PQ Poem Archives - Pittsburgh Quarterly

The First Years

by Sara Henning

The First Years Locals call it the gates of hell, craterin the Turkmenistan desert burning forty years. The longest-burning fire begansix thousand years ago—an Australian coal seam in New South Wales ignited by lightning,smiting the biome into barren trails. But I always come back to the coal seamblazing under Centralia, Pennsylvania, where a trash fire …

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The Bridge to Brunot Island

by Ziggy Edwards

The Bridge to Brunot Island Caged in its lattice of trusses,a worker crossing on footcan witness the last orange flashbefore bare winter conjures Ohio’s vengeance.For now, giants in their opaque depthsbreathe evenly; the bridge’s underbellyjiggles the surface. The hammerhead siren is only sunbathing. A guy on second shiftswears he saw the shadow of Dr. Brunothaunting …

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Work Confession

Work Confession I dug a room that sits empty beneath the earth. I ate the last of the potatoes and didn’t get around to canning before the tomatoes and peppers rotted. Like rain on pursed lips, tomorrow will be a feast day with nothing. We don’t drag the river for our dead anymore. The cemetery’s …

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Saturday Morning Flannel Sheets

by Amy Lee Heinlen

Saturday Morning Flannel Sheets Because I say the exact wrong thingmy daughter sobs: I don’t want to grow up. I don’t want youto die. I don’t want to die. She’s five.Her tongue jimmies her first tooth loose from its warmbottom gum. This necessary severing can’t come withouta little wriggle and push, a little blood. I …

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Prelude

Prelude One night, when you are to readYour poems after a womanWho performs in a beretJauntily angled and a scarfTrailing fringe to her knees, you’reEmbarrassed enough to ponderFeigning illness, every wordYou are about to read becomeAs pretentious as her voiceLifted at the close of each lineAlready dense with inflections. As the half-filled room, formerlyA small …

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Beer Money for Almost Nothing

Beer Money for Almost Nothing “Holdin’ on to sixteen as long as you can Change is coming ’round real soon Make us women and men.” John Cougar Mellencamp, “Jack and Diane” The Rolling Rock Brewery, red brick behemoth, stood just down the street. I’d had some of the palest ale already, but in nineteen-eighty-two I stepped inside. …

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Glendale Lake

by Matthew Ussia

Glendale Lake Summer neck deep on my birthdaydrowning has always been too easyno lifeguard on dutycold currents from the depthsstirred up by distant motorboatscan feel every inch of skinunderneath my clothesfor the next three days Autumn past-peak color on the hillsidesdogs rooting through leaveshoping to surprise a chipmunkthe promise of wintercould separate usfrom our sacred …

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Vanishing Point

by Valerie Bacharach

Vanishing Point Wind kicks sand, a mist of saltwater layers my skin.I am on Hatteras island, the Atlantic on one side, Pamlico sound on the other. My feet unsteady as waves roll in, shift ground beneath me.I walk and walk, stop to gather a few intact shells, ocher and cream, maroon and gray,what were once …

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Our Ark

by Philip Terman

Our Ark If it’s the spruce it must be the mourning doves, the willow— the two blue birds the arborvitaes—robins If it’s the shagbark hickory the red-headed woodpecker If it’s the red oak at the far end of the trail the magnificent male pheasant If it’s the underbrush at the inflow-end of the pond the …

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Four Shorts

by Sheila L. Carter-Jones

Four Shorts 1.organic green(for Pat who died too young)when you come back you will leada flock of mallards through novice blueno more brown speckled plumagecourting distorted imagesin stagnant pond water your glossy bottle-green head will burnthe wind jealous-amber as alwaysyour wild feathers so fowllight will follow you 2.Construction Worker(about an eighth grade girl) She could …

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To My Young Self

by Susan Shaw Sailer

To My Young Self you took up nearly no space so quiet you were never heard or seen see here in the front yard among the mini Japanese maple tree the Oregon grape bush the stained-brown fence beyond you were a piece of beauty bark merely ground …

