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
Babel Tree
You’ve heard of the tower. Well
I tell you, on my street
is an evergreen that speaks
as if in tongues, sounding
like a mob of children
crammed inside a classroom.
Who would think a tree could have
so much to say? St. Francis-
beneath-the-boughs,
presiding over his fellow
statues—cats and raccoons—
steadfast behind their fence,
provides a captive audience
for the prim trimmed evergreen
whenever it’s infested
with that unseen sounding
like a multitude of tiny chimes
rung inside a church.
Truth is, this tree serves
as a container, a mouthpiece
for common sparrows
who “when interrupted by
suspicious noise”
shut up.
I tell you, they do. And who wouldn’t
be surprised
if a tree fell
silent
the moment he or she
walked by?
Felled
The hard-hatted cutter climbs with rope and chainsaw,
lopping off branches like hunks of hair
from the top down, until only a shorn torso remains.
Back on the ground, he circles the trunk,
incising. The engine whines.
Two other men stand at a distance holding cables
tied to the highest stump. A third holds up a camera.
When the saw pauses, they gather
together, leaning back,
pulling, arms taut. Takes all their strength
to make the elm tip, then topple. A colossal thud
shakes the whole house.
Spectators on my neighbor’s porch applaud.
They don’t see me at my window
trying not to cry because this one tree—
that seemed alive while dying, that stayed standing tall as a tower—
has, in less than an hour, been rendered
horizontal and now
lies helpless as a human body.
The black birds never minded
it was leafless every season.
But a petition circulated.
I signed.
Bereft
That we won’t go this year to Payne’s to buy
Boston ferns (three for the backyard gazebo,
one for the front porch) and a few red geraniums
and a single green spike (for the terra cotta pot
by the driveway); that we won’t open the shed,
pull out the muddied gloves and the wheelbarrow,
weed on our knees as if in prayer; that even though
we will never again share these rituals, spring will
return nonetheless and the earth will continue
undeterred, giving her garden the usual flowers:
daffodils, peonies, roses; that the black-eyed susans
went crazy during summer, as if nourished by her
ashes, my father tells me, months later, still
amazed; that she isn’t here to see.
Greetings from Paradise
Here, breeze-rustled palm trees make a sound almost like the sound
of brown oak leaves clinging to branches tousled by March
back home where winter lingers.
Here, it’s already spring. Grass greening the ground. Full-blown
blossoming, purple roadside weeds, fuchsia, jacaranda,
jasmine scent all over the island.
Here, some flowers look like birds and some birds look like flowers.
Even the plainclothes crows strut their stuff with sunlit flare,
glossy as polished patent leather.
Here, a loon joins me for lunch on the bungalow patio. Seagulls
keep me company at the beach while I stroll by the water’s
edge, my feet sinking in sand.
Here. Read this. Then send me a message if you’re there, if
it’s truly a garden, if they’ve given you petals for wings.
Tell me what it’s like.
Going to Visit the Dead
I know you’re here somewhere, intact.
God has given you back
what you lost—
your breast, your ovaries,
your vision, your weight, your energy—
everything. Almost. Lost
is also what we seem to be:
me in the passenger seat,
my Bulgarian friend in the back seat,
her mother driving.
The landscape expands around us
wide and flat. We pass
an orchard adorned with martenitsa:
red-and-white tassels worn during March
for good fortune, good health;
tied to trees on the first day of April
as a sign of winter ending,
spring beginning. I know
you’re waiting. I’m afraid
we won’t find the way. I can’t speak
their language, yet I understand
when my friend says
Sunlight feathers in your hair
and her mother agrees—yes, wings—
Lisa DeSiro
was among the featured poets of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project in 2013. Her poems have appeared in Commonthought Magazine, Mezzo Cammin, and Poetpourri (now The Comstock Review), and have been used as texts for acclaimed musical compositions. In addition to her MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, she has degrees in music and is an accomplished classical pianist. She is also Editorial & Production Assistant for C.P.E. Bach: The Complete Works.