ISSUE TWO: Sly Early Stem | next poem →

Water Cycle #3: I Thought There Would Be More

Bill Neumire

a kind of unkindness tugged

my mind when the lake hung
above like a dust ghost in the
shape of a gavel head

ghosts dust the lake each year
lakes float the sky waiting to
die into the ground

some stories we don't write
just end wrong: a boy burned
in silver fire, 500 seals
slathered in oil, a poison lake
abandoned by the state

oars without boats burn a
drawl of last lamps explains
the permanent clouds

here's a storm's absence
welcome to the propaganda of
calm. We end with the news
with a voiceover reading our
names like weedflowers

the clouds for months soften
a paper birch
what will be lost
when the voiceover explains
our absence?

rainweed explains
the doom of lamps
in a drawl
as long as
September

I think I'm becoming
a small boat without oars
floating in the middle of a lake
that dries up each year

the whimper's in the rain
that falls like end credits,
the whimper's in
the commercial for coffee
that keeps us waiting for the
news when it is the news

Bill Neumire's first collection, Estrus, was a semi-finalist for the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. His recent work appears in Brooklyner, Barrow Street, Istanbul Review, and Laurel Review. He teaches in Fabius, New York, and currently serves as an assistant editor for the online magazine Verdad.











ISSUE TWO: Sly Early Stem | next poem →






ISSUE TWO: Sly Early Stem

Jude Marr
   adrift
   flight—

Bill Neumire
   Water Cycle #1: To Whom
       Shall I Return

   Water Cycle #3: I Thought
       There Would Be More

Laura Madeline Wiseman
   Or To Release Death

Magus Magnus
   Payload Dump (3 excerpts
       from drone: poetic monologue
       for monotone
)

Aimee A. Norton
   Apache Code Errors
   No Sin Like Arson

Katherine Swett
   Translations of an
   Algorithmic Love Poem

Amy Schreibman Walter
   Online Dating Inbox

Paul Strohm
   Our Interregnum

KJ Hannah Greenberg
   The Sanctity of Lists
   Assistance with Quickly
       Becoming Unbearable

Susan L. Lin
   When You Are Sleeping

Ana Maria Caballero
   Another Airport Poem

Ann Skiöld
   Emily Dickinson Did Not
       Drive A Car

Jeremy Dixon
   In Retail (xxii)

Pete Coco
   Especes Perdue

Jessica Joy Reveles
   Surviving the Desert