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
Chris Kleinfelter
Covered Bridges
I am my father’s son, walking in time
with my father’s face printed on my skin,
looking through the eyes of stories
told on kitchen table evenings.
As a boy he strode barefoot on dusty days
of humid summers, in green farm country,
down to where the broad brown creek
passed by endlessly in tuneless murmuring
where the bridge groaned to the weight
of car and carriage, echoing traveler’s voices
in the timbered roof-space among rafter oak
and swallow’s nests, in cool rising air.
Worn wooden planks spanked the bottoms
of shoeless feet under the roof-shade,
above gliding water on it’s long journey from
mountain meadows and Pennsylvania coal towns.
In high noon heat, cold currents came down
between grassy banks, over moss-slick rocks,
where wary brown trout lurked in
deep eddies while above stealthy fishing-boys
waited, patient as hunting lions.
I am my father’s son standing in time
with my father’s face gone from sight
on the harsh summer days where the bridge
once stood on the humid shore waiting
for the sons of country boys to come
stalk the deep running fish.
The strong oak of past seasons gone,
the floods have left only foundations,
standing still, in place, showing
the character of so much weather.
Buoyancy
When I feel how the river of time
carries me along in its strong current
the sandy bottom glides by
and I see the present,
firm and unbroken.
But I think of the layers from eons uncounted
and wonder at how they have shaped the course
of my path through a universe that counts
me as a mere particle shifting with a current
that I can not direct. I can only reflect
that I am still afloat and have always been
a swimmer between the shores
of an uncertain future
content to drift the quiet stretches,
between the rapids,
to find my fortune
one ripple at a time.
First Love Goes Viral
I wonder, if I were young
in this year of plague,
you know like before
I was in my prime
and the life of juggling
was still to come.
Would I be likely
to fall in love at first sight
from six feet away
Like I did that day
long ago by the river
when a blind girl asked my name
and my eyes became hers
all in a moment?
Could I see the fine person
beneath the N95 mask?
If I had the nerve to ask
would I show up
with roses in rubber-gloved hands
and say that I liked hers
with delicate fingers
showing beautifully
beneath tight-stretched latex?
How would we find the magic moment
when PPE must fall
and our souls bare all
with courage and passion
in spite of the pall
making it hard to see
the ones we long to touch?
Summer Night Discovery
Once we lived on the stoops
on hot summer nights.
Mom kept the lights on bright
to see what we were up to.
Heat lightning traced the skyline
and mirrored the electric desires
of our fevered age.
Our fire was not rage.
It was ignited on the pages
of revealed knowledge
showing us our brightest colors
and urging us to slip into the night
where all we could see was each other.
Getting from There to Here
I am, at times, a stiff-necked fool,
a tool of my inner urges.
There were times when I served
the worst of them
and spread my apologies
behind me like a trail of regrets
through a landscape of lost wishes.
Raised on dreams and muttered prayers
I had no one to be
except a feather in the wind
looking for a better wing
and learning that flight is just
deciding not to land.
And that my one true love
is the ever receding horizon.
Chris Kleinfelter
has been writing poetry since going back to college at age 40. That was 20 years ago. He won awards for poems submitted to the campus literary journal, Thoughts Beyond Insanity. Following that his work was published in the literary journal, Harrisburg Review, and The Villager, published by The Bronxville Women’s Club. Most recently he won third place in Tidepools, the literary journal of Peninsula Community College in Port Angeles, Washington.