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Winter 2016: Poetry


Canning Factory Road

How many U. S. roads with that name might show up in some universal gazetteer if such a thing existed? There was a Canning Factory Road in her hometown, but it wasn’t called that until long after the factory closed and the last of the owner-family dynasty had died, long after the last of the canned peas and corn and beets and applesauce were loaded on trains or trucked away. The site stood desolate for years until it became a weekend stage for flea markets and craftsmen’s stalls. She couldn’t walk through those booths of silver earrings and quilted tea cozies without summoning the smell of rotting corn, the stickiness of it smeared in her hair and eyelashes, the squish of it inside her yellow rubber gloves, and the hazard of the sharp knives she wielded to slice out worms from the ears while foremen watched to make sure she didn’t miss too many squirming worms or chop away too much viable corn-flesh. Most of all she recalled assembly-line ennui, relieved by silent recitations of the only poetry she could remember from high school, lines force-fed by teachers to whom she was suddenly grateful for their compulsory assignments of Edgar Guest and Ella Wheeler Wilcox and James Whitcomb Riley. When she discovered how she could subvert her boredom by overlaying the deafening thumps and crashes of the belts and steamers with the internal beat and rhythm of those lines, she wanted more. She went home at night to her abandoned books and found daffodils and tigers and soldiers with their legs shot off. She memorized them and brought them to work, inside her head, her personal poet-ghosts in the machines. They rescued her.




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Poetry Thumbnail Art   Prose Thumbnail Art   Artwork Thumbnail Art   Young Voices Thumbnail Art   Contributors Thumbnail Art
Poetry

Celebrating nature, home and the cycles of life – twenty poets light the winter night.

 
Prose

Six stories use magic to explore loss, grief and healing.

 
Artwork

With imagery of flora and fauna, four artists animate the winter landscape.

 
Young Voices

Five young women dig deep to each speak their individual truth .

 
Contributors

From emerging to established writers – meet the women behind our eighth issue’s voices and visions.

Table of Contents Button
LETTER FROM THE MANAGING EDITOR

POETRY

        Northwest Equinox by Kris Demien

        Gradations of Gray by Wendy Thompson

        With Gladness by Sara Graves

        Home by Leora Marialicia González

        For a Grade School Classmate by Joan Maiers

        Canning Factory Road by Elizabeth Stoessl

        To Make a Prairie by Carolyn Martin

        At Home by Suzy Harris

        Family Disagreement by Tricia Knoll

        The Bullfrogs by Katherine Boyer

        Cows by Rebecca Jamieson

        Lesson by Stacey Vallas

        Stardust by Erin Iwata

        Perspective by Carolyn Martin

        Lacrosse Season by Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo

        The Tangled Path by Suzanne LaGrande

        Matched Set by Tanya Jarvik

        False Bus Stop by Elizabeth Harlan-Ferlo

        Last Visit by Erin Iwata

        October Walk with My Mother by Ann Sinclair

        First Rothko Exercise by Elizabeth McLagan

        Fractions by Susan Blackaby

        Tea by Melineh Yemenidjian

        Return by Stacey Vallas

PROSE

        Scarab Man by Cynthia McGean

        Planetary Influences by Alida Thacher

        Bone of the Past by Burky Achilles

        Teachings: A Buddhist Ghost Story by Ann Sihler

        Wrangler by Desiree Wright

        A Nicaraguan Spring by Pamela Russell Bejerano

FEATURED ART

        Into the Wonder by Annamieka Hopps Davidson

        Deep Blue Meditation by Annamieka Hopps Davidson

        Weave Me Into the Sea by Annamieka Hopps Davidson

        Crassula 2 by Alison Foshee

        Crassula 5 by Alison Foshee

        Crassula 6 by Alison Foshee

        Warm Autumn by Tamar Hammer

        Girl with Conch by Tamar Hammer

        With Her Dog by Tamar Hammer

YOUNG VOICES

        Love Beyond Loss by Isabel Lickey

        Submerged by Raimy Khalife Hamdan

        Which Way? by Alli Rodenbaugh

        To Autumn by Sara Barkouli

        The Storm by Elie Doubleday

CONTRIBUTORS