Poetry Winter 2017 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
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
AJ Powell
Shatter
I sit in a glass chair wearing a glass dress,
holding a glass pencil, breathing glass breaths,
waiting for everything to shatter.
My fingers clink against paper in a minor key;
words fall on the page, sword-strikes
ringing out amid silence.
Light flashes, burnishing dreams both
bright and terrible, and exposing
a million flickering thoughts,
And the glass slivers and flies through the air
to waiting imaginations, embedding itself
where it lands, leaving me flesh again.
Blanket
“This is nowhere,” she whispers in his ear,
“and nothing happens here.”
Then he pulls up her blouse and
ripples her skin beneath his fingers.
Together they spin a blanket
of blissful self-forgetting
threaded with sighs, moans, laughter.
Hide under it for hours
chasing down new shivers
then fall asleep like sated babies.
Wake up startled in the morning,
wide and bleary eyes falling on each other
in daylight.
The myth of meaninglessness
hangs in the air like
dust motes in sunbeams.
She shifts a shoulder and holds the sheet tight.
He brushes away sleep in his eye.
She waits and wonders
if bolting or breakfast is on his mind
and readies herself to be stoic either way.
He doubts his courage to risk what he wants
but, gazing at the lift of her breath under covers,
the want remains.
Sunlight butters across sheets
dappling skin, illuminating freckles
and hair standing on end.
Whatever they’ve woven in moments last night
awaits the morning’s quilting,
still could be cast aside threadbare or
stitched whole,
Time at hand
ready to knit a tryst
into shelter,
as pillows pull magnetic
on drowsy, awestruck heads.
Witch’s Work
I sit and stir at fate’s cauldron,
toil to stew new trouble,
brew bright and terrible concoctions
for the world from a wise and wizened hag—
one wart on my nose for every
bewitched millennia I’ve stared down.
I rage today at pretty images, counterfeit and cheap:
tedious portraits of perfection
fit only for thirty-foot-tall screens of silver,
slivering my sisters’ instincts into nothing
till they hate mirrors and their
own magic selves.
I choke on strange poison in the air;
a toxic atmosphere has unleashed
a sickening, a standard view
that age and imperfection have
no deep and particular beauty, though they do.
I brew a tonic for modern toxins.
I cackle and curse at faked models—
touched by false prophets who spellbind absent
every time-worn, life-earned wrinkle,
every bit of a body’s bump and curve cut—
sacrificed to cellulose tyrants who
demand mannequins of their females.
I cast my hex at the madness of enhancements,
surgical monstrosities papering psyches
till even closed eyelids can’t block them out—
my sisters marred by imaginary failings.
What sorcery is this? and who is guilty of
inducing the poisonous deception?
As if marble is what women are made of,
as if fake is how women should feel,
as though holding a warm breast should be less than it is;
as if a heartbeat speeding and thudding through a chest
with love and lust and ready openness
should split from flesh and choose plastic?
Try hovering in love instead.
Hold an eye for human bodies
walking down the road with bottoms
which are double-cupped,
bellies full with a solid sorcery
while illusions of perfection are moving mists.
For we are for cleaving to for life
like a preserver that rides wild waves and stays
afloat in every storm-tossed ocean.
Let us conjure away the ugliness they’re teaching,
the curse of magazines and billboards
tossing our sisters in jail-cell expectations,
accosting even our youngest daughters.
Stir the cauldron with me;
banish the bullshit.
Find visions of beauty which follow nature’s lead;
let time’s travails and treats
build up softly on hips.
Actual is an attribute worthily embraced
with the capacity to embrace back.
Wander then into bedrooms with real women
for potent wizardry, for joyful spells.
Seeds
I will
Eat pomegranate seeds by the handful—
sweet trill on the tongue, tart pull in the jaw—
till lips and fingers stick with juice,
tentative tasting abandoned for honest hunger.
I will
Slip underwater and silence the world,
let nothing approach but bubbles,
which trace skin with lovely skimming
on their way across, around, between, along.
I will
Listen in my car to favorite songs and
remember the stories behind them,
taking a tour of the past, discovering dwindled spaces—
former homes and hangouts gone small with time.
I will
Watch something funny and laugh,
fall into a forgetful hilarity that cracks open
a life of guarded impressions and best behaviors,
guffaw and snort and hee-haw at nothing, everything.
I will
Dance alone to a sad song,
rock and sway in a room of candlelight,
hum along bluesy and true,
welcoming need as a gift.
I will
Stand breathless, cheeks aflame,
hauling in air halfway up a mountainside,
follow the trail to the summit above
as a zephyr quakes a stadium of aspen leaves.
Countdown
Five times she held her breath
Walked five slow roads to nowhere
Wished five wishes into the wind
Watched them catch a gust and flee headlong
Toward anywhere-elses
Four times she skipped a beat
Glanced four backward glances
Missed four passing chances
Lost them without notice so without grief
But still felt absences
Three times she forged ahead
Pushed three burdens through a day
Won three closures in an open-ended world
Clenched them, claimed them, held them fast
In otherwise empty hands
Two times she gave grand gifts
Grew two perfect presences
Loved two new beings with her eternity
Understood them to be hers briefly
Despite otherwise yearnings
One time she died
Loosed one full soul to the ether
Slew one last dragon stalking her
Laid it down to rest with her body then left
For limitless shores
AJ Powell
is a once and future teacher who raises her children, serves on a school board, and attempts to write in the wee hours of the morning with varied success.