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
George Longenecker
Nest
Wrap me in your wings,
hide me high in a white pine,
weave me a nest with your beak,
line it with downy feathers,
sew it with fine thread of nettle,
twine it with silk of milkweed,
cushion it with pussy willows,
braid it with milk of moonlight,
let me feel warm breath from your beak,
let me feel your heart beat against my breast.
Rock Point, Ontario
Lake Erie’s waves polish limestone fossils,
Devonian sea tides once lapped this shore,
where children ponder trilobites and wander
the bed of the salt sea from which they came.
Gulls sweep low over Rock Point Beach.
Lighted freighters float across the moon while
night beacons flicker on a distant shore—
the lake howls with gulls and freighters’ horns.
At bedtime children in sleeping bags
curl up on the warm limestone bed,
cuddle up to the lullaby of lapping waves,
sleep all night in fossil seashells,
coiled in a bed of time.
Arctic Refuge
All day the sun circles the horizon never
setting, orange at midnight, white at noon
as we float downriver to the Beaufort Sea—
at first rapid current slams our rafts
against stones, but soon we float calmly—
the distant Shublik peaks cast shadows
far across the tundra, a snowy owl circles
white as we drift north in twilight.
In the hills fireweed and paintbrush bloom,
the owl swoops and lands on the high tundra,
fossil coral and seashells lie everywhere,
the remnants of tropical oceans—
beneath arctic stone dinosaurs sleep
in crude petroleum—maybe enough to fuel
the world for another six months;
refined into jet fuel, pterosaurs would fly again,
leaving tails in the sky above the Arctic Refuge.
Next day we float north past a bluff where two
stone heads—Inuksuk cairns—keep watch
as they have for a thousand years over
the Inupiat and their river.
In the distance Arctic sea ice cracks like
thunder, on the horizon ice and sky
meet in a mirage; tundra swans trumpet
as we float north past dunes to
the sea. All night the orange sun sits low
while a snowy owl waits in silence.
Let the pterosaurs and allosaurs sleep
another fifty million years.
Hurricane Irene
All day water pounded on the roof,
poured down in sheets while white pines
whipped in the hurricane. Houses shook
and windows rattled, air pressure dropped
as low as it had in fifty years, but barometers
could never measure this storm.
Tiny streams gorged themselves on the deluge,
became monsters who lifted huge boulders from beds
where they’d lain since the last glacier, the flood
heaved stones, uprooted trees and hurled the mass
downstream into houses, water gushed through
windows, shingles, boards and beams buckled,
cracked and splintered then rolled down into rivers
risen far over their banks—no longer minor tributaries.
All over Vermont from Waterbury to Bethel
from Rochester to Marlboro the water rolled,
streetlights flickered then went out. A crushed
car floated by, its interior lights still on, coffins fled
an eroded cemetery followed by a swimming corpse,
its stiff arms flailing. Two huskies howled and howled
as their dog pen filled but nobody could hear them
over roaring water and pounding stones.
For twelve hours it rained and rivers rose
even more quickly; people ran for high ground
before they could be washed away—no escape,
only pounding rain as railroads twisted like licorice
and roads turned to gorges. A covered bridge
splintered against boulders and the very water
which quenches and cleanses rolled its timbers
downstream with even more stones and trees.
The next day it was warm and clear—
at first light strangely silent, already at dawn
an odor of decay as water settled,
brown and still, blue jays called.
Finally, as clouds lifted, the mountains
could be seen, slopes still green, sirens wailed
while crows hovered, waiting, diesel engines roared,
but it would take months to fill and fix what Irene had done.
Slowly the flood receded and stones settled,
floodwater seeped out of houses and left oily muck
on every plate and chair; those who could returned
home, saw what the water had done and wept.
Cardinal on a Cable
A cardinal sings from his perch on the cable,
happy for another Florida dawn;
his call is the same as cardinals everywhere—
but what if he were plucked from his wire
and instantly landed in New Hampshire
where it’s zero minus fifteen today?
What the fuck, he’d say, now what?
His cable perch carries news
of war in Syria and northern cold,
but he calls cardinals with his own news.
Why are some spared war and cold, others not?
Robert Frost knew . . . that for destruction ice
Is also great. I too would perish tossed
nude into New Hampshire this morning—
at least the cardinal has feathers.
But we’re here in Florida,
on our screened porch having coffee,
grapefruit and cereal, while you, red cardinal,
sing to us from the television cable.
George Longenecker
teaches writing and history at Vermont Technical College. Some of his recent poems and book reviews can be found in Atlanta Review, Penumbra Memoir and Rain Taxi. He lives on the edge of the forest in Middlesex, VT.