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
Sam Hersh
Las Trampas / The Traps
as if by chance
you are drawn down a whisper path to a forest cove
where a strand of vertebrae marks the entrance
to which crows anticipate trespass
and there in a hollow
lie cream-colored catkins
wild rose hips awash in miner’s lettuce
oyster mushrooms ripe with maggots
hazel buckeye black oak bay
and ways blazed
by foragers
don’t go there
even now, amanita ocreata
destroyer of what was and is
craves your kiss
don’t go
she will tempt you in twilight
to kneel on a pillow of death and duff
and reap overtures of golden chanterelles
don’t
be still
very still
still, you won’t see it coming
Meme Quarantine
Remember
that time when
I thought outside the box?
That’s a great question.
So glad you asked.
Let me help
unpack that for you.
Basically,
it’s technical, isn’t it!
Not so fast.
What he just said, not so much.
It’s like, truth be told,
trending now.
Trust me, you people.
That said, say no more. Right?
Black Bread, Rye
I nearly forgot how sour salt caramel
crust and crumb can lap the tongue
or how caraway and wild spikes
of fennel can seed a grin.
I hadn’t savored that black bread, rye
from who knows where
since butter churned, someway
south of Houston Street.
The month after mother died,
my son baked bread that obeyed gravity,
my daughter rekindled ancient grains
and my wife drew back the curtain.
Winter fell, we took note,
blindly tasted and closed in,
on a collision course with an elusive hearth,
bygone, though not forgotten.
A good story ends
with sheaves of wheat or slashes
that score the surface, living proof,
maker’s marks.
We give rise, break bread
and leave the pointed end
for someone in particular.
Do Not Disturb
Darling, please wait
until rap rusts out,
Reali-TV is wrong, gone
and Cryogenic Relaunch goes 2.0.
I can wait until euthanasia
bears your imprimatur
so don’t be a brick shy
more rest will do me good.
Before waking me,
cue that Bach cantata
you know, the one
we played, come Sunday.
Best wait and wonder where or when
the here and now became the there and then.
Going ...
after David Alpaugh’s double-title form
Just as I came up
on the inside
of a fleet-footed thought
a honeymoon of a poem
segued by
going easy, casual as a coyote
vanishing at the crossroads
scribbling something
it chanced upon
along these lines, then
... Gone
Sam Hersh
, a lapsed psychophysicist, lives at the foot of Mount Diablo, with his muse, Jan, and plays at beaches beginning with letters, SAN. By day he figures in the Valley of Heart’s Delight. By night, he rewrites poetry, twists porcelain and refreshes lactobacillus sanfranciscensis to perfect sourdough. His poems appeared in The Ina Coolbrith Circle Gathering, Monterey Poetry Review and the Scribbler.