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
William Godbey
Manuscript
Our last great American novel has been broken
across thousands of ragged pieces of cardboard.
Scribbled on by invisible men and women
with no welcome mats, surrounded by the red glare
of neon liquor storefronts and styrofoam cup wallets.
These black marker fragments of spent time,
ripped from moving boxes and orange crates,
blow across hazy bus stops and concrete islands.
They litter beneath our smoldering purple mountains.
Phrases, pleas, prayers slouch unread by the people
white-knuckling their steering wheels
with doors locked and windows sealed, frightened
to make eye contact with anything but the broad stripes
of yellow on the spacious highways.
Rescuing these signs,
your arms full, almost bursting,
is too brave for a young heart freshly strung
on the flagpole. They’ll only become heavier
the more you lift.
Let them rest, decay.
Turn the key to your engine.
Roll over this vulnerable kindling,
the way wildfire is blind to poppies.
hide & seek
I found my voice in the bottom of a Scottish well.
Grunting the wooden cover ajar, I peered
through the gooey darkness that was muffling him.
He was draped in gray moss & crumbling poker chips,
shaking how a mouse in my palm would after a moonless night
spent in a cat’s alley.
No sunlight had turned his skin seashell white,
a stern look or warm gaze would’ve cracked him open
& loosed the stench of a rotting jack-o’-lantern.
I spotted his toes, curling black from the soggy cold
that was sucking the teaspoons of air
out of his raisin lungs.
He squinted up at me with navy red eyes, his fear a barb
into the liferaft I had scribbled his name on years ago
& kept chained to my daydreams.
His arms were constellations of pinprick bruises
contouring towards nails scraped raw from desperation
to scale this drainpipe of bricks, away from this quiet prison.
My voice opened & closed his mouth, his dissolving tongue
unable to pick the words between his crowded teeth
that wouldn’t melt from a whisper’s heat.
The goosebumps that rippled around my chest
as I had imagined our reunion, were now caught in my throat.
We stared into each other, love & repulsion thickening
into a yellow cough syrup that time refused to swallow.
The sound of a crow pierced the distance, shattering
the pink Scotland dawn around my hesitation.
I grabbed the cover & yanked
it back across the well’s grim opening.
My voice’s O of betrayal rang louder than his silence,
but I had been searching for too long, the well was deep
& it was my turn to hide.
A Corn Field in Los Angeles
I strung up my skeleton
on the front lawn sycamore,
the trunk dangling rotten bark.
my neighbors asked me what it’s for
it’s my scarecrow for the dark.
when night streaks across the 605,
his wings smother the horizon
strafing Eichlers with midnight napalm,
and while you quiver under your bed sheets
my skeleton jangles and sways,
but will not snap.
just how lamb’s blood dries, evening
passes over my skeleton
but will crash through your houses,
your bones, pecking at what eats away at you.
a lunar spotlight on whatever insecurities
you squeeze beneath your mattress,
as he drags the husk that’s left of you
out with the stalks of sunrise.
my neighbors gape as I hobble back inside
to slump on my kitchen floor, wait
to welcome my old friend,
with a bottle of gin wrapped in a brown bag,
spineless and safe.
William Godbey
’s work has appeared in several publications, including the Chiron Review, Misfit Magazine, and Slipstream Press. He is currently pursuing a BA in English from California State University Long Beach, where he currently lives. He is 22 years old.