ISSUE 05 SAMPLE POEMS
E. Kristin Anderson
Practicing Modernism
Theseus and I lie on the couch,
his thigh against mine, watching
the television. The wind stops
to catch its breath and I whisper, this is never
good news. You see, they will always
want him back. One quiet afternoon
at the lake I allowed myself to float away
from the shore, pretended I had drowned,
imagined the pressure of water filling lungs.
He was out for a swim, saw my hair
descending from the surface, my cheeks’ pallor
in the lake’s gray-green. As he took me
back to shore he told me his fears of the
encroaching winter and I asked him
what he was doing on my side of the dusty books
that line my library. The water was warm.
It lapped at his ankles, saying, This is how
I intended you to fall in love.
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Brent Fisk
The Fourth Little Pig
While one and two
were careless, making light
work of twigs and hay, and the third
let his brothers stay behind
the brick walls of his house
the fourth pig lived
alone unseen. He built his home
from the pelts and bones of wolves,
and dug a pit just inside his door.
Those he loved knew to enter by the window
or call from the safety of a sunny glen.
He had a way of eating
feral dogs, growing fat on their marrow,
wearing their teeth on a string.
Some say he kept a fetal child
in a pickle jar, the offspring
of some wicked farmer’s wife.
But of course the pig who told me this
was filthy and feverish, scratching
his backside against a split-rail fence,
munching down on rubbish. A hunger burned
in his close-set eyes, and he whispered each detail
as if it were dear, morsels of bread so near
the curling tusks, he almost drew me in.
Thank God a dusk-lit rush of birds brought me sober,
and, spooked, I ran straight home to bed.
It could have been something I ate, rancid
bacon fat on moldy bread, some gristle-thread
of a dream that held me like a snare.
Phoebe North
Sappho in Childhood
She joined her brothers, tossing knucklebones,
running barefoot races down the docks of Mytilene.
Like beggars, they sponged up sweet figs from strangers,
honey cakes, a kylix of sour wine they choked down straight,
until they giggled home, the day a sea of glittered waves
behind them. Her mother dragged her by the braid
across the portico, had the slaves undress her, doused
her daughter’s stained skin with hot oil and set her,
drowsed, at the loom to count threads, while in her head,
she added syllables.
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For a full list of published issues, see the order page.
UPCOMING ISSUE
Issue 05 (Pre-order)
£4
Free p&p within the UK and the USA. £1.20 p&p overseas.
Poems from:
E. Kristin Anderson, Joanna Boulter, Iain Britton, Jeff Calhoun, Brent Fisk, Sally Flint, Annie Katchinska, Aditi Machado, Ian McLachlan, Esther Greenleaf Mürer, Alistair Noon, Phoebe North, David Pitcher, Christine Potter, Carolyn Srygley-Moore, and Cole Swensen.
Prose:
Joanna Boulter on Poetry as Music, Music with Poetry.
Jane Holland on the naming of poems.
Luke Kennard on John Ash and The New Symbolism.
Artwork from:
Patrick Hruby (cover), Magdalena Rachel and Asad T. Syed.
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ISSN 1754-1913
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