Poetry Winter 2017 fiction all issues
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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
Sam Collier
Sanctuary for the Chosen Lost
We buried our fingers in fleece
until our skin shone.
Lanolin. Warm sheep faces
rubbing our shins. Dirt
packed so hard only hard rain
could ease it. Jacketed,
we closed our throats, scattered
geese, penned sly-eyed goats
gave blind ponies, broken ducks,
a feast of sun. In gravel dawns
we soaked our shoes in grass
and shoveled shit. The sky opened us
with its blade of wind.
Your body a ladder of light. Mine
a pillar of salt. Dozens
of birds between us, their chests
too swollen for their hearts
to fill. One time a pig fell over,
couldn’t get up. Bad hip.
Huge. We strained to lift him,
a sling around his belly, his eyes rolling,
his bristle-bare skin so human
I looked away. Strange
intimates. He shuddered, shrieked:
indignity of the treacherous body. I
saw. I saw. Sometimes my hands
betrayed me. Sometimes I sang
then thinking, caught myself,
covered it, turning my mouth
to the open mouth of the fan,
generous gale of its silence.
Nocturne In An Empty Sea
In 2007 a bowhead whale was caught off the coast of Alaska with fragments of a harpoon in its shoulder bone. The harpoon dated back to the late 1800s, indicating that the whale was at least 115 years old.
Salt in your mouth and your eyes clouds, you scrape crustaceans
and drift through winters, calling to the secret wells of water
in vowels shaped for love. There were years
when no one came. There were long years
when you thought you might be last. Might be final.
But sometimes from the liquid deep, a beautiful dark shape,
and then sometimes a calf, pressed shining
to the surface, swelled fat on milk and strong enough
to leave you. Nothing lasts. The world is warming and that old ache
still grumbles at your back—a spear carved in a lost century,
so men could read of plagues and angels by the blaze
of your lit fat, or split and steam your bristled teeth
to bind their daughters’ ribs. They struck you, but you sank away,
blood darkening the sea. You healed. You’ve carried the iron
hooked in your bone for so long now it’s part of you,
driving you on. You have no word for loneliness. You have no words
for summer. Yours is the kingdom of ice and wind. You swim
and the world spills before you into songs of blue and grey,
you crack the ice and the air is a rush of sweet cold, you breathe
and midnight comes again with its purple dust of stars.
Sam Collier
is a poet, playwright, and theater artist. Her poems have been published in Iron Horse, Mortar Magazine, The Puritan, Liminal Stories, Guernica, and elsewhere. Her plays have been developed and/or produced by the Chicago Theatre Marathon, PTP/NYC, New Ground Theater, and Theater Nyx. Sam holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and is a 2017-18 member of the Goodman Theatre Playwrights Unit. She teaches with the National Writers Series of Traverse City.