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
Winner of $100 for 2nd-place-voted Poems
Ann V. DeVilbissFar Away, Like a Mirror
I’ve gone out walking
to see if I can meet myself
on sleeping streets
muffled with snow.
A rabbit is standing stock-still
in the center of the road,
as if refusing to move
will keep him safe.
I wonder if the rabbit is me
and how I can prove it.
At night the snow
holds the sky captive.
The rabbit sleeps curled up,
deep under the ground,
under the layers of trapped sky,
under the real sky,
which is orange like an echo,
which seems far away, like a mirror.
I go back home and try
to stay up all night.
I want to watch the snow let loose
the dawn, freeing the sky. I want to
see the light cast over the rabbit,
see it change him,
but I fall asleep again,
wake fur matted, confused.
I keep seeking new things
on all the same cold roads.
I need to know
which way to run.
I don’t know
where to run to.
Seasonal
We go west in the mornings, east
in the evenings. We know the sun
only by its heat and shadows;
we are home only when it’s dark.
The world seems full
of monsters. The grass is
uneven, sharpened by frost.
A man spits on my porch,
tells me I can’t park
in front of my house because
that’s his spot, always has been.
The stains on his teeth are older than I am.
A few weeks later he is arrested for fraud,
having let his mother’s body rot
in his house for months while he
collected her social security checks.
Once he is gone,
the house stays vacant
because of the smell, and I
park wherever I want.
Crows line the eaves
like undertakers, bray
like donkeys, begin
to outnumber us.
The world is too big
for safety, but here
in our house,
there is reason for joy.
Still, sorrow comes back,
pulled to me like
water to the moon.
Down for the Count
When the thunder rumbles
I know he is looking for me
and I count
one, two, three, four
between the flash and roar.
The row of American flags
across the street looks
downtrodden and a little afraid.
I stick close to the eaves.
Before the storm the yard
was full of strange birds,
pelicans and hummingbirds
arriving in the wrong season.
He rolls his thunder tongue
through the clouds like
a snake in amber grasses.
One, two, three, and I am
bathing in electric light.
A count of one is too quick
to hide from, but somehow
the driving rain feels
clean, like a refuge.
His sky voice is big enough
to reach me anywhere.
The Reckoning
His life is like a tango
between before and after.
Sometimes it fills his head
with oatmeal. Sometimes
his story is full of holes.
When he speaks of the loss,
he refuses to whisper, and
his loud voice pitches high,
like the keening of a sawmill:
flashing metal on dark wood.
His loss is like a small child
who has always been hiding
under the dinner table, and he
could hear her muffled giggles,
her earnest whispers, for years
before she came out in the open.
His loss is like a scar that has
to be told about because he
wears it under his sweater,
where no one can see.
His loss comes out to meet him,
to tell him she’s always been waiting for him.
He takes her hand and they walk together.
Harp
I will make a harp of you,
your hair curled around
its strings, the wood
of its flank flushed with
the color of your cheek
as you try to decide how
to say what comes next.
The harp will sing with
the sound of glass broken,
accidentally, woven into
a strain of careful laughter.
It will hum with uncertainty.
When you are away
I will know it is silent,
though I am deaf.
Ann V. DeVilbiss
holds a BA from Indiana University, where she studied English and completed the honors program in poetry. She does editing and production work for a small press in Louisville, Kentucky, where she lives with her husband and their cat.