Poetry Winter 2019 fiction all issues
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Cover Florian Klauer
Meli Broderick Eaton
Three Mississippi
& other poems
Andrea Reisenauer
What quiet ache do you wear?
& other poems
Alex Wasalinko
Two Dreams of Vegas
& other poems
AJ Powell
The Grammar Between Us
& other poems
Emma Flattery
Our Shared Jungle, Mr. Conrad
& other poems
Nathaniel Cairney
The Desert Cometh
& other poems
Sarah W. Bartlett
Unexpected
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
Jaybird by the Fence
& other poems
Brandon Hansen
Bradley
& other poems
Andy Kerstetter
The Inferno Lessons
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Space Walk
& other poems
Richard Cole
Perfect Corporations
& other poems
Susan Bouchard
Circus Performers
& other poems
Edward Garvey
Nine Songs of Love
& other poems
Mehrnaz Sokhansanj
Sea of Detachment
& other poems
Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius
Aftershock
& other poems
Claudia Skutar
Homage II
& other poems
Donna French McArdle
Knitting Sample
& other poems
Megan Skelly
Puzzle Box Ghazal
& other poems
Tess Cooper
Charged
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
Auschwitz
& other poems
Catherine R. Cryan
Raven
& other poems
Richard Cole
Triage
Yes, there are days when the ER doors explode
and Code Blue comes in on a gurney, rapid
crosstalk over the patients, one right after
another. More often though,
we triage our lives with quiet, glancing
deferments of care, attention, faith, for whatever
needs us and cannot be ignored and left
to die. We have no choice but to choose
among these three—money, the people we love
and our inner life, such as it is. We can save
the one, maybe two out of three, but nobody
I’ve seen has it all. The math doesn’t work that way,
though one might serve another, the church
of parenthood, perhaps, or creativity
that pays the bills. But marriages can fail
in the face of sudden money.
We can fall in love as our business
fades, or drive down avenues
of achievement, proud and blind.
We can die before we die.
We can hold our breath for years
and do, our dreams growing beautiful
as autumn leaves, golden and forgotten.
We can find what feeds us in triage, an ascending
crisis of opportunities, thinking like nurses
and ER doctors, fast and wise
as much as possible, trying to live one life
as we save others.
Perfect Corporations
Corporations are people, too,
numbers with skin.
Like people, they have dreams.
Like people, they can ache and grow
and have that growth cut short,
wounded, and then survive
to consume or be consumed by others.
Like people at times, they have
no choice, and the better ones have come to believe
that people, natural people, are frictions,
that the best corporations are heaven on earth
as the earth drops away, trailing numbers,
human capital liquefied
and refined, the corporate body
reorganized by cold explosions leaving
a cloudy taste
and empty cubicles filled with light.
The perfect corporations are the ones
with nobody left. Breathless and calm. The ones
that have no soul.
Too Big to Fail
The sky is filled with brokers jumping from windows,
some holding hands as they step off together,
showers of suits and ties that flutter
through crashing markets, debt bombs
going off in the bundled securities wrapped
and bleeding through layers of gauze,
20 years of financial assumptions collapsing
like circus tents on fire, the elephants screaming, old lions
roaring in outrage as the furious band plays on,
and the bodies keep falling faster,
racing to the final moment, the slap
and explosion of meat
pounding the sidewalks and then
they touch down
gently, as if
on a well of bubbling energy.
“You’re safe,” the dancing master says.
“You’ll always be safe. It’s like a love affair
with gravity. Look at what you’ve already become
and what that means. You’ve made a killing.
Banks are immortal, in their way,
and so, in a way, are you.”
Becoming Air
Slow pounding on the door
downstairs, a low, steady sound
more felt than heard, month
after month for a year,
then almost two, now growing,
filling the massive house
where my sister waits
in her flying bed, exhausted,
with a painted battle scene above her head,
historic men on horseback, swords waving, charging
always toward victory.
Then a faint click.
Greatness enters the room,
pauses, as if questioning,
and offers a white flower. At last,
after years of framed achievement,
anger and controlling love,
she sighs, a burning fragment
cradled in the arms of pure death,
and together they descend with dignity,
intimate all the way down
the amazing stairs.
Richard Cole
has published two books of poetry: The Glass Children (The University of Georgia Press) and Success Stories (Limestone Books). He is also the author of a memoir, Catholic by Choice (Loyola Press). His poems and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Poetry, Hudson Review, Sun Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, The Penn Review, Image Journal and various anthologies. Cole works as a painter and business writer in Austin, Texas. www.richard-cole.net.