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
Garage drinking after 1989
Her world will spiral like a merry-go-round in the belly of storms.
The matches and lighter fluid she’ll buy at Walmart
will seem a lot less dangerous than they did before—
well as the cheap vodka that’ll burn within her throat,
and after the fifth or sixth shot, it won’t burn anymore.
Cobwebs will surround her; in all corners they’ll spread like lies.
Spiders will fuck other spiders; their egg sacs swaying
with momentum like a Newton’s cradle.
And with her back turned, few feet away,
an industrial fan will spin at its highest speed.
She hates the heat; it sweats out the alcohol,
and nothing smells worse than the depths of disease
protruding through stale fragrance that will embed,
into vintage tank tops with Mickey Mouse on the front,
over a pink bra and blue denim shorts bathed
in Giorgio perfume—wrinkled and creased, and
crammed in a cardboard box on top another cardboard box:
the furthest decade she’s able to reach without a step stool—
the last one she’ll ever trust, to rational thinking.
Only stigmas will remain—of oil and antifreeze,
Fieros and Firenzas, Madonna in the tape deck—
the beaming of the headlights unfolding
the shadows that ascend to the ceiling.
Hanging hacksaws will warp into sharp fangs.
Lawn rakes into claws.
And the storm will come. Her gutters will surely give,
to pouring rain under black clouds, blacker than their predecessors,
bringing bad fortune through meandering felines.
Soaking black Maine Coons take shelter with lemon-marble eyes
gouged from years of sidewalk disputes, and yet to purr thereafter.
Instead they will stay still, struggle to see,
their eyes slowly dimming like a wicker candle.
And she will feel pity—for whom or what, she won’t know,
just enough to understand belligerence will not kill the pain.
A lit match to methanol works best.
Swimming at night in suburbia
The pool shines mercury beneath the moonlight,
where young girls jump off of diving boards into the deep,
somewhat ashamed as only their bikini tops break the surface,
spilling polka-dots, some amber, others amaranth.
And the boys can’t see, only touch, because chlorine
burns their eyes the same way liquor does their virgin throats,
sinking ten feet to the bottom, haggling air through a kiss—
sealed, the radio drowns by a thousand pin drops,
and the girls allow to be touched with pruny fingers.
Subterranean lights beam bright,
outlining shapes, the shadows: a frog
who gave his life in the skimmer, a thousand
ripples projected on a white painted fence, and silhouettes,
all different sizes as they watch their former selves,
slide off eachother, poor attempts at a carnal act,
squeezing the air out of inflatable rafts,
on such a night where fireflies dress their best,
and luminesce the pungent air.
Granny and Papa’s house
And for sure this house is haunted;
it moans at night like papa did,
when he wasn’t papa anymore,
rather a sad story of children and their children
and pestilent cancer cells, his sunken cheeks pale,
and white as the ghosts who live here.
If you listen close, you still hear his son,
been dead since ’72—
plastered to a tree, killed instantly,
thrown out the window like a sack of shit,
the same way most repudiated
his mendacious words of advice.
And you can still smell the menthols,
almost if she hadn’t lost to the stroke
ten years prior, my granny,
who smoked before you could die from smoking,
turning the walls to dirt, stained dull yellow
like the nicotine on papa’s teeth.
And granny’s the kind of gal papa read poems about,
and papa didn’t read poems, he was more
a hands on kind of man,
who preferred using fists when he’s pissed off, scared,
and even in love because granny swears
that one of the holes papa punched through the closet door
was in the perfect shape of a heart.
And you could see right thru,
skeletons stacked on skeletons.
Philip Jackey
, a Midwest poet, was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana. His work is heavily influenced by human trial and tribulations, as he strives to portray realism in everyday life. He currently resides in Elkhart, Indiana, with wife Stephanie, two boys, and a brand new beautiful baby girl. His work has appeared in journals such as Torrid Literature, The Write Place at the Write Time, Sundog Lit, and Agave Magazine.