After a Snowless Winter by Patricia Traxler

ð

March blizzard; the late snow covers our world

like amnesia. All day our eyes are drawn to windows,

absorbing the endless swath of white beyond the glass

that holds it apart, pristine, like a painting of what’s real.

1

I remember when we all were here, how winter warmed

us then. Yes, attrition is a function of time, and we have to

ignore it as far as we can–buy a new address book, forget

the touch that woke our skin, the sweet imperative of meals,

unruly music of children’s voices, words alive in every room.

1

Sunday wafer on the tongue, absolution, old miracles we still

crave; love, maybe. And before everything, the words that were

to be believed, that gave us something to fear and love and live

up to; nothing left to chance, except everything that would follow.

1

The world is old now, war still abounds, meaning refuses attachment.

Bulbs stir in the ground, regenerate out of habit, away from the light.

I’m yours, I tell the air. The cold makes its way in then, and for hours

snow deepens across the prairie while frost blinds window glass.

1

No ideas but in things, he said, and yet the world is clotted with things

and often bereft of ideas. This belated freeze enters the flesh the way

love did–a mercy?–then makes its way into the heart, and stays.

The power to make something necessary, lasting, to place something

new where nothing was–anyone fears the loss of that. And of the need.

1

Somewhere underground now a river hurries over itself, blind roots

stirring as it passes, earth darkening around souls muted and stilled,

stones smoothening in the passage of time, while above we wait and

wonder: Is this what we were meant for? Who will tell us what was true?

~ Patricia Traxler

Patricia Traxler, a two-time Bunting Poetry Fellow at Radcliffe, is the author of four poetry collections and a novel, and has edited two anthologies of Kansas memories dating from 1910-1975. Her poetry has appeared widely, including in The Nation, The Boston Review, Agni, Ploughshares, Ms. Magazine, The LA Times, and Best American Poetry. She has read or served as resident poet at many universities, including Ohio State, Harvard University, Kansas University, the University of Montana, Utah State, and the University of California San Diego.

Tyler Sheldon is a graduate student in English at Emporia State University. His poems and articles have appeared in Thorny Locust, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, The Dos Passos Review, and in the anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties (a 2013 Kansas Notable Book). Sheldon is an AWP Intro Journals Award nominee and has been featured on Kansas Public Radio.

William Sheldon lives in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he writes and teaches. His work has appeared widely in little magazines and small press anthologies. He has two books, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley) and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth), and a chapbook, Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill). He plays bass for the band The Excuses.

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Forbidden by Denise Low

He pulls fear from a wooden drawer—

an Aboriginal witching stone

his uncle collected years ago.
1

As he unwraps flannel swaddling he says,

unflinchingly unsexing me,

“Women should not see this. It is taboo.”
1

We had spent hours drinking medicinal tea

while sorting eucalyptus-bark paintings—

crocodiles, water holes, sparkling dust.
1

Now this stone. He recounts ceremonial rules—

the strict gendered intention for it.

How initiates kill women who intrude.
1

He holds the pecked lodestone to light,

a Gondwandaland lava remnant

at first unremarkable but magnetic.
1

I behold a dizzy white-on-black nebulae

a white hibiscus a frozen river whirl

a desert spring a rosette of labia stretched wide open.

(For Barnaby Ruhe, on the death of Ed Ruhe)

~ Denise Low

Denise Low, second Kansas Poet Laureate, has published over 20 books of award-winning poetry and essays, including Ghost Stories (Woodley) and Natural Theologies, essays about Mid-Plains literature (Backwater Press). Low was visiting professor at the University of Richmond and Kansas University. She taught at Haskell Indian Nation University, where she founded the creative writing program. She served Associated Writing Programs as board president. She and her husband Thomas Pecore Weso publish Mammoth Publications.

Tyler Sheldon is a graduate student in English at Emporia State University. His poems and articles have appeared in Thorny Locust, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, The Dos Passos Review, and in the anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties (a 2013 Kansas Notable Book). Sheldon is an AWP Intro Journals Award nominee and has been featured on Kansas Public Radio.

William Sheldon lives in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he writes and teaches. His work has appeared widely in little magazines and small press anthologies. He has two books, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley) and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth), and a chapbook, Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill). He plays bass for the band The Excuses.

Wake Up Call by Harley Elliott

A butterfly walks

up your cheek

and looks you

in the eye.

1

A stone between

your feet grows

a warm spot

in your hand.

1

Cloud shadows

race over you

peel identity and

drift it away.

1

Birds swarm and

turn in unison

becoming sky

and flashing

back as birds.

1

And yes thunder

is growling

your secret name.

1

In a moment

all the cells of

creation are

bending your way.

~ Harley Elliott

Harley Elliott lives in Salina Kansas. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including Darkness at Each Elbow and Animals That Stand in Dreams (Hanging Loose), and The Monkey of Mulberry Pass and Fugitive Histories (Woodley), as well as a memoir, Loading the Stone (Woodley).

Tyler Sheldon is a graduate student in English at Emporia State University. His poems and articles have appeared in Thorny Locust, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, The Dos Passos Review, and in the anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties (a 2013 Kansas Notable Book). Sheldon is an AWP Intro Journals Award nominee and has been featured on Kansas Public Radio.

