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
Sky
We were always looking up
in spring; those months so
hot and cold anything could happen;
funnels dropped, vanished,
vacuumed up between the clouds.
The Midwest sky turned
jaundiced and still.
Oklahoma knew it was coming:
the cliché of the freight train,
the stillness,
the mass of moving earth.
This time, the myth would shred
the houses to toothpicks
scatter photographs
and houses like paper shells.
In Kansas, tornado
drills were routine;
I thought we would outlive
whatever hit us; our heads
down, legs cramped, breath
hot above our folded laps.
Carrying my blanket
down under the stairs, my
father’s shortwave crackling
weather reports,
I knew I would not survive
when the tornado hit
our house. Living would be
too difficult, as the living always is.
Her Letter to Kurt Vonnegut, 1982
There’s a place in Kansas City
called Montana Wildhack’s;
I thought we might meet for a drink
and talk about Cat’s Cradle or
Slaughterhouse Five. It would be
nice, nice, very nice.
My sister knows the place.
It isn’t a gay bar, really, but
she might have kept that secret
(she is so used to keeping that
secret); she just likes the name,
I think, and said she’d take me.
I think you write like you know
all too well how humans behave—
the writing is spiritual,
tough, real. (Too much?)
My sister hasn’t read a word
of it, and probably won’t; it’s
not her thing. She leaves reading
to me except for Anais Nin
or the author of 9 1/2 Weeks;
The books were in her room
and she was out.
Earthly conversation
would suffice, not be
the end of the world,
frosty and nuclear—
so it goes.
She told me she was in love
with a woman one night
in an old pickup we hot-wired.
At her friend’s house with a pool
late at night, we drank beer
and swam above the Playboy
logo, down and back and down.
I am sure this type of thing
has happened, more or less; this
may be one of the good times
we concentrate on, ignoring
awful ones. I hope you will
consider meeting me
the next time you’re in Kansas City.
Cycles
Spring hot, yet
it feels like fall—
through weak bones
through clotted skin
thickened and congealed—
jaundiced spring and wild
ochre seep through
flaming bramble; bruised
plum of laden hyacinth,
the cadaver of a grey mouse,
the pinched ruby of a tree
growing, leaning toward pale
summer petals of a shrub flowering
in bells that hang low, look
as if they might reach
for furry mustard & black
pepper with wings—
translucent and spinning—
winter insinuating.
Originally from Kansas, Anne Graue lives, writes, and teaches online from her home in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her poems have appeared in Paradigm, Compass Rose, Sixfold Journal (May, 2013), and The 5-2: Crime Poetry Weekly. She was a finalist for the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award for 2013. She is a reviewer for NewPages.com.