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
Doni Faber
Man Moth
You call at 4 am
looking for someone,
finding me.
Yet my sleep-thickened skull
doesn’t let in the realization
that I’m the someone you’re looking for.
We forget to exchange names
as though the intimate folds of night
have jettisoned us past our status as strangers.
“Do you know what time it is?” I ask
not upset, just tired.
“No,” you say.
The word splinters into awkward silence,
waiting for contrails
to lead us back
into friendlier skies.
Maybe you need to hear that I hear
the pain edged in your silence,
that I didn’t mean to be
its bearer.
I fumble for an apology,
a key that won’t turn in the door
without another hand
to coax it into relenting
its flat denial of my entry
like the I’m-sorry’s
we say too often to ourselves
and not to the people
who have no idea we need
their forgiveness.
Please forgive the edge of my sword.
I meant only to knight you,
but I see I have drawn blood.
Imagine, we mourn the death of a moth,
even when it is we ourselves
who have crushed its ordinary wings.
No longer capable of flight,
all that remains
is its body-dust imprint
against the glass.
I will brush the dust
into the indentations of my fingerprint
if only this would soothe you into believing
that I will remember you
not as ordinary,
but as a vibrant, trembling being,
one whose like
will never pass this way again,
that I would not relinquish you
to someone else
who slept through your crisis call
and is no more qualified than I
to respond to someone in need,
that it is late
and I know how lonely 4ams can be.
If I inhale long enough,
can I take back those words
that sent us spinning to the precipice
of awkwardness?
“Tell me,”
I would like the opportunity to say,
sending this man moth back to you.
An Attempted Thank You
I ring your doorbell
and hear you yell at your dogs to relax.
I smile as you open the door
and I hand you your gift.
“What is this for?”
“Just because,” I say
not willing to finish with, “you’re great.”
“Where did you find this paper?”
“I made it myself,” not speaking of the long hours
shaking the pulp and leaves onto a frame,
then compressing it between layers of cloth
until it adhered together
and how it turned out all gloopy the first few times.
You carefully slit open the paper to reveal
a framed photo of a clump of dark weeds growing in a field.
And you don’t know what to say.
I speak into the silence.
“I like it because it doesn’t seem
like the sort of thing most people would notice,
let alone take a picture of.”
What I don’t say is
those overlooked weeds remind me of you:
The “I love you’s,” you’ve said plain and simple
without receiving anything in return.
I settle for,
“I hope you like it,”
but even this sounds too demanding,
like I expect to see it hanging in a place of prominence.
I want you to know
that all the times you’ve continued to care
for those whom no one else cares for,
each time you sat with a loner at lunch—
that has been a gift to me.
Maybe if I tell you how you give of yourself
each time you play intensely with your daughter,
the way you bring me into your experience of reading with every new book
and always greet passersby with a friendly hello,
you would know
that I see you
as the remarkable being you are.
To you, these habits may just seem
like the weeds of day-to-day living,
but to me, they are memorable.
Memorable enough to photograph.
Keeping Watch
As day slips behind mountains on tiptoe
and the distant blue beacon of the weather tower
blinks its cloudy forecast
through a window too easy to break,
my joey nestles in the pouch of my arm.
She does not notice the blinking light
nor the crack in the glass,
threatening to grow bigger.
She will not be snatched by a fanatic
through a broken window pane and taken to worship in the foothills
nor be threatened by the stillness that seeps
into bodies raised in incubators instead of with human touch.
I serve as her platoon mate,
keeping watch for snipers who wait in the dark
so she doesn’t have to.
She will never hear gun fire,
only the calming break of waves,
as an electronic turtle simulates the sea.
I can still see the slivers of blue
through her gently pressed eyelids.
Her feet prod me to make sure
I am at her side,
knees worn from intrepid exploring,
and toes curled as if clinging
to invisible tree branches.
Just now, she whimpers
and I soothe her with a stroke across her arm.
Her chest rises and falls
and rises again, each breath reinforcing
her arrival as the apex of my life.
Her breath steadies into sleep,
wrapping every jeweled moment between now and her birth
into an unbreakable ligament of peace.
I wait for years to procure words
for her to tell of moondreams washing the day
from the back of her eyelids.
Sleep without fear, little one.
I will keep watch till then.
Holes With a Few Roses Tossed In
If the turtle could break out of its shell,
allow its rib cage to recede back into its chest
to embrace a slumbering heart
would it still be exposed to idly prodding fingers?
If Michaelangelo weren’t a mere painter,
encasing the small but infinite gap
between God’s and Adam’s fingertips
in a static scene,
could they some day touch?
Instead of waiting for an invitation,
the vagabond would break through his self-appointed isolation
and grasp hands in a now-electrified circle
whose circuit would be incomplete without his pulse.
Someone would smile at him across the circle.
And that would be enough.
The widow would no longer kneel by the side of an empty hole,
staring into its unfilled grey.
She would know that God has reached him.
She would cast off her wilting roses
and fill the hole in,
treading softly atop the dirt
so it wouldn’t collapse.
When she thinks about the circles upon circles of pulses she has yet to touch
and recognizes that each pulse she has already reached
is still a part of her heart beat,
she would no longer have need to bury them
for their memory is not yet dead.
Barrier
Laughter stumbles across my threshold.
I want to know the joke, so I can laugh too.
But he’s too drunk to see my reflection,
though the lights inside are blazing
and he is submerged in darkness.
I switch off the light and peep out the window
as though I’m peeping in, violating someone’s sanctum
when really, I’m looking at my own yard.
A throng of college kids toss beer cans
into my yard, one pissing on my lawn.
The laughter crashes raucous around me,
every racist one-liner leaving me tamping down dynamite.
I explode outside, with phone held high in defense
though any image captured would be uselessly blurred.
If getting drunk, smoking, and having sex
is what it means to belong,
I’ll fail the captcha test.
Belonging is knowing that others
accept the smallness of you,
that you can be fragile
without the fear of breaking.
I want laughter
to hold my hand
in the dimness of a movie theater,
even if he is silent.
I want him to wrap me in his arms
in the midst of a party
where my hearing aid is useless.
But so far, the light inside is too bright.
I’ve tried to find him by switching it off.
But then no one can see me at all.
Doni Faber
enjoys libraries, singing in a band, and emergent homeschooling. She is a retired slam poet, boothie, and third grade teacher. She has written a biography of her grandpa who dedicated his life to making people laugh. This is her first publication. You can find her book reviews at foldedpages
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