Poetry Winter 2016 fiction all issues
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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
Lisa Zou
How to Begin a Song
Begin with sight: the electric blanket of a sky in the seconds
before a storm. This time you leave the umbrella at home,
surrounded by the antiques your grandmother left; you learn to
knit scarves. The whole day through, just a sweet old song.
Begin with smell: the blood vapor of rusting metal. How you can
sense dust before it exists. The earthy aroma of old
bookstores; the essence of a child’s room. This time you’ll forget
to spray the perfume on your jacket, leave the door open.
Begin with sound: the sewing machine’s melodic hum,
the light switch in his apartment. The crackle of thunder,
the buzz of bees with Sinatra in one ear, and Elvis in the other. The
spilling of apologies. This time you won’t listen. Georgia.
Begin with touch: the structure of the human body—the way
skin becomes a rainbow of pink, purple, green. How
your veins stretch like roads, bumpy and convex. The viscosity
of honey, the weight of wrapped vinyl records.
Begin with taste: the syrup of summer, the lemons you saved
for winter—now overripe! Oh, the bruised peaches—
how nothing worth keeping will last. The snow does not show
signs of melting and you knit. The road leads back to you.
Forget the distance between the missed and the mist.
This begins with you—my road has always led back to you.
Fission
You grow a beard, check the mirror,
notice you are forty years old, the next
morning, you shave it off, find you are
sixty. But life is like that, suddenly
everyone you know is dying and they
still visit you with your back turned to them.
One day, you took the school bus
and you earned a gold star for answering
the last question right. Now, the nurses
on night duty ask you something which
you can’t open your mouth and respond to.
All you know is that someone switched
off the light and you don’t know how.
Under the Parlor
Under the Q-switched laser, the dragon
blisters from skin to dough. The navy blue
having stayed with me for decades—
I got inked too young, too full of hell.
How the lines resemble
well trodden roads, now burned by the
side of banana peels and the newspapers.
How the therapist said I was a slave
to perfection, suggested I wear
my mistakes like a crown.
If
The boy took
the other road and
stopped by
the bookstore and
purchased a book—
of any cover. The man
he would have
become is now dead.
Blind Mammal(s)
Scientists in Honolulu have uncovered
a primeval tortoise long alleged as extinct.
The blessed creature stumbled out of my sink
in the company of toothpaste patches
and last Wednesday’s soap suds but
now this no-eyed sea resident with three fins
is on a trip to the lab in Maui, traveling on a boat
rather than below it. This morning, the newspaper
announced that he is not native; how many miles away
from his motherland we clearly cannot fathom.
Lisa Zou
currently studies at the University of Pennsylvania and has previously been recognized by the Poetry Society of the UK, National YoungArts Foundation, Sierra Nevada College, Johns Hopkins University, and Rider University, among others. Her writing is forthcoming in the Lindenwood Review.