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
Bucky Ignatius
Rear View
Dandridge Drive-Thru Beverage
is gone, love child of a general
store and covered bridge,
choked by convenience
chains, economy of scale:
gone, soon forgotten.
No more crony clubhouse
for jokers and smokers
to pass hot nights staring
into the slow parade,
grading the trade, hoping
to catch some thigh.
A species born endangered,
vanishing breed thinner
by one. Its skeleton stands
time-worn, forlorn, most
of the parts still good
for something—maybe
a museum on the outskirts
of town, oil drum around
back for pitched empties
and spit, neon sign starting
to stutter, hot rod dreams
up on blocks somewhere.
Sonnet with Reptiles
Before the Chianti
is opened, before
the pesto is ground,
I’m already high
on basil oiled fingers,
gush of tomato
juice on my chin,
dazzled by darting
Lazarus lizards,
captured and brought
to Ohio from Italy,
who rule the rocks
in my garden, their own
Mediterranean dream.
Hide and Seek
My kitchen is a clutter of purloined
letters hiding in plain sight. Odd
shaped things—Cuisinart blade,
French press plunger—come to mind,
but not to hand without a search.
Eyes methodically scan the surfaces:
counter, three sinks, two tables,
the dishrack. Repeat. Add the floor,
look behind and under, more slowly,
with a curse this time. That vegetable
knife is too large, too brown to hide
in familiar stacks and scatters of glass
and silver where every meal starts
with a prayer to Saint Anthony.
“Something Old, . . .”
A gentle joke mingled
at my second wedding,
“They’re registered at Seven Hills Resale.”
True enough, things I like best
have often been discarded
in the common market.
Home-made, well worn
things, not wallflowers,
participants in the fray.
Companions for hand and eye,
things someone might find
worth trying to mend.
End of September
for Carl Sagan
waning fire down
to quivering lumps
of light, furnace
orange and charcoal
one triangle tongue
of flame in the corner
of the bed flickers out
comfort, warmth, wisps
of smoke, brush of hair
from the crown
of a lover’s head
these things and more,
everything emanating
from ashes of dead stars
Bucky Ignatius
is a semi-reformed hippie who has spent most of his 70-plus years in or near Cincinnati, where he now tends a large eccentric garden and a small comically curious cat. A chapbook of fifty short poems, Fifty Under Fifty was published by Finishing Line Press in 2015. For meager wages and inspiration, he operates a century-old elevator in a former factory that now houses more than a hundred working artists.