William Sheldon lives in Hutchinson, Kansas, where he writes and teaches. His work has appeared widely in little magazines and small press anthologies. He has two books, Retrieving Old Bones (Woodley) and Rain Comes Riding (Mammoth), and a chapbook, Into Distant Grass (Oil Hill). He plays bass for the band The Excuses.

August by Tyler Sheldon

Seeds explode like fire against the neighbor’s garage

or hang mortified like bodies

from the sycamore out front.

My father walks with leaden pipe in hand

(dog insurance, he says)

as downstreet the Akita runs his length of iron chain,

hoping it will snap.

 

I am barefoot and fifteen

and the concrete boils before me

as the mail truck pulls away

into the hallucinatory shimmer of the street.

I run out like time,

And life itself hangs in the balance.

Bio: Tyler Sheldon is the Press Manager for Flint Hills Review, and is a Creative Writing student at Emporia State University. His poetry has been published in numerous journals, such as Tulgey Wood, Quivira, Periphery, Thorny Locust, and eleven to seven, and is forthcoming in I-70 Review. The 2012 anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices featured his poem “Fall” alongside work by Kansas Poet Laureates Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and Denise Low. He has self-published a chapbook, Being (American). tyrsheldon@gmail.com

Guest Editor Diane Wahto has an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University. Her poem, “Someone Is Always Watching,” won the American Academy of Poets award. Recently, her poems “The Conspiracy of Coffee” and “After the Storm” were published in Active Aging. She, her husband, and two dogs live in Wichita, Kansas. dwahto@cox.net

It’s Only Kansas by Tyler Sheldon

If you’re not impressed at first,
Don’t sweat it overly much.
It’s often said that our best scenery is nowhere
Near the ground.

Start slow. No one’ll blame you.
Go drag Main
In a rusted-out car at 2 AM.
Eat fish sandwiches from their soggy wrappers
With no-good tartar sauce;
Throw clove cigarette butts into the street.

Walk our dirt roads because you can;
Search for ruby slippers
Because outsiders say you’ll find them here.
Take in the wagon-wheel mailboxes,
The darkly inviting salt mines.

Throw your lines into the air.
Fish kites and vultures
From a deeply important, endless sky.

Bio: Tyler Sheldon is the Press Manager for Flint Hills Review, and is a Creative Writing student at Emporia State University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Tulgey Wood, Quivira, Periphery, Thorny Locust, eleven to seven, I-70 Review, Coal City Review, The Dos Passos Review, and 150 Kansas Poems, and is also featured in the anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices (a 2012 Kansas Notable Book). Sheldon’s poetry has been nominated for the AWP Intro Journals Award, and has been featured on Kansas Public Radio.

– August Guest Editor: William J. Karnowski is the author of seven books of poetry; Pushing the Chain, The Hills of Laclede, Painting the Train, Hardtails and Highways, Catching the Rain, Dispensation, and The Sodhouse Green. He has poetry published in Kansas Voices, The Midwest Quarterly, Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, Kansas Author Club Yearbooks and multiple website locations. Karnowski is the current State President of Kansas Authors Club.

 

Lemons

As a baby I’m told I would eat lemons
Grinding pulp between nubby teeth
Spitting seeds to the wind
Or the garden already overgrown with yellow marigolds

Our Schnauzer would eat gummy Payday candy bars
Peanuts in his sharp doggy teeth
While my parents painted the kitchen yellow
The neighbors’ fence become my spot
For cold cold ice cream or small padded books
It led to the faded yellow tetherball out back
Before I knew about its owner’s cheating
His wife’s insanity
And even then it was across the street anyway
In the middle of Oz
So I was safe

The flag-bearing wooden bear kept me safe
On walks around the neighborhood
I would sail my yellow paper ships in the backyard pool
Make vinegar volcanoes
Be a kid because I was good at it
And I liked it that way

– Tyler Sheldon is the Press Manager for Flint Hills Review, and is a Creative Writing student at Emporia State University. His poetry has been published in numerous journals, such as Tulgey Wood, Quivira, Periphery, Thorny Locust, and eleven to seven, and is forthcoming in I-70 Review. The 2012 anthology To The Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices featured his poem “Fall” alongside work by Kansas Poet Laureates Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg and Denise Low. He has self-published a chapbook, Being (American).

– April’s Guest Editor, Roy Beckemeyer, edits scientific journals and writes poetry and essays. His poems have most recently been accepted by or appeared in The Midwest Quarterly, The North Dakota Quarterly, Straylight, Nebo, Mikrokosmos, Coal City Review, and The Lyric.  He lives in Wichita, Kansas and has degrees from St. Louis University, Wichita State University, and The University of Kansas.

He notes: “In the poem series I have chosen for April, I have  focused on works that define our sense of Time and Place by the people we know, the people we interact with, the people we live with. “

146. To the Stars Through Difficulties: Tyler Sheldon

With the crackle and smoke of our rusted burn-barrel,
I am brought up from my guitar by this new Fall.
Borne from the garden gate by special invitation,
By November’s proposition which entices nostrils, but threatens lungs
I resolve a fall of my own volition,
and the cider on the bar inside agrees with this stubbornness of mine.
On the porch, my little sister
cider of her own in hand and the porch lip underfoot
giggles at the heady swish of leaves and possibility; steps too far back
and still laughing, experiences Fall in her own way.

— Tyler Sheldon