Poetry Winter 2018 fiction all issues
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Cover Elena Koycheva
Bryce Emley
Asking Father What’s at the End
& other poems
AJ Powell
Butterfly-minded
& other poems
Faith Shearin
Biology
& other poems
Claire Van Winkle
Admitting
& other poems
Sarah W. Bartlett
Summer Cycles
& other poems
Nooshin Ghanbari
Vincent
& other poems
Meli Broderick Eaton
The Afterlives of Leaves
& other poems
Jeddie Sophronius
Refugees
& other poems
Paula Bonnell
In Winter, By Rail
& other poems
Addison Van Auken Waters
Girls
& other poems
Daniel Sinderson
Hallelujah
& other poems
Andrew Allport
All Nature Will Fable
& other poems
Marte Stuart
What an Insult Time Is
& other poems
Matthew Parsons
My Father as an Inuit Hunter
& other poems
Emily Bauer
Gently, Gently
& other poems
Bruce Marsland
A once lovelorn bard’s final journey
& other poems
Beatrix Bondor
Night Makers
& other poems
Isabella Skovira
Lawless Conservation
& other poems
Juan Pablo González
Colombia, 1928
& other poems
Molly Pines
The Pillbug
& other poems
Jamie Marie
On the Lake
& other poems
William A. Greenfield
If You Show Me Yours
& other poems
Bill Newby
Tuesdays at The Seagate's Atlantic Grille
& other poems
Elder Gideon
Male Initiation Rites
& other poems
Joel Holland
Dear Gi-Gi
& other poems
Martha R. Jones
How Lewis Carroll Met Edgar Allan Poe
& other poems
Paula Bonnell
To a Chicken Pie
Dearly beloved, you were there
to greet me with a smile of steam
when I walked home from school
on those winter grade-school days,
home to avoid the abhorred squishiness
of lunchbox sandwiches and the softball games
of the noon recess. You were there,
consoling, in my young married days
on the nights when we got home
at 10 p.m. from work and night school.
You were there in my civil-servant days,
transmogrified to a turkey pie
with a touch of cinnamon in the gravy,
made by my co-worker on her turkey farm.
Those were the days when I came home late
to you, having enjoyed the privilege
of rank: unpaid overtime.
And I recall, too, how even before
grade school, when I looked at the illustrations
showing rivers of milk
and islands of cake, I always knew
that the pies growing on trees
were you, O chicken pie.
And now, dear friend (as my nephew said
to his big wooden truck when he carried
it down the stairs), I do not question
your coming to mind as I stand here
in my near-vegetarian middle age
on the subway platform,
a vision of your browned crust
rising rotundly.
I simply greet you with pleasure.
When broken, your crust will—I know—
release fragrant hints
of the white, orange, and green
nourishment deep in your inland sea
of gravy, cradled in your crinkled silvery pan.
The Who & How of Morning
The rooster hauls the sun
from the bottom of the sea
and the little birds
with the fine mesh net
of their songs
lift it inch by inch
over the horizon
And by the time
its bottom edge
clears the horizon
the seawater
has all drained
out of it and
it is light
and can rise
of its own accord
to the top of the sky
When & Why It Got Wet
Noon:
and the sun has risen
so high that it can see
how little we have done
all morning, how much we
have omitted, what bungles
we have begun. Changing
its angle hardly improves
the picture. It
notices certain small
worthy persistences,
its slant rays reveal a
good deed, inspirations
here and there, but the sun
sees everything. It is
heavy-hearted, molten
with grief, unwilling to
face the wrongs that might be
done after dinner when
what is kind is streaked with
what is cruel. It paints
a canvas that mingles
shame with a flowchart for
glory, then the sun
lowers itself in its
bath and the world
floods with darkness.
On The Bay
Rain salts the air
Vagueness erases the horizon
Blank sky seared with
white from a hidden sun,
a diffusion of clouds
Bright!—
the air pops open—
Thunder slams it shut.
Once
and once only . . .
Rumbles fall off the edge . . . .
Yes, we all saw it, all heard it—
No, all the trees seem intact—
House silence:
Tearing lettuce,
choosing the green bowls,
milk glass, a blue plate
Talk of our mothers,
torn bread, fish chowder
Amen.
The Interior Decorators’ Vow
When my partner and I took on this job
we were clear from the beginning
about what we wouldn’t do.
We wanted to avoid
even the idea of a concept.
Two rooms in a millionaire’s penthouse
and a little vestibuley anteroom
that he called a “lobby.” (A
million isn’t much these days,
when you think about it.)
Manhattan.
In the lobby we placed
a low cedar chest. And beside it
an African sculpture, upright,
the kind Picasso admired.
A warrior, this one—I’d say maybe
related to his Don Quixote
drawings. Nothing else
African in the place.
(I don’t count, of course,
the faux zebraskin rug
beside the ormolu table
on which rests a bakelite box.)
Our fakes were the real thing:
fakes. We didn’t overdo the faux
thing, though; that would have
been too much of a good fling.
The bedroom had color:
rich reds, deep blues. The
living room tried to be almost
without color. Not neutrals, though.
Nothing gray, for example.
There was glass, open-textured things,
some greens mixed in.
No pure whites. A lot of
stuff in that room made
of natural materials that were
variegated as hell (or as hell
wouldn’t be, if there were
such a place)—baskets in which
the tones were an astonishing
mélange of straw yellows, reedy
browns and clay reds, the whole
thing quite the mixed discourse.
I’d say “airy,” but that’s a con-
cept, and what we were trying to
avoid.
Black shine on water
Shadows precede
each of the trees
Marsh stubble dull copper
Loops of river water
coppery, smooth
From the train:
rivers disclose harbors
birds land
and hold themselves in their wings
Old blue clothes
caught in a tree
beside the harbor
Redbrown leaves, stones,
trunks rising—
branches V and branch again
Muting whistle
a feeling of mist
beside trees, beside waters
Causeway—
osprey nests on platforms—
a flotilla of swans
White-covered boats
houses on stilts
a toss of small birds
Poems by 
Paula Bonnell have appeared in APR, Rattle, Spillway, and more; and won awards from Negative Capability, the New England Poetry Club, the Chester H. Jones Foundation, and the City of Boston. Mark Jarman chose her Airs & Voices for a Ciardi Prize and Albert Goldbarth selected her “Eurydice” for a Poet Lore narrative-poetry publication award. Bonnell’s collections include Message and two chapbooks: Before the Alphabet and tales retold. More at http://paulabonnell.net