Poetry Summer 2023 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover
Joel Filipe
Kristina Cecka
Rabble
& other poems
Gillian Freebody
The Uncivil War of Love
& other poems
LuAnn Keener-Mikenas
Skunks at Twilight
& other poems
Alyssa Sego
Passage
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
Forest of One
& other poems
Brent M. Foster
Ode to Darwin
& other poems
Jack Giaour
trans man is feeling blue
& other poems
Alan Gann
how strange
& other poems
Richard Baldo
The Privilege
& other poems
Michael Fleming
In
& other poems
Holly York
As it turned out, there was no bomb on board
& other poems
Celeste Briefs
Late Poppies
& other poems
Kayla E.L. Ybarra
Goose Song
& other poems
S.E. Ingraham
Leaving to Arrive
& other poems
Rachel Robb
Molting Scarlet Tanager
& other poems
Bruce Marsland
Sauna by a Finnish lake at Midsummer
& other poems
Ellen Romano
Seven Sisters
& other poems
Greg Hart
False Coordinates
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
Shanksville
& other poems
Corinne Walsh
Southern Charm
& other poems
Michael Fleming
I could build a house
with nothing level, plumb, square—
but not to live in.
In
It’s like a club, and maybe you were hired
or maybe you were tapped, it’s all the same,
you’re in, that’s the thing, you’re in on the game—
but first: the trial, the hard ordeal of fire
and ice, the hazing, initiation. Admit
it, you wanted this, you wanted in, you
wanted a chance. Fine—you’re in. And the blue
vestments suit you, the rooms are underlit
and filled with whispering—it’s what you said
you wanted, it’s what everybody wants,
that special smell, those slots where special coins
can be the only tender, and you’re fed
the special food, you dance the special dance,
forget to wonder why you even joined.
A Gentle Nudge
It happens sometimes—an unforeseen moment
unburdened by yesterday or tired
rehearsals for tomorrow—the world slowed
down like an opening rose with its scent
and its color, a tacit hint of knowing
without thinking of knowing, a gentle
nudge, no drama, no heavenly choirs
or talking bushes, just the truth you’re meant
to stare into—life’s steady quiet fire.
Pulse
A cloud of starlings undulating, rising
in the failing light, boiling with urgent,
unknowable purposes—the sky
is breathing starlings.
Tonight it’s fireworks
and the fierce tang of gunpowder—the flash
and the bang, the sudden blossom of light,
the crackling drizzle of sparks.
This old-fashioned
universe—same old wrongs, same old rites,
always the one story forever telling
itself: the point, the sphere, the eversion
of the sphere, the ringing of the bells
theorem and all things involute.
We’re nursed
on nothing, shot into the cloud of unknowing,
spooked by murmurs of Go, baby, go.
Michael Fleming
was born in San Francisco, raised in Wyoming, and has lived and learned and worked all around the world, from Thailand, England, and Swaziland to Berkeley, New York City, and now Brattleboro, Vermont. He’s been a teacher, a grad student, a carpenter, and always a writer; for the past two decades he has edited books of every description. His first collection of poems, Bags and Tools, was published by Green Writers Press in 2022.