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The Sea Lion Who Saved The Boy Who Jumped From the Golden Gate

by Jane McCafferty

The Sea Lion Who Saved The Boy Who Jumped From the Golden Gate 1.All my slippery-slick dark life,whether at sea with a raftof sisters and brothers,or on rockssprawled in a colony,I’ve loved the water.Sometimesin the depthsI’ll sleep,then waketo breakthrough water’s skinto look at stars —swallowing them with my eyes.I’ve loved tunnelingtwistingturningcelebratingthe impossible freedomof having no …

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The Factory

by Michael Comiskey

The FactoryI start my shift as jars and bottles marchin perfect ranks and files from the oven,glass soldiers of an army on parade.An electric selector inspects theirwarm bodies for weakness; those that don’t passmuster must be mustered out—returned tothe furnace to be melted and recast.Maybe on their next try they can run theobstacle course. Those …

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Culture PQ Poem

Morning Yoga

Morning Yoga The yoga ladies gather at daybreak,drag plastic chairs over cracked earthinto straggling rows. Bright greetings and murmured joysflit lightly through the clustered groups,conspire against the teacher’s drone: “Bring silence to your Practice,breathe deeply—inhale, sustain, and exhale—listen to the sacred sound of Ommm. . .” But the yoga ladies gather to gossip,exchange the tremors …

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Ghost Park

by Ellen McGrath Smith

Ghost Park The dog took off near the backhoe stuck in its rutand I followed through tan brush,watching his white shape zip up the mud path. A plateau halfway up the city mountain:an abandoned basketball court,chain-link strangled by vines,backboard standing indecisive abovea spread of soggy beer-cases, broken bottles, crinkled cans.Of course, a used condom here …

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Finny Cora

by Maxwell King

Finny Cora Finbar bolted down a big breakfastand walked with his best humanto the greenwhere he had his morning poop–on the way back twenty paces from homeall four feetwent out from under him . . . heart gone that mercifully quick Cora outlived her mateby three yearsslowing down. . . and down . . . …

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monkey bars

by Charlotte Pruett

monkey bars it’s lifting your feet as trains pass,holding your breath near graves—it’s hidingshivers as you angel in the snow. it’s filling your rain boots with puddles,water-logged Velcrotoo soggy to stick––it’s gum, decades-old,decayingunder desks. it’s crunching leavesonce they orange;their sound bites like brown-bagged lunch—it’s cartons of milk curdlingin heatwaves. it’s stuffing inch wormsin pocketsand forgettingby laundry day—it’s hanginghand-me-downsyou’re sureare shrinking. it was sitting on daddy’s suitcase,your …

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I Could Live There

I Could Live There A colonial perchedon a leafy hillside—its yarda backslope of rhododendronand weed, a bit of grasshere and there— I could live there, I thinkas the train rolls by. But then I see a perfect woodof evenly spaced pinesand long to lie on the warmed fallen needles, their scent a relieffrom housekeeping tedium.I …

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When Did Prison Become My Home?

When Did Prison Become My Home? My wife had to leave me first,saying so over the phone,the fifteen-minute inmate call long enoughfor her to speak pregnant & separationso I knew my home was not my home.Then came work, waving its armslike a candidate for office,promising a few extra dollarsin my trustee account. Too,I wrote poems …

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mountebank afternoon

by Jason Baldinger

mountebank afternoon (for angele ellis) contrails fadesun tries to breathelife into the old city mission the art deco erawritten in lamppostwatched by eaglesbronzed in way back the wind across mountebankafternoon stretches a flagto the point it could break then take to the skya kite of a freedom imaginedlike the leaves that decoratethese hillsides bare trees

Interstate Five

by Ryler Dustin

Interstate Five What remains of these lost deltasafter the mills shut down: an artof disappearing, black-windowed bars,the towers of a closed factorystill blinking their red lights to hideno work’s inside. For yearsI drove past these roadside dinerscarved out of rain, trailer parks linedwith European trees, the truck stopwhere cigarette smoke driftsinto the air like a …

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Colors

by Deborah Bogen

Colors Blood-red was all the rage that year — in the fashion magazines and the furniture showrooms. So, now we had the new loveseat, my mother’s find — the fabric called blood-red, but it looked older and dried up. Something closer to rust. The walls of my room were a perfect sky blue and my …

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