Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Winter's Last Apple
    Winter's Last Apple
    Winter's Last Apple
    Ebook113 pages56 minutes

    Winter's Last Apple

    By Ken Poyner

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A collection of poems, prose poems, and micro-fiction pieces, speculative and surreal, which touch upon various aspects of villainy, saintliness, debauchery, responsibility and discovery. These pieces have appeared in as diverse a swath of magazines as "Asimov's Science Fiction", "Grievous Angel", "Unbroken Journal", "Rune Bear", "Pank" and dozens of others.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKen Poyner
    Release dateJun 19, 2023
    ISBN9798215537091
    Winter's Last Apple
    Author

    Ken Poyner

    Ken Poyner has published more than 200 stories and 1200 poems in more than 200 journals and magazines, both print and web based. His books include "Cordwood" (poetry), 1985; "Sciences, Social" (poetry), 1995; "Constant Animals" (fictions), 2013; "The Book of Robot"; (poetry), 2016; "Victims of a Failed Civics"; (poetry), 2016; "Avenging Cartography"; (fictions), 2017; "The Revenge of the House Hurlers" (fictions), 2018; and more, with his latest being speculative poetry in "Lessons From Lingering Houses", 2022. He has taught creative writing on a Poets in the Schools Virginia teaching fellowship; and given readings, or taught seminars, at Bucknel University, George Washington University, the Bethesda Writers Center, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for multiple Pushcart prizes, multiple Rhysling and Dwarf Stars awards, the Sidewise award, and several Best of the Net awards. His work appears in a number of contemporary anthologies. He is known for his surreal and Irreal topics and methods.

    Read more from Ken Poyner

    Related to Winter's Last Apple

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Ducks Of Home

      Sep 19, 2022

      The Ducks Of Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Mar 1, 2019

      Not humble, a quilt takes credit for inventing cinema. Jump cuts? Sure—look: two shepherdesses evading rockets. And here’s rosefilled toile-land again. Other quilts at the bottom of the fulllinen chest running away from bad shepherds in toile-l and f

      2 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      Without the adventof Stockholm Syndrome,how could I havelearned to love myself so much? I’m asking Godand New York, can anyonehelp me? (An all-but-audible “or else.”) The captain’s chair:it’s beginning to smella little too much like me. Again.But the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ready, Set, Let go!

      May 15, 2019

      Ready, Set, Let go!
      11 min read

    • Article

      Until The Sea Closed Over Us And The Light Was Gone

      Jul 1, 2020

      —Dante, Canto XXVI But if the truth is dreamed of toward the morning—El Paso Although it was really last summer’s song,all this summer Despacito played on as slower then I turned myself to gazeupon Juarez. The summer everything hurts my eyes, a dozen

      6 min read

    • Article

      Otterly Wonderful

      May 25, 2022

      Otterly Wonderful
      5 min read

    • Article

      As the World Collapses

      Jul 27, 2017

      As the World Collapses
      7 min read

    • Article

      Six Bestiary Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      The world, is it finite? Pliny the Elderon what he saw and heard, 37 “books” toround that up, early C.E. as heproceeded to be infinite. His Naturalis. His Historia.First bestiary ever in Book 8. Land lifeand sea life and through-the-air and undergrou

      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Sep 1, 2020

      I was only eight. Not the driver, but I wasthe one who begged for the cats. Our father,so allergic he stopped breathing sometimes,gave in. So long as I fed them.So long as we kept them in the garage. Outdoor cats we called them. All I wanted was a bo

      3 min read

    • Article

      Beautiful In The Distance

      Jun 24, 2019

      Beautiful In The Distance
      10 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      Light delimits the darkness as snowgives shape to the silence of winter trees.Above a rooftop, the shadow of illness hoversindistinguishable from the wraithsof common chimney smoke.Strip skin from flesh, flesh from boneto behold the comical, adumbrat

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tapeworms

      Jun 1, 2024

      Tapeworms
      16 min read

    • Article

      Lay Of The Land

      May 3, 2020

      TODAY I’m the self-appointed inspector of the alley behind our house. A mop rests end-up on my neighbor’s chainlink fence, its teardrop loops of purple string drying in the heat. Wisteria, I think, because it’s spring, and I have flowers on the brain

