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Poetry Winter 2015    fiction    all issues

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Cover Peter Rawlings

J. H Yun
Yesenia
& other poems

Colby Hansen
Killing Jar #37
& other poems

Melissa Bond
Freud's Asparagus
& other poems

Jane Schulman
When Krupa Played Those Drums
& other poems

Susan F. Glassmeyer
First Moon of a Blue Moon Month
& other poems

Melissa Tyndall
Haptics
& other poems

Micah Chatterton
Medicine
& other poems

Emily Graf
Toolbox
& other poems

Kate Magill
LV Winter, 2015
& other poems

Michael Fleming
Meeting Mrs. Ping
& other poems

Richard Parisio
Brown Creeper
& other poems

Jennifer Leigh Stevenson
Circe in Business
& other poems

Laurel Eshelman
Tuckpointing
& other poems

Barry W. North
Molotov Cocktail of the Deep South
& other poems

Charles C. Childers
Privilege
& other poems

Ricky Ray
A Way to Work
& other poems

Cassandra Sanborn
Revelation
& other poems

Linda Sonia Miller
Full Circle
& other poems

J. Lee Strickland
Anna's Plague
& other poems

Erin Dorso
In the Kitchen
& other poems

Holly Lyn Walrath
Behind the Glass
& other poems

Jeff Lewis
Charles Ives, A Connecticut Yankee
& other poems

Karen Kraco
Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill
& other poems

Rafael Miguel Montes
Casket
& other poems


Writer's Site

Kate Magill

NOLA, 2006

Rusted bikes clattering

over rutted streets:

only sound this morning

in a city still learning

how to breathe

now that the flood has receded.


This boy I barely know

takes me to a childhood home.

We stand on the sidewalk

saying nothing,

breathing in the lush smell

of puddles and drowned worms.


We’re stripping away

the blackmold sheetrock,

exposing studs

we hope are strong enough,

press of bodies

in the small rooms,


smell of sweat

and waterlogged stuff.

Someone has planted

sunflowers out back.

Their big heads gyre west

to watch the sinking sun.


Down on the sand after dark

listening to black waves

and that air-swelling bayou hum:

we are almost children still,

hurtling forward,

verging on something pure.



Morning, Five Ways

1.


Whitebread morning—

give up on daring.

Focus on something

mundane and immediate:

backbone, for example,

or sinew.


2.


Through the open door,

a furnace blast of morning

The dog has shit a chickenbone

still whole.

No goose today,

no golden egg.


3.


You cannot remember,

standing in a potential friend’s foyer,

which boots are yours.

Perhaps finding the correct coat

will spark something.


4.


You have not yet opened your eyes.

The fact of being alive

kicks you in the ribs,

threatens to slit you down the middle

and spill your slick ruby innards

all across the slant of light

whose heat sears through your lids.


5.


It is best to wake first

to give yourself the option

of staying in bed and listening

to his roughhewn breaths

or leaving for an open space

where you can hear your own.



Tanka for The New Year

New Year’s Eve, and grey:

cloud upon cloud, swollen full

with unfallen rain.

We are already asleep

on the chill white sunless sheets.



LV Winter, 2015

It’s not hot yet and already I’m tired,

trying to read Bronk while the baby sleeps,

trying to sort the husk and hulk of words.


The sun is asserting itself again,

hot butter glow cowing the short grey days,

filling the air with creosote and sage.


Lizard skitter and hummingbird pulses,

the rest is stillness, that desert restraint,

knowing always when and when not to move.


Coffee is blacker in the old palm’s shade,

dry fronds brushing my shoulders, somewhat like

a lover’s presence, breathing, imagined,


remembered: that kneejerk covering-up

of unfinished pages, this black-on-blank:

I’m sorry, dear, this is not yours to read.

Kate Magill is a Vermont native and a devoted backcountry wanderer. This is her second appearance in Sixfold. Her first volume of poetry, Roadworthy Creature, Roadworthy Craft, was published in 2011 by Fomite Press.

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