Poetry Summer 2023 fiction all issues
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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
Holly York
As it turned out,
there was no bomb on board
Pacific-bound passengers, enshrouded by night
and vibration sleep right through
the turn. Can’t tell them,
the captain said. One
may be the bomber.
review my life
raft assignment my life
jacket instructions
forgetting my life
that may not be
which door do I open
for launch hoping
not to mess up
all still alive
thinking fast
from blink
to blink
will this one
be the last
will all
become
nothing
Through the darkness, sudden light. The runway!
Our final departure, after all, won’t be tonight.
I grab the mic, half sigh, half cry, “Fasten
your seat belts” for landing (back where we began),
and gasp it out again in three more tongues,
to rouse them from hours of dozing unknowing.
They only thunder their dismay that they’re HERE
and not THERE, where they’d planned to be today.
The Other Shoe
On Pan Am, you’ll have a stewardess who knows her way around
the world the way most girls know their way around the block.
—From a TV commercial
Gardenia-scented breezes breathed me past
tiptoeing waves that rumpled satin black
volcanic sand. There was a single shoe,
a few steps later, reading glasses, bent
and lightless. Inbound I’d served the skipper’s
coffee one and one, had cooked Tom’s steak not
rare but medium. On that very beach
I’d slapped away Tom’s wandering hands and growled
adieu.
The guys headed for Samoa, where
their 806 went down, all passengers
and crew. Tom’s landing, the black box said,
the Tom I’d told to go to hell the night before.
Through warming seas and over land
time’s flotsam and jetsam wash up
on memory’s shrinking shore.
As I walked the dog this morning I saw
just down the block a single shoe.
Fight or Flight Night
—It’s your lucky night—he said and I knew
then he was no knight in shining armor,
as they say. Things went downhill from there
He detailed each carrier landing,
each different lay on each layover. Thus
the night had not gone well. We finished
dinner, strolled too long on the moon-starved beach.
—Too early to call it a night—he shoved
past me through my front door demanding
that I offer him—what else? a night cap.
Also a goodnight kiss. You can guess
the rest. We wrestled. He twisted my arm
and I snatched my keys from the nightstand—small
defense. Threats and bruises. He seemed to doze
so I grabbed the phone. He cursed and called me
a tease. Accusations, more threats, wrestling.
When the night was finally over, relief
that whoever he was would never
come back. Wherever he is after
so many years, he probably doesn’t
remember that night
or me—
Flight 815
Hurtling west toward Pacific morning
imprisoned in a metal tube. Sleeping
passengers. Overheads packed, and packed
underneath. Crew sleeping shifts in aisle seats.
Air of stale food, toilets and failing
deodorant. Dim light endless night
Why on earth had she bid this flight?
Destination far as the sextant’s star.
Tiare flowered hais and seashell leis
flying fish and joyous swish of dolphins
nearing shore thatched huts’ glass floor
for prying eyes to see sea creatures’ lives
slack strings strum, steel drums thrum hips gyrate,
grass skirts vibrate: tamouré!
dim light endless night why this flight
Hurtling west over Pacific black velvet—
longing for shore. At the jump seat in back she
touches the door, whose red arrow beckons
with a sign: to OPEN.
Jettison unneeded words
I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words.
—Frank Ohara
The earth, our big blue marble, is “as blue
as an orange,” says Eluard. Orange,
the new black, is as orange as a black box
filled with words of flyers fallen silent.
Reentry capsule is jettisoned to splash down
offshore. No reentry without hand stamp,
says the sign at the sock hop door. Without
a word, he takes my hand. A man of few
words. Strong silent type. Say it with flowers,
not words. Actions speak louder. “Leave some
white space talking through” says Mrs. Thornton
in watercolor class. White space talks like
white noise. Then Mama said Don’t talk
with your mouth full. Now I say Don’t talk
with your mouth too full of words. Enough
is enough, by definition. Why
do they call it a black box if it’s orange?
Holly York
is Senior Lecturer Emerita of French at Emory University. In addition to Sixfold, where she was runner-up in Summer 2022, her poems appear in Crosswinds, Oberon, and in online journals in the U.S. and U.K. Her chapbooks are: “Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen,” “Picture This” and “Postcard Poems.” A blackbelt in karate and grandmother of five, she lives in Atlanta with her two Dobermans.