Poetry Winter 2014 fiction all issues
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Debbra Palmer
Bake Sale
& other poems
Ann V. DeVilbiss
Far Away, Like a Mirror
& other poems
Michael Fleming
On the Bus
& other poems
Harold Schumacher
Dying To Say It
& other poems
Heather Erin Herbert
Georgia’s Advent
& other poems
Sharron Singleton
Sonnet for Small Rip-Rap
& other poems
Bryce Emley
College Beer
& other poems
Harry Bauld
On a Napkin
& other poems
George Mathon
Do You See Me Waving?
& other poems
Mariana Weisler
Soft Soap and Wishful Thinking
& other poems
Michael Kramer
Nighthawks, Kaua’i
& other poems
Jill Murphy
Migration
& other poems
Cassandra Sanborn
Remnants
& other poems
Kendall Grant
Winter Love Note
& other poems
Donna French McArdle
White Blossoms at Night
& other poems
Tom Freeman
On Foot, Joliet, Illinois
& other poems
George Longenecker
Nest
& other poems
Kimberly Sailor
The Bitter Daughter
& other poems
Rebecca Irene
Woodpecker
& other poems
Savannah Grant
And Not As Shame
& other poems
Michael Hugh Lythgoe
Titian Left No Paper Trail
& other poems
Martin Conte
We’re Not There
& other poems
A. Sgroi
Sore Soles
& other poems
Miguel Coronado
Body-Poem
& other poems
Franklin Zawacki
Experience Before Memory
& other poems
Tracy Pitts
Stroke
& other poems
Rachel A. Girty
Collapse
& other poems
Ryan Flores
Language Without Lies
& other poems
Margie Curcio
Gravity
& other poems
Stephanie L. Harper
Painted Chickens
& other poems
Nicholas Petrone
Running Out of Space
& other poems
Danielle C. Robinson
A Taste of Family Business
& other poems
Meghan Kemp-Gee
A Rhyme Scheme
& other poems
Tania Brown
On Weeknights
& other poems
James Ph. Kotsybar
Unmeasured
& other poems
Matthew Scampoli
Paddle Ball
& other poems
Jamie Ross
Not Exactly
& other poems
Martin Conte
We’re Not There
For Janet and her daughters
An injured spirit lingered in our town
last night.
The air was thick—
He cast a cold pallor
over our ground.
The next morning,
we woke
to our first hard frost.
No one noticed the silver puddles of blood
that he left
except for our third graders,
who went splashing through them in rubber boots,
screaming.
He took with him
our town clerk
our pharmacist
and a young father.
We pretended the spirit was
heart failure,
stroke,
alcohol.
But we knew better.
Our bodies recognized
the taste
of this spirit’s bitter breath;
our bones itched
as he scraped
at our cornerstones.
People gathered in the streets,
just to cry.
Air too thick to—
We’re not there.
Instead, at school, miles away.
A friend from home messaged us:
I feel like electricity is surging through the air.
My mother calls:
The Island can’t handle
another tragedy this year.
We’re all gone, but the spirit
demanded intercessions anyway:
tears thick as—
We mourned that day like doom,
like 9/11 or JFK.
Did the town fathers meet
to ask of each other
what happened?
Did they sense the spirit
in the thick air—?
Did they put away
the gavel,
the bible,
and call on the old gods instead,
buried for centuries in granite tombs?
Did the spirit sit among them
listening to his trial?
Or did he pass beyond,
going first through your home,
leaving
that stained fray of linoleum,
that creak in the stair,
that whimper from your sleeping brother?
We still speak of it.
Patriotism
They came to make a map
of my bedroom.
Two men, bearded, solemn,
with rolled up drafting paper
and thick black markers.
“You can stay seated on the bed”
one told me, carefully sidestepping
a pile of my laundry.
Both pulled out tape measures;
they measured everything:
the average width of my books,
the circumference of the bare lightbulb
jutting from the wall,
even the width between my feet,
toes kneading the blue carpet.
Then they set about drawing,
boxes and squiggles abstracting
the solids of my life,
turning the djembe I carried
from Uganda
into a circle,
the windows etched exes on the wall.
They used a labeling language
I could not discern.
I had to pee,
but one told me if I left,
they would have to start
all over again.
Finally, hours later,
they put the markers down,
rolled up their papers,
and shook my hand.
They said the drawings
would go to the Library of Congress
and be indexed with
the rest of my rooms.
They called me a patriot,
a citizen of the highest regard.
Then they left,
and their footprints
faded into the abstract square
of my carpet,
labeled ‘F7’ in the secret manual
all these men carry.
Peacetime
I.
Four men appeared
from the war.
“Where should we meet?”
they asked.
“You will come to me
in a long, thin room,”
I responded,
thinking of the hallway
in the Rotary.
“Will our mothers be there?”
they asked.
“No, they died, each,
of heart failure,
when they heard the news.”
II.
A man in Maine
has been beating a drum
continuously
for four years.
He says it is the heartbeat
of the Earth.
He has disciples who take turns
on the drum
in four hour shifts.
He is squandering
his inheritance.
I hear they may move
to a smaller house.
I wonder how they will drum
in the car;
if they go over a bump,
and the rhythm is interrupted,
will the Earth wink out of existence?
They must have
a contingency plan.
The End of His days
And every ozone sundown burned a braver creation
—Christian Wiman
Revelations settles
on the shoulders
of the blooming congregation.
Little eyes expecting
endings, wondering
at my cassock, at my
collar. Fear,
dear hearts,
in their little eyes.
For fear of what?
I let my brain
glide noiselessly
through the waterveins
of this bleeding Earth.
There is, hidden in smog,
destruction; fires
in homes of sand and stone
gut the lonely
mothers;
wives ask
another god
for his tongue
back. I rake
my fingers
through my brain,
explaining how a discarded
Book is alive,
blood-spilled and hand
prints all over the margins.
Man’s thoughts smolder
of creation, embryos
swimming through rivers
of caution-tape into
a mother’s waiting delta.
God turns bright red
and America’s Lazarus, dead again,
(he was Kennedy,
he was Lincoln)
pretends
that his infinite
devotion to the notion
of one nation,
under God,
can raise him up.
My boat is drifting
through dusk.
My lambs are waiting
for slaughter,
for new life.
I ask
the third grader
what God wants
us to confess.
She, blest, imparts
intimately a
wisdom far beyond
her years.
I hear angels sing
praises: her God is near-
the end of His days.
Martin Conte
is a student of English literature at the University of Southern Maine. He has published in the Words and Images Journal, and has won numerous poetry and playwriting awards. His current project involves the struggles that ensue when his narrator appears in his home, and refuses to leave. He currently lives on the coast of Maine, the most beautiful place to live, where he intends to stay.