Poetry Winter 2013 fiction all issues
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Alysse Kathleen McCanna
Pentimento
& other poems
Peter Nash
Shooting Star
& other poems
Katherine Smith
House of Cards
& other poems
David Sloan
On the Rocks
& other poems
Alexandra Smyth
Exoskeleton Blues
& other poems
John Glowney
The Bus Stop Outside Ajax Bail Bonds
& other poems
Andrea Jurjević O’Rourke
It Was a Large Wardrobe...
& other poems
Lisa DeSiro
Babel Tree
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Reptiles
& other poems
Michael Berkowitz
As regards the tattoo on your wrist
& other poems
Michael Brokos
Landscape without Rest
& other poems
Michael H. Lythgoe
Orpheus In Asheville
& other poems
John Wentworth
morning people
& other poems
Christopher Jelley
Double Exposure
& other poems
Catherine Dierker
dinner party
& other poems
William Doreski
Hate the Sinner, Not the Sin
& other poems
Robert Barasch
Loons
& other poems
Rande Mack
bear
& other poems
Susan Marie Powers
Red Bird
& other poems
Anne Graue
Sky
& other poems
Mariah Blankenship
Tub Restoration
& other poems
Paul R. Davis
Landscape
& other poems
Philip Jackey
Garage drinking after 1989
& other poems
Karen Hoy
A Naturalist in New York
& other poems
Gary Sokolow
Underworld Goddess
& other poems
Michal Mechlovitz
The Early
& other poems
Henry Graziano
Last Apple
& other poems
Stephanie L. Harper
Unvoiced
& other poems
Roger Desy
anhinga
& other poems
R. G. Evans
Hangoverman
& other poems
Frederick L. Shiels
Driving Past the Oliver House
& other poems
Richard Sime
Berry Eater
& other poems
Jennifer Popoli
Generations in a wine dark sea
& other poems
As regards the tattoo on your wrist
It’s not that I don’t believe you. Rather,
call it some natural curiosity,
born of a childhood’s nights
spent beneath the starry curve
of the sky, that makes me
want to discover
for myself
whether Orion really is
the only constellation
traced out on the curves
of your skin.
Ad Cassandram
Let them come with their black
ships, princess. Let them come
and let them take back
what is theirs. You are not theirs.
I will love you and I will protect you.
Let them come with their black
horses. Let them harness them
to their chariots, let them rein
in their flaring nostrils
with bit and bridle.
Let them ring the dust
around our city
with the tracks of our dead.
It will take more than horses
to bring down our walls.
I will love you and I will protect you,
my beloved. My beloved,
beloved also of the deathless
gods. Most beloved by the most
deathless: master of the strings
of bow and lyre.
•
Cursing the aim of another’s arrows, he cursed your own aim: that it might always be true, but never find its mark.
•
Let them cover the sky
with a dozen dozen arrows.
I will love you no less
among the shadows. But
do not put your trust in shadows
and in dreams only you can see.
There is no one else who will.
I will love you and I will protect you.
I will love you but I will not believe you.
Begotten of the Spleen
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone;
I will make him an help meet for him.
—Genesis 2:18
And so God reached past Adam’s ribs,
and from his spleen was woman born.
And gone from Adam was the melancholy
that the Lord had seen in him,
but for Eve there was nothing
except that same sadness.
There is a way in which you look
off into the distance
that weighs against the lightness
of the heart behind my ribs
in your presence, that I can describe
only as the sinking of swallows,
who do not remember this
morning’s sunrise, into evening.
villanelegy
well
(i said
hell
he fell
on his head (she said
it’s just as well
too soon to tell
(they said
what sent him off to hell
or heaven (hell
we said
he liked his drink too well
and so he fell
(they said
hell
there’s nothing more to tell
so toast to heaven for the dead
and for the living, well,
hell
Julie
When you think
about it, if you
think about it,
what did us
in wasn’t your
anger or my
apathy, but that
if in the second line.
Michael Berkowitz
was born in Michigan, raised in Maryland, and earned his degree in Classical Latin and Greek from Oberlin College. He now lives in Somerville, Massachusetts where he makes his living as a web developer and occasional musician while studying poetry and circus arts. He is delighted to have his poems debut in Sixfold.