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
Kimberly Sailor
The Bitter Daughter
My father
never says Thank You.
A family fish fry for his 60th:
bronzing jukebox songs and a hotel stay and grandkids in swimsuits
fuzzy on the bottom, fizzy drinks in hand,
steam from the winter water
and made-to-order eggs on the other side of the night.
Result: one photographically documented half-smile.
Exhausted daughter who tried.
A hilltop gathering for his 65th:
noodle soups, crisp salads, pizza for fifteen,
and a custom cake with a wide-mouth bass.
Leaving work early, grandkids packed in the back,
harrowing January roads, cars in the ditch,
but not ours: we arrived, with candles too,
and that fancy party hat I wanted to burn
after he snapped the little string and said,
“Get this damned thing off me.”
His face was red like a cardinal’s back.
The grandkids made the hat their bugle.
Result: we’re only gathering for the descendants now,
these milestones better left unrecognized.
My father
feeds his yard birds dutifully each morning.
Black oil sunflower seed for the showier singers,
yellow millet for the tiny fliers,
kernels for those who forget to
or would rather not
leave during winter anymore: too old, or too well-fed at home.
No thanks there, either;
but under his care, the birds stay.
In his kitchen,
a clock with birds instead of numbers
starts the bluebird song,
chirping mechanically as I make his morning coffee.
“Too weak,” he decides, emptying it down the drain
before grabbing his bird seed bucket,
straightening his hat,
and sliding the glass doors open to leave again.
She Won’t Know
I carry the dead bat with a shovel.
My husband, working in Missouri,
my daughter, asleep, her old baby monitor just in range
as I move the bat from driveway to woods.
“Intact?” my husband asks.
“Yes. Probably still warm,” I say. “Just fell from the sky.”
The woods are slender but useful:
the neighbors drag over dead leaves on tarps,
abrasive and crunchy over the road’s asphalt.
The city keeps a pump house behind the ash trees,
pleasantly humming as it cycles water on a schedule:
loud and quiet, loud and quiet. Hasn’t broken yet.
I won’t tell my daughter about the bat,
the same kind she visits at the zoo
next to the sugar gliders in their little huts.
That’s part of motherhood: not telling.
Fancy church shoes clipping down the pavement with a dead bat,
or a run-over cat, or the worms she gathered and left too long in the sun:
should have been fishing bait, now just stringy compost.
The next morning, we are smiles and cereal,
wondering what to do with our day.
Lineage
My mother died in her early 50s.
I am careful to say “died” and not “passed away”
because when you kill yourself, language matters.
The first time didn’t work.
She asked if the hospital had a bookstore, or a library,
something to do, something to read, please,
while I watched Oprah between vital assessments.
The second time took.
I received her old earrings,
an odd photograph of myself that printed poorly
(don’t know why she saved it; can’t ask now),
and a snow globe that works if you shake it hard enough.
I like this last trinket, because she lived in the desert.
But all of this only reminds me
that I never received anything after my grandmother died.
So in love with her, I would have accepted
anything at all: a blanket from the linen closet,
a souvenir magnet from the fridge, a bent fork from the drawer.
But from her, I just have the last memories her daughter gave me.
Josephine’s Garden
We bought a delicate sign
for my daughter that spring.
Josephine’s Garden it says, a metal oval on a stick,
butterflies behind the letters.
In her garden
poppies bloom, low to the ground for a child’s eye,
and irises too, taller than her (“taller than me!” she sings).
And while the tenderly collected rocks sleep,
twigs stuck in the ground fall down,
bits from her lunch decay for the birds,
and puddles from her watering can hands fill again,
I pose her for another photo, filed away by year.
After the flash
her eyes search for more cherry tomatoes—
her favorite, eaten off the vine, not even washed;
in the organic assault of Perfect Mom, I have made peace here.
In the corner
a farmer’s market is underway: pumpkins double in size,
giant looping vines tickle their striped watermelon neighbors,
looking like summer footballs
getting ready for fall kick-off.
From age one to two, three to four, five to six,
I watched her in the weeded rows;
she’s finally taller than those flowers we first planted.
Josephine snaps open too-small peas,
pulls up tiny carrots too early
and says: “Everything is still growing in my garden.”
And I am water, sun, and heat,
thinking about my next child:
a small turnip growing within.
Deep Sea Fishing
My line of pimples
is shaped like a Caribbean island chain.
The Bahamas maybe,
where we sail next to stingrays slapping our boat.
“Life is precious,” I say.
“Sure is easy to die,” he says.
The stingrays head north
and we thread our poles.
It’s winter back home,
where the cardinals and bats play,
my snow globe re-dusts unshaken
and the perennial bulbs are hard underground.
Down here, my family is old enough for a boat ride now,
and this salty trip erodes many pains.
But in the ocean spray, I’m months away,
maybe days,
from someone realizing I’m a fraud.
Faker wife, infertile mom,
dramatic daughter
who can’t even cast my line far enough in calm waters.
But I carry on with all of these,
because pretending, trying, is still doing.
We have two daughters:
one looks like me, one looks like him.
And if they look up to me
then I’m authentic
and forgiven
enough.
Kimberly Sailor
graduated from the USC Creative Writing program in Los Angeles and also holds a Master’s in Library and Information Studies from UW-Madison. She is the current Editor-in-Chief of the Recorded A Cappella Review Board (rarb.org), authoring over two hundred published music reviews. Her flash fiction has appeared in The Bookends Review, and her novel The Clarinet Whale is available on Amazon.