Sixfold Poetry Summer 2015

Sixfold Poetry Summer 2015

  by Sixfold

  Copyright 2015 Sixfold and The Authors

  www.sixfold.org

  Sixfold is a completely writer-voted journal. The writers who upload their manuscripts vote to select the prize-winning manuscripts and the short stories and poetry published in each issue. All participating writers’ equally weighted votes act as the editor, instead of the usual editorial decision-making organization of one or a few judges, editors, or select editorial board.

  Published quarterly in January, April, July, and October, each issue is free to read online and downloadable as PDF and e-book. Paperback book available at production cost including shipping.

  Cover Art by Hannah Lansburgh. Besichtigung der deutschen Gruppe (Tour of the German Group). 2014. Silkscreen. 12” x 18” https://hlansburgh.carbonmade.com

  License Notes

  Copyright 2015 Sixfold and The Authors. This issue may be reproduced, copied, and distributed for noncommercial purposes, provided both Sixfold and the Author of any excerpt of this issue are acknowledged. Thank you for your support.

  Sixfold

  Garrett Doherty, Publisher

  [email protected]

  www.sixfold.org

  (203) 491-0242

  Sixfold Poetry Summer 2015

  Jennifer Leigh Stevenson | For Your Own Good & other poems

  Marianne S. Johnson | Tortious & other poems

  Kate Magill | Nest Study #1 & other poems

  Karen Kraco | Studio & other poems

  Matt Daly | Beneath Your Bark & other poems

  Paulette Guerin | Emergence & other poems

  Hank Hudepohl | Crossed Words & other poems

  Alma Eppchez | At the Back of the Road Atlas & other poems

  Jim Burrows | At the Megachurch & other poems

  Rachel Stolzman Gullo | Lioness & other poems

  Yana Lyandres | New York Transplant & other poems

  Heather Katzoff | Start & other poems

  Tom Yori | Cana & other poems

  Barth Landor | What Is Left & other poems

  Abigail F. Taylor | Never So Still & other poems

  George Longenecker | Polar Bears Drowning & other poems

  Ben Cromwell | Sometimes a Flock of Birds & other poems

  Robert Mammano | the way the ground shakes & other poems

  Janet Smith | Rocket Ship & other poems

  Gina Loring | Dementia & other poems

  J. Lee Strickland | Minoan Elegy & other poems

  Toni Hanner | Catching the Baby & other poems

  Contributor Notes

  Jennifer Leigh Stevenson

  For Your Own Good

  Isn’t it a wonder, the way someone fills

  you up? Feasts on the least of you? She

  knocked on the hollow part of me, a

  master craftsman with shutters for eyes.

  With little more than night’s breath and

  panty’s breadth between me and her

  that time and she kneaded my hip to a

  bruise and sloppily hummed “Blue in

  Green” while I shivered and learned

  some things.

  Her bright lipstick lingered everywhere,

  on the steam-roller bong, the end of her

  cigarettes. Once she left her mouth

  mark on my earlobe which really required

  some explaining.

  On the bottom of the

  tube: Matte Finish, then BRAZEN.

  So. It was me who always ate the jelly beans

  she stashed in her glove box and it was me

  who stole her quarters to call a guy.

  It was him who made her want to die. At

  least she said it was. She had a loose

  relationship with telling.

  Another time she painted our toe nails

  black and plucked my eyebrows

  super thin like Anaïs Nin’s. Man did I

  want her to love me but I just couldn’t

  balance all that fear and feasting

  on my fingertip. I told her how the deep

  divot between her nose and lip drove

  me delirious, and she laughed, named

  it a philtrum. Sometimes she put hickeys

  on me in hidden places. Sometimes

  she put her feet in my lap when I drove.

  She left early one morning, I watched her go.

  She put on her long dark skirt and peplum

  jacket, rolled her hair into a ballet bun and

  shed our yesterday like a too small snake skin.

  The Oracle Squints

  She hears the clack of my prayer beads

  I want lips sliding across my collarbone

  She understands my lack and longing

  I know who governs my neck and throat

  I light candles

  leave offerings

  ink drawings wrapped in my hair

  poems written small

                things that drip with meaning

  drown in feeling

                things of touch and taste

  and reason

  I feel wanton but buttoned

  so I turn on the night music

  loud and honey-slow

  start a fire to bring

  a little atmosphere

  in here

  my shadow shivers on the wall

  my feet are bare

  these stones are cold

  everyone is hungry

  Some burn incense

  to please a goddess

  I sacrifice words

  to woo her

  Harvest

  A cigarette burns in an ashtray

  lipstick on the filter a yelp of red

  I know it must belong to an old

  woman or a young one, no one

  in-between bothers

  sip at my scotch

  she slinks up, a gorgeous graceless

  thing, pale with dark bangs

  and melamine eyes, gives

  me a grin, those red lips dragging

  a stain on her front tooth

  oh she’s a rock and roller

  I smile, touch my own mouth

  automatic, and she understands

  draws her tongue back and forth

  then bares her teeth at me

  and I nod, serious

  yes it’s gone

  she rejoins her cigarette, blinks

  at me through the smoke and din

  like some nocturnal creature

  tiny and shivery and very alive

  and I lean over

  she smells of fall

  firewood, apples and clove

  I wince with sudden comfort

  she will have Violent Femmes

  records and she will touch

  my cheeks with her thumbs

  tender and kind

  Ghost Towns

  Last spring your neighbor’s cat laid a baby rabbit

                              on your front steps, a tribute bloody and very

                much alive.

  It’s suffering

                I sobbed.

                              Your face solemn, you told me

                              Go inside, Hummingbird.

