Poetry Summer 2020 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
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
Amy Swain
In Praise of Trees
after W. H. Auden
What do they form? Bearing in mind clear,
inconsistent treatment, it may not make
for desirable consideration.
But there they are, substance and skin of the
pages we read, the oxygen we breathe,
the forest that makes us homesick and sick for
other simple things, like digging in dirt.
What could be more like Mother than nature?
On vacation admiring the redwoods,
feeling the faults in the bark and admiring,
while her son pisses on another tree,
content in the knowledge that he is doing
what he has been taught; that his own faults
will be appreciated just as tenderly.
If a tree falls in the woods, and no one
is around to hear it, did ego
mania even happen? If an ant
does not see you die—would you, understand?
Watch, then, bands of monstrous machines
make it clear, cut in twos and threes and three
hundred seventy million years before you.
Ant in metaphor, speaking of trees as green
money and smoke, do you know what you saw
when you sit on that branch and hack away
at what is behind you? Try to appreciate
the secondary growth allowing arbor
to grow in as well as up then try it.
The poet, admired for his earnest
appreciation of the Burren stone,
sees definition in the faulted ground
that once hosted pine shadows
and made room for sap.
It’s Not Just the Heart
I am yours, yes—
my hands are yours to hold
And bend and touch
my lips
open to you
my legs
are eager to wrap around you and keep you.
You are welcome
to spread my hips,
to occupy my fourth finger.
My feet will walk with vibration
and elation
toward you
as the song that plays will play.
But my guts remember him, and when we stopped
on the way to North Carolina, and in that field rivaled the sun with heat.
Igbos Landing and Other Histories
In 1940, a book was published titled “Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes.” It is compiled of accounts of oral folklore, many which include, with hope and confidence, flying Africans.
when drums and shadows came around
asking what happened,
not one eye (nor wing) was batted.
some said “I never saw, but I know people.”
some said “of course I’ve seen it, why, you got a net?”
you don’t have to believe it, like they didn’t have to
TELL IT—
emancipation isn’t for the captor.
more than twenty-five accounts
of heavenly descent.
the Gullahs and the Timucuan knew it too,
but they always knew magic.
if Orpheus could go back for Eurydice,
they could surely escape hell.
“why did he run?”
He forgot he could fly.
Willful
On some writing in a women’s bathroom stall:
Sad and betrayed, glaring. How did you get here?
It is dangerous to remember, it wept.
Don’t blindfold yourself!
Quiet sanctuary of the space, should have
kept out those who don’t know that memory is
keeping our mothers and grandmothers inside
our blood, souls, and mind.
Who, in this stall, thinks witches simply burned out?
When I smell smoke, I become hysterical.
Mixed race declarations on plantations say,
His story’s not hers.
Stop, think—brock turner and yellow wallpaper.
Really think, was your grandma allowed to vote?
I think, how sad a woman sat here and thought,
I don’t want to know
that it’s easier imagining, laughing
alone, than to scream in a coven outside
for what the tenth muse loved, praised and made form of,
love for womankind.
Lunar Eclipse
I am the moon.
Dark, quiet, blemished
and howling
You are the sun.
You make me go down,
go to bed.
Make me useless,
and senseless.
You end me and you
make sense of my existence.
When you’re gone I shine.
Amy Swain
is a new writer and recent graduate from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, having studied Writing, Literature & Publishing. She currently lives in New Hampshire with her boyfriend Jon, and their cat and dog, Ham & Lucci.