      17 min read

    • Article

      First Flight

      Aug 4, 2020

      First Flight
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Plague Legends

      Dec 1, 2021

      The Plague Legends
      12 min read

    • Article

      Cul-de-Sac

      Dec 1, 2021

      That old rage for order: how my father drove a square mouthed mower over-and-back, over-and-back, each row of neatly trimmed grass cut just like he told his barber: boy’s short, regular. O pioneer, taming this joke bit of prairie, no bindweed or dog

      5 min read

    • Article

      How the Lark Got Her Crest

      May 30, 2023

      How the Lark Got Her Crest
      15 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Winter's Last Apple

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Winter's Last Apple - Ken Poyner

      WINTER’S LAST APPLE

      An empty morning rises with snow between our windows. The white pressing on our sills tries to slip under the stoic wood, and has its words for us. I hunger for the warmth of your thriving heart. I can see through the shatters of snow the outline of your small room – the table, the mirror, the closet door held ajar by your own flop-eared and grievously tempting closet monster, even the anthrax sealed envelope of your love’s lasting love lying unopened – where surely you wait coiled in bed like a pity, dimly aware of the man across but a brief way: the man thinking in his metal idleness of your heart, and the warmth it might be in anyone’s hands. No, in his.

      A HISTORY OF BIOPHYSICS

      Once a drawer of ghosts is filled

      I shut it and connect the latch

      So it will not slide unattended open.

      Ghosts need their routine. So I fold

      And catalogue. I note, about each,

      Its circumstance of special attributes:

      So many idiosyncrasies – but enough

      Idiosyncrasies pooled, and the lot of them

      Make a colossal ordinary. I cannot

      Come to that conclusion too soon.

      Each ghost for a while deserves

      A modicum of respect. But it is

      Inevitable – tray after tray of ghosts,

      Each perhaps alone a haunting of merit;

      Taken together in their great weightless mass

      A background hum that is just the noise

      Of the Universe coming, the Universe going.

      It is my routine, and I know it.

      ALLEGING ROMANCE

      You assemble the car out of ordinary things: cabinetry, dining room chairs, a bed worn out, three chickens and an old dog from Henley’s. Its engine is the heart of a bear. You draw the choke and the heart sputters, coughs itself into rhythm, pushes blood into the axles. You proudly slip into the barbed wire seat, pull a feather to signal you are entering the public street. On her porch, your future wife is turning over furniture, prying at loose boards – her long, rusting chain dress blindly seducing the broken porch light – her mouth worriedly wicking where oh where is my thundering bear?

      CHILDREN IN THE RAFTERS

      I hear they inhabit

      The girders at the tops of unused warehouses,

      Comfortable in the cramp

      Of supporting joists and bracing beams, yet

      Buffered by all the empty space below.

      Even with rusted skylights and missing panels,

      There is still enough dark left at the roof to eat them

      Like the last of this week’s groceries.

      Listen: you can hear them shifting,

      Swaying on the senile metal, wrapped

      Four limbs around a weight bearing pylon:

      A building and a subspecies indivisible.

      I am not afraid of them. Some

      Say they will drop molding ceiling tiles

      On the unconcerned passing below,

      Piss on your halo as you angel-step through.

      My little brothers. At home in no home,

      Watching the abandoned family abandoning,

      Watching them scurry at ground level while,

      Almost human, they claim the warehouse air

      And the right to drop whatever they want.

      I am always concerned, and when

      I take the shortcut through this rotting post-worth

      Construction, if I have one I drop

      A penny or a nickel on the floor,

      Sometimes the still grieving half

      Of a cigarette. I imagine I can hear

      The shadow excitement above me; and when

      I come back through, as safe one way as

      The other, always what I have left them

      Is gone.

      SEASIDE EMBRACE

      I remember us at the beach. You wore one of those one piece bathing suits with the cut-out sides, and I had full shorts and a t-shirt. The rapt pier lights kept us far enough away. The water was muscling in crabs. The crabs started picking at the fish. Then, they noticed us. I could see their eyestalks waving. They collected themselves, claws clacking out what only just then I understood was language. You did not recognize it. I could not translate it for either of us, but I knew it was a terrible language of injury and dissolution and that surely its contents were directed at us. And then they came: dozens, perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands. You did not see the danger, but, ever the dutiful lover, you ran when I said run and we sped parallel to the shoreline, a gathering of crabs carving the sand behind us. You seemed excited by your breathing. I was thinking we could not run with only the water at our side: we needed to turn and run inland. Likely you were never there and I have never been to the beach, but I have been smuggling crabs into the old barn out back, trying to translate the awful clack they make between themselves, a language

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1