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
Meli Broderick Eaton
When We Were Mud
Our nothingness was everything
when we were mud, still,
stirred, we stood
to be counted and forgot
our filth, the dirt beneath
the crescents of our fingernails. Maybe
we departed before the mud dried, maybe
we arrived before we were formed,
maybe we didn’t remember
we were dirty.
We rose and forgot
that standing is just the start
of the need to lie down, to tie our eyes
with sutures of sleep eventually,
inevitably
a furrow begins in the first petal
the perfect cup of a tulip collapses
the wheel of each flower spins into dust
every leaf trades green for fire every stone
softens for the river every beat
of your heart is a pump closer to falling
back into the earth.
When my mud dries, open the heavens
to let the rain fall into pearls
on this skin I wear
wash the dust back to my feet
let my petals curl
out of the way, for the next
blossom might mean more, the next
leaf will rust into glorious tatters, the last
beat hammers into stillness
and we remember everything,
everything is borrowed.
Blackbird
Blackbird bobs on his branch
at first, I think his dance is the wind
but then I see it is his own weight
too great for the slender stem
clutched in the circle of his toes.
Through fleeing light he peers
with intense button eye—just one
as though he has found what he came to visit.
Behind his bright shouts beneath
his dark mutterings I hear
the things he doesn’t say, the things
he can’t wrap with sound.
I don’t know the words either
but in the crimson thrust of his epaulets
as he bristles his throat I sense the urgency I hear
the boulder of his thoughts the fear
night will come with some pearl unsaid
some idea too big for his song some sigh
that can’t be heaved because its weight
would break us would make us
fall from our tree.
With one flap he fades into the spilling night.
This darkness, known, is a kindness
maybe
the other is, too.
The Afterlives of Leaves
(Komorebi: tree leaking through sun
the miracle of light, leaves)
Cellulose bones strung
like ribs parched in the sun
woody webs spread over their own decaying
roadmaps pointing to their end.
Do they remember seizing the light
as it fell, driving cupped hands upward
in worship?
When you get there
will you know if you are broken
into fractals of yourself or
just broke down with your back to the light?
Will you remember the last time
laughter fell from your lips as you sipped
time from the silty swirl
at the bottom of your cup?
Look up at the heavens where
it all starts over, where
we strung our words on the spokes
of the stars for later, always later.
They flutter and rustle where we sift for order
where we cling to each other hoping
to hold the light before it passes.
Web
Untethered
tiny spider mariners
set sail into the unknown dusk
their entire lives
strung between trunks
that must seem like planets stationary
unmoving as the wind sways them
from one galaxy to the next
and they never know.
Beneath
our feet seethes
the coronary flow of this earth
the whole reason
we stand in the first place
but the rock we cling to, sink our anchors
seeking warmth is forever reforming
pushing us away from its churn
and we never know.
Buried
in our hearts
sits a seed placed there
before we came
out of the darkness
sliding into the arms of our family trees
the fertile carbon fingers that start
the heart seed’s tendrils drawing
our map back home.
Flight
Is there wonder is there light
when time has fled when
the heart trembles its last when
your hand is not there inside your hand
this was always meant to happen
Do you stand balanced between mountains
or are you wrapped inside a cloud or
do you drink the river whole as
you swim like a salmon to completion
this is the natural order
What sky do you feather with raindrop wing
can you still see the shiver of a lily stem can you
feel the last paint of sunset brush your skin do you
hear the hawk scree as it streams toward the earth
you need to get over this
Will you remember a black so black
it reflects green a song so sweet
you can’t possibly think when some tiny miracle
makes you catch your breath
are you still
still
Meli Broderick Eaton
developed a reverence for nature through a life in the outdoors of Oregon. At Sweet Briar College, she studied in workshops and independent studies with poet Mary Oliver and author John Gregory Brown. She took a long break from poetry after graduation and returned to it as a method of evolving through loss. She lives with her family on a suburban microfarm in Oregon.