Poetry Winter 2016 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Joel Filipe
Alexander McCoy
Questions to Ask a Mountain
& other poems
Alexandra Kamerling
Prairie
& other poems
Debbie Hall
She Walks Into Starbucks Carrying a 2 x 4
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Patience
& other poems
Jim Pascual Agustin
Sheet and Exposed Feet
& other poems
Melissa Cantrell
Collision
& other poems
Martin Conte
Skin
& other poems
AJ Powell
The Road to Homer
& other poems
Paul W. Child
World Diverted
& other poems
Michael Eaton
Remembrances
& other poems
Lawrence Hayes
Walking the Earth
& other poems
Daniel Sinderson
Like a Bit of Harp and a Far Off Twinkle
& other poems
Sam Hersh
Las Trampas
& other poems
Margo Jodyne Dills
Babies and Young Lovers
& other poems
Nicole Anania
To the Dying Man's Daughter
& other poems
Lisa Zou
Under the Parlor
& other poems
Hazel Kight Witham
Hoofbeat Heartbeat
& other poems
Margaret Dawson
Daylily
& other poems
James Wolf
An Act of Kindness
& other poems
Jane A. Horvat
Psychedelic
& other poems
Bill Newby
Touring
& other poems
Jennifer Sclafani
Hindsight Twenty Twenty
& other poems
Nicole Anania
In Secret
My mother ran her fingers through my hair,
fever coating my cheeks, sweat beads at my hairline.
She dispensed cough drops and bandaids,
a cool hand against my forehead.
She was an open pair of arms,
a soft chest to bury my face in.
If she cried it was in secret,
in the early predawn hours,
as we slept in twin beds.
Behind the closed bathroom door,
beneath the roar of the toilet.
If she cried it was alone,
in the small moments,
between drop and pick up,
homework and dinner,
laundry and dishes.
Now my mother cries in the supermarket
between the aisles of canned soup and bathroom cleaner.
I stroke the hair she carefully arranges,
trying to hide its precipitous loss.
But still, slivers of white scalp cut through,
like thin fish in a dark river.
Her back curves, arms swinging down too heavy to lift.
I dispense cautious massages and little pills.
I help her undress,
slight movements making her shudder.
If I cry it is in secret.
If I cry, it is alone.
I watch her chest rise and fall,
wondering when we switched places.
Never admitting,
I wish we could switch back.
Meat
Your skin is usually the color of roasted leather,
rawhide left to bake in the sun.
But suddenly the light switches off,
the soft husk sapped of its warmth.
Your small, sweet gut disappears,
your stomach flat and sallow.
The weight falls away,
an insidious symptom we only notice,
once the sharp lines of your skull
jut out, like mountain ridges.
Check the gums.
The computer screen glows,
white rectangles reflected in my pupils.
Pale gums spell doom.
Blood trickling somewhere,
incessant and slow,
a leak in the basement.
You clutch your side,
violent spasms twisting
your shrivelled face.
When they find it,
a mass hunkered down inside you,
silently expanding,
I imagine cells black and toxic
multiplying,
until you are filled with a vile tar.
The hospital is filled with an assault of smells.
Soiled bed sheets and dry meatloaf
linger below antiseptic and clean air
pumped through the building,
trying to cover up the sweet decay
of fresh flowers and inert bodies.
You are a twisted line in the stiff white bed,
and you nod towards a styrofoam cup
filled with tepid water
and a floating green sponge.
You are not allowed to swallow,
so I place the wet sponge
on your eager tongue,
watch you bat it around
your dusty mouth.
I am reminded of the horses at the petting zoo,
their long gummy tongues
maneuvering sugar cubes from my hands.
Pain wracks your skeletal frame and I think,
you are only flesh and bone,
a hunk of meat rotting away.
To the Dying Man’s Daughter
When the chaplain enters the room
resist the urge to speak in tongues.
Resist the urge to ask him
where the fuck his God went.
