being, and the bouquet of
your sex flowered on the tip of
my finger. When we rolled in
the hot, sticky grass, it stung
our bodies, but we did not care,
we were happy and in love,
two naked mammals collecting
crickets in our hair, preserving
the earth by our very nature,
the dirt and clay of a miraculous
creation, and naming, one by one,
all the animals in the woods, an
aesthetic action where fear, not
love, fades away.
Matthew A. Hamilton
holds an MFA from Fairfield University and a MSLIS from St. John’s University. His chapbook, The Land of the Four Rivers, published by Cervena Barva Press, won the 2013 Best Poetry Book from Peace Corps Writers. His second poetry collection, Lips Open and Divine, was published in 2016 by Winter Goose. He and his wife live in Richmond, Virginia.