  I loved your country boy know-how

                              your mercy

  and when I shook off my city girl shock I kissed you so

                long and hard your mouth bruised


                              like fruit.

  But now I only have this map.

  I left at dusk, bought some cheap whiskey, a six pack of beer

                drove all night and made it here with stars to spare

                              so I parked and drank the sun awake.

                Take exit 148 toward Luther

  I distrust this small hush, the lavender horizon now burning pink, too perfect

                to be real. Windows down, air already

  so hot it hurts. My car rumbles a sad thrum over the gravel.

                Turn left onto Hogback Rd

                              Sweat licks down my neck.

  Summer finds these back roads rutted by drought. Red dirt dust stirs lazy

                in the molten August morning—everything sticks

                                            but nothing stays.

                Pottawatomie Rd turns right

  A sort-of understanding dawns at golden hour:

                Fallis spelled in rock on a hillock.

  I chose to visit this place first for three reasons:

  poets and quiet and cock

  You had southern rocker locks, wore aviator sunglasses like a traffic cop.

                Your sublime Okie drawl hinted

  at drowsy Sunday afternoons. Of black magic,

                              of limbs tangled in too warm sheets. Of swamps

                and sweat and Jack. Your voice

                              like pecan pie.

  One day you looked long at my hands, at my curls breeze blown.

                You said

                You look like a radioactive Pre-Raphaelite, all hands

                              and eyes and hair.

  Grinned around the Camel held in your teeth. Unabashed.

                So of course I took you home. Tasted the sun without

                                            burning my tongue and made you a habit.

  That summer we just drove, took black and white photos

                of ghost towns and gravestones. The best has you leaned against a

                              pleading angel,

  a toothpick pointing jaunty from your smile. You caught

                me candid that same day, hazy daylight roaring through my sundress

  and my legs backlit. I lifted that skirt later and rode you

                                            before the ride home,

                my hair in your mouth.

                Take the 1st right onto 3rd St

                              From the heavy trees an aggressive mailbox juts out

  forward and to the left

                              like a boxer’s jaw twisted and ruined:

                A.Whittaker Red Fox 1034

  An address long abandoned, hidden by overgrowth. Shadows dapple

                the silvered eaves, and the wood shingles,

  shaped like dragon scales, have gone

                to stone.

                              I ease open the door, certain

  all this honeyed peace is bait on a trap. Inside, a wingback chair

                flower fabric rotted away

                                          sits in a thrust of sunshine.

  Maybe you caused all this damage

                too. A pan on the stove

  a canister of salt on the countertop.

                              Mrs. Whittaker washed coffee mugs one morning

                lined them up on the window sill to dry

  but she’s gone now, some apocalypse,

                maybe, some rapture come to claim the blameless

                                            and I’m still here.

                Take exit 157 for OK-33

  Noon and the searing wind seethes,

                slaps my cheeks red and oh lord all the booze

  has caught up                   my head pounding

  with heat and hangover and something else

                              something like fear.

                Turn right onto Coyote Trail

  On to Centralia, where a shell of a home stands

                              its west wall intact

                a crocheted potholder faded dull dangles from a nail

  the wallpaper bears pale scars where

                              framed pictures once hung.

                Slight right to stay on E 160 Rd

  I find a huge snakeskin in a church vestibule and soda cans

                              in the baptismal. Open a hymnal

  to page seventy-three. Despite the dim I feel

                see-through in this place and some angry weight makes me run

                              away with a thudding heart.

                Take the 3rd left onto W Grand Ave

                              Another house.

  This one suffered

                bricks broken

                                            walls scorched.

  A mattress reduced to rusty springs shoved in the fireplace.

                              Beneath a window sits a claw-footed

  tub filled with scat and shards of glass.

                Turn left onto E0740 Rd

  Suits under thick layers of dust lined up neat in a closet,

                a wedding album

  buried in rubble. No great catastrophe.

                                            Just time.

  As I drive I’m listening loud to songs with fiddles

                              harmony and heartache.

                Hiwassee Road declares a hand-painted sign, white on black.

  I take my last right past a barn

                              smashed gray and silent

                under a felled oak, my tank top sweated through—

                              but my eyes       dry in the rearview.

  Yes, loving me was a lonesome business. I saw your stillness as beautiful yet

                I could not be still.

  From the bed you said

                              Come here, Hummingbird

                your face so bright I turned away.         True,

  your mouth was nectar, so I rubbed


  gardenia petals into the pulse

                              of my throat.

                Hummed a paean to you as I turned out the light.

  Such solace, for a little while.

  Yesterday morning

                I watched your broad

  back in sleep

                                            a gentle up and down.

                The curtains stirred and the open air felt like a failed spell,

                              heavy with cause

  or maybe just Dread,

                lurking with her black, rolling eyes, her demon mouth filled

  with shotgun pellets and sweet tea rot.

                I think she’d say

  Bless your heart,

                              right before she gobbled it up.

  Someone posted a sign, jarring in its shiny modernity:

                              Welcome to Pleasant Valley!

                There’s no real welcome, pleasant or otherwise, just a few store fronts

                                            with broken windows and determined trees

                              growing twisted

  though cracked foundations--

                              Mostly it’s just desolate prairie and grassland

  the post office gone

  the outlaws too

                and of course you

  Ardor Is Arson

  I’d rather be an arsonist than a lover,

  I’m better in an immediate crisis, better in all black,

  silhouetted against a billowing conflagration.

  (The conditions are right, no wind tonight, no moon.)

  A book of matches or a bottle of wine,

  it makes no difference in the end,

  the outcome is the same:

  someone without a home

  someone left with sadness

  that clings like a smoldering scent,

  eats all the air in here, in the between.

  I burned my house down and gave you the ashes.