A Break In The Weather

July 2013 | back-issues, poetry

we were mistaken for sisters, two middle-school blondes,

glasses sliding down noses, volleying secrets

in whispers. winter storm clouds held the promise

of snow days; we crossed our fingers for blizzards.

years later, we sit in her parlor, discussing our lives.

we’ve forgotten much, but memories cut our minds

like dull knives – a butchery too eternal

to reconsider, too sweetly painful to pass by.

I drive away. the moon sags behind the sifting snow,

a frigid night so similar to the ones we used

to hope for together. old dreams are frozen through

from time and cold. what we need is a break in the weather.

by Katherine Vondy

Katherine Vondy is an LA-based writer and filmmaker. A 2009 resident writer at Wildacres, a 2012 resident artist at Starry Night and a 2013 artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Stickman Review, Toasted Cheese, Red River Review, Perigee, Dark Sky Magazine, The Oklahoma Review, Breakwater Review and short story anthology The Lover, the Lunatic and the Poet. Katherine earned a BA in English and Music from Amherst College and an MFA in Film & Television Production from the University of Southern California. Her blog of comedic mini-essays can be found at http://thewalkingdeadpan.tumblr.com/.

Wendy Sue Gist poems

July 2013 | back-issues, poetry

Fragments of Southwestern Youth

Stink beetles balance

beaks

on splintered porch.

Arizona daze,

San Francisco Peaks

sanctify.

Dragonflies flash blue

as jelly shoes.

Chicken-egg scoop

coop.

Sunflowers arch

rock-hunked roads

through ponderosa pine.

Jewelry-maker

neighbor, turquoise nuggets

machine drills, echoes.

Pine bough huts,

Sinagua potsherds,

black-on-white patterns

fragment underfoot;

daydreams dead awaken

earthen palms:

ontological monsoon.

No cell phone, no gps.

Sun out time: time-in

moon orb oozes behind

Mars Hill:

no ears ringing, no calls

from home or to home,

not in far-gone

forest of youth.

Visitor at Tsaile Lake

It’s dry as drought. A freckle-face cow startles the way, horns point tips to hip. Sun bleached tree limbs strew land all over the place like moo bones. Indian paint brush flame. Grasshoppers buzz the path, streak sand with dot lines, sashaying among piñon pine and juniper to a clearing. Clouds smile wisping turquoise sky, reflecting Tsaile Lake. Horsetails, four, dance lyrical. A pale pony, muscle-legs shades of sage, ignores, mane and tail, ink-black as raven wing shine, tendril a bellowing sky. A pitch-black horse, white splotched down its sides like a painted on saddle, skedaddles. Albino stallion, eyes lined pink, bucks. Hoofs tread coral sand amidst thickets of sea-green sagebrush: itch, itch, I itch, sneeze, wheeze. Wind blows a current to a reddish mare grazing a frenzy feed of native grass. All the wild horses I pass. Folks at lakeshore tug trout while bridal-white pelicans rise, rise. A truck of boys get stuck today–muck spins wheels, stop again, again spin, at lakes end. Navajo women in a pickup pull up, say: “Are you from around here?”

Wendy Sue Gist’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Dark Matter, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Pif Magazine, Rio Grande Review, RipRap, The Chaffey Review, The Fourth River and Tulane Review for your consideration.