Poetry Winter 2014 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
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 Mathon
Do You See Me Waving?
Forty-two.
You announce it, as if it were the answer
for everything.
You’re playing a game
with the fiddler crabs,
wiggling your toes, counting the seconds
until they reemerge.
It’s dangerous,
I wouldn’t come out for anything.
But they need to eat, you answer, sifting
the mud. And they mate every two weeks.
The males wave their big fiddler
claws
to attract females who follow them
into their holes.
Purblind love,
I say.
Only if you’re invisible,
only if you’re still as a killer
will they come out.
But it’s impossible to tell the difference
between love and danger
of a silent predator.
They’re quick enough,
you answer, to make up for that.
They have to risk it.
You call it trust.
An adolescent ibis works its long curved beak
into one of the holes without success.
I call this hope.
But the adult birds know
how pointless it is and don’t even try.
It’s what lovers do,
tunnel into safety,
hold on until the ibises stop digging.
Because love is
dangerous as a predator.
We keep counting but it waits us out.
The Simplest Gifts
We love by accepting, I say:
the simplest gifts, the dumbest promises.
You nod in agreement
but remind me,
the male osprey knows
that if she doesn’t approve,
his mate will discard the branch
he offers.
Sometimes the things I want
to give to you, the words I want to say,
scare me like that.
Above us a large nest
sits on a platform atop a power pole.
A male osprey flies out of it,
low
through the mangrove limbs beside us,
his wings
like knives in the leaves.
I offer you a shell I’ve picked
from the beach. Washed of its color,
its original shape nearly indiscernible,
you tumble it in your fingers.
In full flight
the osprey grasps and breaks a twig from a tree.
Crack!
Inured to her will, the sound emboldens him.
He turns back to his nest. Though small
the branch is accepted.
It’s just an ordinary
shell. After a quick inspection
you toss it
into the water. But it’s all I want from you,
something small and plain as that twig.
The Cello
If love were easy
I would play
as beautifully with any bow, an equation
could be solved with any number.
It’s why I hate
the soft hollow of her knee,
her arms’ mathematical arcing
as they pull
these pellucid notes from my heart.
The way she bows me
until the sound
I can’t help but make when she presses
her fingers just there, and there,
resonates.
A quantum vibrato that fills and rattles
the empty space between my molecules.
Love is desperate,
I protest, but relinquish it
on the pitch she commands
because I am made
for her straddled plucking and the horsetail
she flails incautiously across my taut ribs.
Each note she breaks open
—breaks
open my wooden heart and sublimes
into the electric air.
Not my will nor hers
but a reckless current when we touch.
The composition is timeless, she turns
the pages of the score with painted fingers.
It’s not the way she plays the music
I love,
but the music we make
of our entanglement.
The Bow
When she touches
the bow’s rosewood
inlay, its ivory frog, when she lifts the length
of pernambuco wood,
it seems
a kind of ménage à trois. The shock
of horsetail is a fourth, like a stranger
met on a train. Later, an invitation
to dinner,
an unexpected tryst.
The cellist feels their joy.
She carries in her instrument,
selects a bow
and plays a note, a chord. She chooses another,
plays a note, a chord.
No prices are listed.
It makes no difference because price
is not the measure.
She picks a third, plays, sets it aside.
The Cuban Ipe wood shines, the carbon
composite balances, less than weightless
in her hand, but she knows it’s not up to her.
The bow
will choose the instrument.
The morning progresses like a slow dance.
The bow maker makes tea for her
as if
they were merely chaperones
at a schoolgirl’s cotillion. They sit,
talk of music,
wait for the music to begin.
Under The Horse Chestnut Tree
I can’t say if I unlaced my shoes
or he untied
the knots and unrolled the socks to bare my feet
but I felt more naked
than shoeless
from that deliberate uncovering.
Was it the summer wind
that lifted my dress
above my knees or his hands that peeled
the cotton cloth away, his lips that limned
the contours of my mouth and licked the beads
of sweat away, on a summer afternoon, sitting
in the front yard
under the horse chestnut tree?
The neighbors watched from their porches
as we kissed in the wind that lifted my dress
above my knees.
The fine hairs on my thighs
stood upright in the breeze,
his fingertips felt like cat’s-eye marbles,
must have felt their stiffening
when they rolled
into the labyrinth hidden under there.
Was it the wind
that shook those quivering limbs
and bent my body so exquisitely?
Oh, I was breathless as those limbs
palpitating in the wind that blew my dress
above my knees.
There is no longing
like the longing of the wind.
I heard only wind
in the horse chestnut tree,
and chestnuts chafing on their branches.
The white panicles of erect spring flowers
now become these thorny nuts
in summer.
How they will fall to earth in autumn,
cracking open to open their chaste centers.
I will not resist him
nor how he will thumb them
slowly to throbbing luminescence, nor
how he will rub them
to polished perfection.
How can a fallen object be so flawless?
I wondered,
as the wind lifted my dress above
my knees. Horse chestnuts are bitter,
not for eating,
but rolling endlessly
by boys between their fingers
until they shine
like cat’s-eye marbles
under the horse chestnut tree.
George Mathon
was born in Vermont and still lives at Joe’s Pond, though now he winters in Florida. He’s explored many of the natural wonders and native ruins in the United States. These places provide inspiration, time and location for many of his poems. He’s published three books of poetry: Entering The Forest, Chickadees, and Killers.