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
Generations in a wine dark sea
Instead of fresh herbs, what I rub on my skin now
is nettles, I cry out and delight in the dramatic effect
The adolescent is standing before me, is not me,
his eyelashes pretty now he leaves them alone,
He’s moved on to finger cracking. He ought to understand,
the age is right, is it not? to say to him, let’s talk now
about travelling cumulous clouds, moon riding day sky,
hair falling in dust, cats brushing legs like foliage,
tropical night breeze, whirling, spinning maple seeds,
crunchy autumn leaves and one small lone blue feather, reappearing
in unpredictable places, pressed between the pages of books like forgotten
euros, Let’s talk about damp yellow grass recently nourished, slumber, lotus-
eaters and opiates, acres of coconut trees, Let’s talk about eyes sharp as a puma’s
and moving limbs more precise in the darkness, a lifted curse, a shattering vase,
a slice of papaya, a still dark brown face, flapping through a sanctimonious night
and memories of many lives, let’s talk about dirty quartz and the smell of
seashells while washing hair, flecked eyes that sparkled with a spice like
pimento, lips wet with fruit, the scythe that hacked the clouds into streaks of
plasma, the plotless story, the sequential paintings, your ticking hand that ruled
time and weather, the world splitting into a series of images, all times and
possibilities, in one unique frame, the ruffling of hair and heart possession that
echoes across the aeons.
Lost fairy
They poisoned the Argentinian trumpet vine
because it got too comfortable, sprouted everywhere
like a weed, and replaced it with some other flowering vine
more white and well-mannered. I suspected them of racism
but it was their house. When I moved here, the flowers seemed
to be in my face like the advertising, although the convolvulus always
tended to remind me of Borges. No more discreet kangaroo paws, subtle
Geraldton wax, bedraggled wattle. Here the bedraggled wattle is me, amongst
those other belles, the saucy snapdragons, self-sufficient succulents, ubiquitous
petunias, spicy nasturtiums, whose population seems to dwindle in every suburb
where we live, along with the European dandelions, washed of residual herbicides and thrown in our soups. We are foragers, tribespeople
with little ones strapped to my front and my back, a stolen cumquat
or rosemary leaf perpetually between my teeth. How did dente di leone
translate to dandelion? The plant has teeth, it’s rough, roughage.
I slurp the nectars, check the parallel lines on the leaves before
chewing native sarsaparilla, tear my sandalled feet to ribbons
in the sparse strips of bush between train stations, teach the kids
to hoist themselves over a tall rock. We run away here when we can’t stand
being at home. I pretend for a moment that I haven’t been domesticated,
pretend for one afternoon, I still have big, purple, feathery wings.
Other lives
A staircase leading to a new continent
The smell of a man’s body, never known
but so vividly imagined
Practising the words “I love you”
It’s been some time since they were said in English
It’s been some time since they were meant.
A child told to count windmills on her way to boarding school
A child about to be abandoned
Windmills and hair, windmills blowing hair
Watermelon carved and eaten
with plastic spoons because knives are forbidden
A paedophile uncle and a new pink A-cup bra
Raindrops on car windows
Imprisoned in a car
A game that gives identities and voices to each raindrop
Clusters of raindrops that join and separate
Massive drops that steamroll diagonally
separating families, drawing baby raindrops from their mummies
How they cried!
I can still hear their distraught voices
Femaleness
There comes a time when you can look a man in the face
While he’s doing something else, and instead of being
dazzled, by his phenomenal good looks…
nothing. You can live without him.
His track pants are too daggy
his toenails too long
his ears too greasy
his nose too bulbous
his penis too crooked
his glasses too big
It’s those glasses and the way
he looks fixedly at the computer screen
It’s the way men relate better to computers than women
It’s their onanism (which is just a fancy word for masturbation)
which yes we all do, of course, but for me it’s about sailing higher, higher
above apricot coloured clouds. For them it’s about believing women exist only for them. Oh! Let me withdraw further, further into my inner worlds…
Let me see all colours behind my eyelids, especially bright green
Let me be a retreating dot in an enormous swimming
universe. Let me be cradled, floating in space.
Sustain me now. Sustain me now.
Mastitis
Cinderella is on the stairs in a flurry. My story
hasn’t been written yet. Nothing resolves.
Scientist are on the verge of a breakthrough
that may save us by destroying another world.
Metal drums full of fire. A dispersion of men in overalls
leaping for joy when they find the key, scissor kicks in the sky.
A knowing god looks down upon our treetops and sighs.
The time is now, it’s running out, ça ira, ça ira,
I tingle. Nerves twinge. Something terrible may still happen.
My breasts are being milked for yet another hour
and I shiver endlessly in a feverish infected delirium.
Boys cavort and ignore me. They’re used to this.
Downstairs you grizzle and mutter in your usual way.
Something smashes in a doorway. More curses.
Flat on the bed, making a leap fifteen years back in time
I am left with an upturned palm full of sperm and a decision to make.
Jennifer Popoli
I grew up in Canberra and during adolescence wrote a lot of poetry, prose and unfinished novels and participated in the local writers community. At age seventeen, I met my husband and moved to Sydney. I gave birth to my first son at age eighteen and went on to have five children, then recommenced my degree in Spanish and Italian. Recently, my computer broke; I lost everything. This inspired me to begin writing prolifically again.