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
Sharron Singleton
Sonnet for Small Rip-Rap
Here is a wooden clothespin that grips
a striped beach towel, rusty nail in the hinge
no one has seen since nineteen thirty six.
Yes, and safety pins, straight pins, bobby-pins
used to plaster curls to my head when I
was twelve, obscure and forgotten as old
bones of the lesser saints. They lie
in dusty drawers, the plain things that uphold
us—buckles, zippers, paperclips, all
the small earnest rip-rap that insist we
button and snap and allow us the small
pleasure of undoing. Praise especially
that which attaches, is unseen, spare—
the needle that mends and binds up the tear.
Why I Don’t Write Poems
About My Father
Old, mottled,
algaed
and scarred
where hooks
have ripped,
the fish
has gone
deep, has sunk
through brown-gold
pillars of water,
as if through
a temple ruin,
down beyond
the reach of light,
to lie hidden
among weeds,
tattered fins
and fronds
tremulous
with the lake’s
slow breathing—
the only sign
of its presence,
a shiver of circle,
unnoticed except
by the watchers,
the heron
and fisherman.
Well hooked
by his quarry,
the fisherman
wants both
to catch and not
catch, to scrape
away the armor
of scales,
to open, gut
the creature—
and still to glide
upon the wide
eye of the lake,
oars dipping, just
rippling the surface,
the shadow
of the boat
sliding across
the shadow
that is the fish.
Seed
I lay down
life, crave
earth. Time’s
bell clangs
death, chimes
birth, folds me
in its grip.
Harrowed
in the grave
I twist, split-
ting the shell,
I leap from
the furrow,
an old god,
green
and knowing.
Hottest Summer on Record
there’s no
resisting
the heat the air
sags with moisture
boundaries blur
between sea and sky
washed in bluegray
congruity
air becomes
ocean and we wade
into it lungs
open and close
like gills back
bones prickle
with forgotten
fins each cell
a pouch of liquid
edges dissolve
speech thought
becomes vapor
spangled with sweat
your body slips
into mine wet
boneless and salty
we stroke together
away from shore
The Sleep After
While the pleasure of it
rips through me
like lightning on water,
while I think this is
what I could die for,
have died for—
it is the sleep after
in the arms
of the fugitive moon,
in the hands of that saint,
the rose, in the mouth
of the god
that I long for.
Sharron Singleton
My poems have appeared in Agni, Rattle, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, among others. In 2009 I won the James River Writers Contest and was named the Poet of 2010 by the journal Passager. I also won 1st place prizes in 2010 and 2012 in the Poetry Society of Virginia annual contest, 1st place in the MacGuffin Poet Hunt contest in 2012 and 1st place in the Sixfold Contest in 2013. My chapbook, A Thin Thread of Water was published in 2010 by Finishing Line Press.