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
Marcie McGuire
Saying Goodbye
— for Bill Worley
Those summer nights
he lay at the window,
chin cupped in his hand,
and watched the stars go out,
the only one awake,
when even the bars
were closed, knowing then
how it was to be.
His friends refused to
understand, and merely
repeated his words,
“inoperable, chemotherapy,”
hopefully, beneath the slow
irregular rhythm of the fan.
Down the street
a screen door slammed.
His wife leaned her head
against his knees.
They tried again to tell us
what we did not want to hear.
Later they brought
slices of lemon pound cake
on clear glass plates
and iced tea with mint, and
he talked of going
to the Texas State Fair
before he died.
And after they had said
everything they could,
we sat on the floor,
our knees almost touching,
between us a half bushel
of lima beans to shell.
Still Birth
— for Megan Sleadd
As if I had actually died in that dream and
woke up dead in a garden in late summer
where a child was swinging
in the shade of a weeping willow.
Across the lawn another child
chanted the roses’ names: King’s
Ransom, Crimson Glory, Sheer Bliss,
while a woman wheeled her chair
among the beds and tilted her face
toward the sun.
As if that garden were real, the path
wide and smooth before it
narrowed and took unexpected turns,
and where there had been roses, suddenly
were ferns and mosses. Hosta dark and
striped, pale blooms on slender
stalks upraised against the sky.
Shadows of tangled vines beneath
a canopy of leaves.
As if for three seasons I had not
carried the weight of her life in mine
and had not seen bare branches blossoming
after a long winter, and had not heard
migrating Canadas returning to green waters.
As if I had never known the one who
grew for a time beneath my heart
kicking and turning in her watery world,
who was delivered into silence
one spring day.
Negative Space
I am letting these empty fields in mid-December
stand for all the places I have traveled through,
the men I might have loved, the women
I could have been, with the sun slanting across
the stubble of last year’s crops, dried seed pods
rattling in the wind. I am letting the branches
against the sky and the spaces between the branches
stand for all the time we never had.
Fear
Long after the light has moved
across her bedroom wall and out
into the night, years after the stationmaster
has pocketed his watch and turned away,
she can still hear the dogs howling
behind her house and across the fields,
just before the fast freight
rounds the bend, and her windows
rattle her awake, sensing disaster—
a pick-up truck stalled at the unmarked
crossing, a loose rail, something
abandoned in the shadows along
the tracks, her father driving home
drunk after a late night of cards.
Coming Home
i
Christmas day, driving into thick fog
among black cedars that appear
briefly, then dissolve around us.
Near the edges, fringes of fog like gauze
curtains moving across the trees, lifting
momentarily. A ribbon of brighter fog
floats like silk above the plowed fields and
weaves among the trees. In the distance,
wispy gray branches brush against the
sky’s pink scalp. As soft colors dissolve,
I doze in the moving car, the highway
humming beneath my feet, then wake
to a clear black sky and piercing stars.
ii
While we slept, night hardened into crystals
that stung our fingertips as we moved hands
along the metal rail that led from our room
down the wire mesh steps to the parking lot
where a few cars glistened in the morning sun.
Later, driving through Illinois on I-64
past Burnt Prairie and Grayville,
beneath a thin, cornflower blue sky,
a haze of trees circling the open fields,
something glinting in deep furrows,
quartz veins against black earth, icy pools
between plowed rows. We cross the narrow
Black River, and the road curves around the few
isolated hills. A cow stretches her neck toward
distant fields. A pick-up truck has stopped
beside a pond. White smoke rises from the trees.
iii
After miles of dead grasses and leafless trees,
we come across a few startling green fields. A flock
of small birds descending. Near the fence row
two trees grown so close they have become
a single tree, each branching out on the side
farthest away. There is no separating their roots,
deeply tangled beneath the earth.
iv
An hour from home, fingers of fog curl among
the upper branches, smooth the soft gray backs of
hills, slip among the trees. The road narrows,
following the curve of the land, and we begin
a slow descent to the river valley, the sky reduced
to a wedge of gray between the hills, rain on the river,
then open fields again and black rail fences marking off
irregular hill-shaped pastures. We drive beneath
a canopy of branches, following limestone walls
built by slaves a hundred years ago.
v
My mother’s living room is dark and quiet,
lit only by a table lamp and the colored
lights of the Christmas tree in the corner.
The walls hold paintings done by former students
in shades of green and blue, abstract seascapes
and clouds, a footbridge over rushing waters.
A rocking chair with arms carved into
dark swans glides through this room. An angel
rises out of a single piece of wood, her face pale
and featureless, her arms lifted and held
slightly back, revealing the hollow
blackened space between her wings.
vi
Late afternoon, I walk along streets
named Pocahontas, Shoshoni, Hiawatha,
Mojave, past tidy yards and neat brick
houses where yellow lights are coming on
in windows facing the street. Two men
lean against a truck and smoke, while
girls jump on a trampoline behind a house.
A young couple strolls down the middle of
the blacktopped street, holding hands. The
houses here are smaller than memory,
one-story brick with contrasting shutters,
modest Christmas trees in front windows,
red ribbons on the doors.
Even those places I went with my lover
now seem formal and quiet, and not
part of my past at all. The evergreens
tower over the eaves like childish drawings of
Christmas trees taped to the windows at school.
By the time I turn back, night is moving in
over the farm beyond the last houses,
roaming through back yards and
along the empty streets.
vii
Two days after Christmas, fog has frozen
on all the trees, encasing branches and twigs.
We enter through a door that has been wired
to notify the nurses if the old ones
try to leave to buy milk for their long-grown
children. We walk past the visiting room with its
red floral couches upholstered in plastic,
past angels made of linen handkerchiefs
fluttering among dark branches while
larger angels robed in silver guard the red
poinsettias. Along the hall, we read names
of shop-owners and teachers from another
time. The one we have come to see
is inching his wheeled chair forward
with his toes, singing under his breath,
“Just Molly and me and baby makes three.”
viii
Near campus on an overcast day,
we head east on Clayton, following the path
I used to walk the year I was thirteen,
past the empty lot where our house once stood,
past the Nazarene Church where my best friend
sang “How Great Thou Art” in a breathy soprano
while I played piano, where the youth
played kissing games in the basement after
Bible study. Then down a couple blocks and
left on Avondale, where my friend once
whispered that it was wrong for girls
to beat a boy at any game. Another left turn
and we are heading west on Jackson Street,
where I am suddenly eight years old, playing
beneath the evergreen in secret rooms
where the dark branches touch the ground
in my grandmother’s yard, or roller skating
over rough brick sidewalks and tree roots
to the corner store to get bread for sandwiches.
Just past the college football field, we park
in the circle drive before Pawling Hall,
where mom’s new office is located, the same
building where her father lived as a student
in the nineteen twenties, where fifty years later
I sat in philosophy class, debating what was real,
while Dr. Gragg stood on his desk, swatting
wasps that flew in the tall, narrow windows.
We enter through the door facing the street,
and my mother uses her master key to let us into
offices, classrooms, seminar rooms. We walk
the length of the building accompanied by
ghosts from our past, then exit out the back,
hoping the superstitions about doors aren’t true.
Marcie McGuire
is a poet, memoirist, and fiction writer who has been writing for a long time but only recently got up the nerve to submit her work for publication. She was born and raised in Kentucky but now lives in Missouri, where she enjoys the simple things in life (playing music with friends, dancing, walking in nature, keeping bees). She has worked as a librarian, English teacher, and editor.