Instead, let him place his broad palm
on your father’s clammy forehead.
Let the soft, murmured words
cradle him to sleep.
Accept that this stooped stranger
is cutting up his veins,
pouring life into the vessel,
attempting resurrection.
Take in the blinding white collar
against the blackened cloth.
Think of a moving metaphor,
and write a useless poem.
When your cautious friends call you,
do not let your pain twist
into red-hot roiling rage.
Do not swallow their support,
like rotted fruit
you are trying to keep down.
In fact,
do not answer the phone at all.
When the morphine starts to do its job
and his burdened breath begins to slow,
do not think of when he carried you
on his sturdy, mountain shoulders,
of airplane rides on sunken couches
his smile widening below.
Do not think of playing catch
when the sunset turned him golden,
of painting birdhouses in summer
of the thin hand you are holding.
Do not think of long car rides
the wind blowing back your hair,
of cigarette smoke and chewing gum
the future far and fleeting.
Do not think of falling asleep
in the crook of his arm,
of feeling safe and sure and loved
of how it’s all gone.
If you think of all those things
you will be crying too hard
and you will forget to kiss him,
even though you hate goodbye.
You must leave then
before they cover up the body.
You must remember
it is just a body.
Spider
Smoke curls in the orange street light
as your hand crawls up my leg,
a thick-legged spider
with a dozen black eyes.
Evaluating
the broken veins on my thighs,
the soft swell of my stomach.
Deciding
if I am good enough
to pin and devour.
I am praying you won’t care,
about the acne scars and rolls of flesh.
Knowing that if you voice disgust,
I will push you off
with an outrage so pure,
its heat will pucker your skin.
I will wrap myself
in a blanket of contempt,
I will invoke the anger
of a thousand women,
deemed too ugly
to deserve decency.
Leave you on the porch
stung and unsatisfied,
while I stomp my way
up four iron flights,
the sound vibrating through my boots.
But as my door swings shut,
my fury will quietly dissipate,
until only slick shame remains,
like dregs
at the bottom of a glass.
So please,
don’t run your rough fingertips
over the missed patch of stubble on my knee.
Don’t sneer at the stretchmarks,
translucent lines that litter my whole body.
Please don’t.
Because I’ve been here before,
and I’ll be here again.
The Big Girl
It’s hard to say when I started noticing
how much space I filled.
It might have been a revelation
brought on by a collection of disgraceful moments.
Squeezing through the maze of a crowded restaurant,
pressed between chair backs,
blood rushing to my cheeks
as I knock a glass off a table.
Twisting out of clothes
beneath the hot lights of a dressing room,
trying to free myself,
like a trapped animal.
On the outskirts of a party
magnetized to the wall,
holding my arms tight against my body,
willing myself to shrink.
Being big
you’re both invisible and conspicuous,
your form calling attention
and then dismissing it.
They assess you
and then look away.
I lose pounds
and suddenly people don’t look away.
They look me right in the eye.
Suddenly people are a little kinder,
their smiles last a little longer.
They don’t believe I was that big.
Their mouths drop open,
putting on a show of shock and awe.
Wow, they say.
You look so good now!
It goes unsaid
that the big girl
would not have been their friend.
At first I don’t notice,
the shadow that follows me.
Its edges extend too widely,
threaten to swallow me whole.
The big girl follows me,
and sees all the people she will never talk to,
all the fun she will never have.
Guilt chokes me even as I laugh,
and pose for a photo.
The big girl pinches me,
stunned and betrayed.
The big girl was never in a picture,
pouting in a filtered selfie,
grinning in a group shot.
The big girl is behind me,
breathing down my neck.
She whispers,
Isn’t this what you wanted?
But I didn’t think it would feel like this.
Like the big girl in the corner locked eyes with me,
and I looked away.
Nicole Anania
is a writer based on Long Island. She enjoys writing both short stories and poems, and is currently completing her MFA at Hofstra University.