Poetry Winter 2017 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Thought-Forms
Laura Apol
On My Fiftieth Birthday I Return
& other poems
Jihyun Yun
Aubade
& other poems
Jamie Ross
Red Jetta
& other poems
Sarah Blanchard
Carolina Clay
& other poems
lauren a. boisvert
Save a Seat for Me in the Void
& other poems
Faith Shearin
A Pirate at Midlife
& other poems
Helen Yeoman-Shaw
Calling Long Distance
& other poems
Sarah B. Sullivan
Iris
& other poems
Timothy Walsh
Metro Messenger
& other poems
Gabriel Spera
Scratch
& other poems
Zoë Harrison
Pattee Creek
& other poems
AJ Powell
Blanket
& other poems
Alexa Poteet
The Man Who Got off the Train Between Madrid and Valencia
& other poems
Marcie McGuire
Still Birth
& other poems
Kim Drew Wright
Elephants Standing
& other poems
Michael Jenkins
The Garden Next Door
& other poems
Nicky Nicholson-Klingerman
Costume
& other poems
Doni Faber
Man Moth
& other poems
M. Underwood
In Other Words
& other poems
Carson Pynes
Diet Coke
& other poems
Bucky Ignatius
Something Old, . . .
& other poems
Violet Mitchell
Deleting Emails the Week After Kevin Died
& other poems
Sam Collier
Nocturne in an Empty Sea
& other poems
Meryl Natchez
Equivocal Activist
& other poems
William Godbey
A Corn Field in Los Angeles
& other poems
Winner of $1000 for 1st-place-voted Poems
Laura ApolSix Suites for Unaccompanied Cello
The young mother peels
potatoes in the playroom, surrounded
by her four boys. Their stories
compete as she fingers
the kennebecs in the bowl. She takes in
all their voices at once, yet listens to each—
postpones silence until there is silence
to be found. Her own thoughts surface then,
and she’ll know what she knows
about love—to keep a part for herself:
a few fumbling notes
on the cello she is just beginning to learn,
a lesson she embraces one hour
each week. She does not choose scales
nor the rasp of simple tunes, selects instead
Bach’s solo suites, their ravenous
scope and sweep. She guides the bow
with fierce attention, crosses strings
with singular care. Just one note,
then another—
the press of each measure ongoing,
insatiable.
On my Fiftieth Birthday, I Return
The street, the market,
the church on the corner—how can I turn back
the trees? There would have been
leaves, this yellow, and light, and the same
October air. A woman rose that day, felt
the stretch of her skin and a baby’s kick,
breasts tender, back swayed. These motes in the air:
is this all that remains? The body that held me
is gone; brick-solid, the garage apartment
where she slept and woke. These sills
hold that morning: her breath at the window,
her bent-double prayers. The stoop
where she stood, the stained concrete steps—
how can I turn back the sky?
Roots
You phoned Sunday
to say your younger brother had died.
I tried to read your voice the way I read the river,
heard underneath
a story you’d told me last summer
—how, as a child you studied the roads
when your family went for a drive, learning
the landmarks
so that if your parents left you,
you could find the way back.
You were the firstborn.
It would be up to you to lead the others home.
Today your family will gather once more—
dark suits, white roses. For me, you have laid out
the family tree: great uncles, second cousins,
a tangle of generations.
But I see only that backseat boy
who watched out the Buick’s side window,
thinking about routes,
knelt for first communion at the rail at St. Bart’s
wearing the welt of the razor strop,
who in a few hours will cross himself, kneel again
before something he no longer believes, lay to rest
a hope he can no longer carry
—a boy who never will make his way home.
Seven Years On
The mole the calico brought home
seeps blood, a heart-shaped
stain on the step. I search
the grass for the finch
that hit the bedroom
glass. Such a fascination
with endings: the way the dog
rushes each morning to learn
whether what has died in the woods
is still dead. The way in France,
a whole town gathered around
a piece of star
that fell to a field. And how,
with coffee, we look across the rising
Grand—trees, white apparitions
against autumn grey. We wonder
if there’s something wrong,
what is able to survive.
How much, really, do we wish:
bleached skeletons
without bark, limbs empty
and inviting—
place, now,
for the river hawk to roost.
Light, Water, Bones
On the far bank, a willow weeps,
while in the river, its mirror
ripples with light. The cloud-blemished sky
meets a perfect dappling beneath.
Here are Plato’s images in reverse,
the ideal in the darkening current:
a leaf, a branch, an evening bat.
Even the heron steps gently,
afraid to startle the flawless
heron at its feet.
Along the lane, the deer carcass
does not teach me about life or death,
but about the curve of ribs
whitening under the moon.
The lessons I learn
are soundless: the light, the water,
the delicate bleach of bones.
After years of listening,
perhaps in my next life
I will not need to learn to trust—
will come back faithful
to my own sense of smell,
wander like the possum, solitary
through the night brush and broken limbs,
burrow fearless as the sleek black mole,
far from this world’s polished
surface, intimate with the wet
roots of things.
Laura Apol
teaches creative writing and literature at Michigan State University. Her poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals and anthologies, and she is the author of several award-winning collections of her own poems: Falling into Grace; Crossing the Ladder of Sun; Requiem, Rwanda; Celestial Bodies; With a Gift for Burning (forthcoming); and Nothing but the Blood (forthcoming).