Poetry Winter 2023 fiction all issues
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Cover
Susan Wilkinson
Selena Spier
Red From The West
& other poems
Pamela Wax
Talk Therapy
& other poems
Ana Reisens
Honey Water
& other poems
Mark Yakich
Necessary Hope
& other poems
Bridget Kriner
A Few Lies & a Truth
& other poems
Keegan Shepherd
Silver Queen
& other poems
Alaina Goodrich
Sacred Conflagration
& other poems
George Longenecker
Those Who Hunger
& other poems
Hailey Young
Ball Room
& other poems
Sébastien Luc Butler
Aubade
& other poems
Savannah Grant
Ever Since (v.2)
& other poems
grace (logan)
Dynamic
& other poems
Samantha Imperi
A Poem for the Ghosted
& other poems
Corinne Walsh
Limerence
& other poems
Kayla Heinze
Stop checking the score
& other poems
Richard Baldo
Chasing Through to Dawn
& other poems
Alex Eve
A moment
& other poems
Robert Michael Oliver
Prison Hounds
& other poems
George Longenecker
Two Tents
sag under snow,
at a picnic area a mile out of town,
home for people who have nowhere else to go.
They’ve camped since summer
in this patch of woods
next to the Winooski River,
which rushes by but says nothing.
Morning traffic passes,
school busses, commuters,
skiers on their way
to slopes or second homes.
300 feet from their tents,
a brown house with river view,
ten rooms, three car garage,
fireplaces, bright Christmas lights.
Winter night comes early
for those who live in tents,
snow blows, rattles pines,
cold river rolls over stones,
bones turn to ice.
Birds Without Borders
A dozen gulls feed on fast food scraps,
rest on a tractor trailer
at a New York Thruway service area;
soon more gulls join them,
beaks pointed west,
maybe they know this truck
is headed toward Lake Erie,
though they’d rather fly,
than cling to the top of a trailer,
as it roars down the thruway,
unlike refugees from Honduras,
who must cling to boxcars across Mexico.
The truck roars away beneath their wings,
and twelve gulls ride wind currents,
northwest out over Lake Erie.
Canada geese, redwing blackbirds, a few flickers,
fly south with cargo ships and fishing trawlers far below.
Flocks cross back and forth,
borders, customs booths,
walls, fences, guards with guns
all irrelevant.
Memory passed bird to bird,
their celestial compass
of flyways older than nations,
as old as these lakes—
wings over water.
Pizza in a Snowstorm
Snow falls on their outstretched arms
outside a convenience store,
finally someone gives enough
for two slices and a large coffee,
which they share on a park bench,
one warms their hand in the other’s pocket,
snowflakes alight on pepperoni and onion,
crystalline stars which quickly melt away;
they pass coffee back and forth,
eat pizza with tattered gloves,
two crows circle and caw,
hoping for a scrap of crust—
scraps of two lives
reduced to one shopping cart,
a ragged tent,
and what’s left of their pizza—
they toss crusts to crows.
Full Wolf Moon
On New Year’s Day the moon is full,
Abenaki people said wolves howled in hunger
outside villages on the first moon after winter solstice,
some years people were hungrier than wolves.
Now there are no wolves left here,
but there are still those who howl with hunger,
though not from the forest behind my house,
there are quieter cries from the village,
where there’s a food shelf in a church;
when the blue moon rises
on the last day of January,
people will be out of food again.
From Earth we can’t see the moon’s dark side,
from the other side of town, we hardly ever
see those who come after work or school,
so they can have lunch or supper.
Some come in moonlight
so they might not be seen,
or better still in darkness,
when a cloud passes over the moon,
ashamed that it’s come to this,
that they must come in hunger.
Those Who Hunger
The hungry eat lunch in a church basement,
come to the food pantry each Saturday,
those who seek refuge
are torn from their children at the border,
those who hunger
ride trains for days seeking sanctuary,
the hungry come
across seas on flimsy boats of flotsam,
some will die on their journey,
many will be turned away,
by angry men,
but someday,
as Bach said in Magnificat:
Esuriéntes implévit bonis:
et dívites dimísit inánes.
He filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich he sent away empty.
George Longenecker
lives on the edge of the woods in Middlesex, Vermont. His poems, stories and book reviews have been published in Bryant Literary Review, Evening Street Review, Rain Taxi, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Saturday Evening Post and The Mountain Troubadour. His book Star Route was published by Main Street Rag. He looks for poetry in the paradoxical ways humans repeat their mistakes and reflect nature in their art. He’s glad to make his seventh appearance in Sixfold. See George Longenecker on youtube.