Hello Panoply Community

We’re taking a moment to ask for your help. Like many similar publications, Panoply is an all-volunteer journal. Other than our own bank accounts, we have two sources of income: fees generated by our contests (one so far), and donations. 

If you like what you see, the “wide-ranging and impressive array of writing,” please consider making a donation via PayPal. Just use the PayPal button in the right-hand margin. As we say here, “bandwidth ain’t cheap,” and that’s not only bandwidth for the site, but also for our submissions software.

Thanks for your consideration and generosity! While this is clearly a labor of love for us, it’s also a cost. 

Very shortly, we’ll be posting our nominations for the Pushcart Prize. We’ll also be posting a review of an upcoming chapbook. Then, we’ll open our call for submissions for Issue 14, expected in early January.

We thank you for all of your support and wish you the best!

Andrea, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors

This piece is devastatingly indirect.

yes, you have heard how it snaps jagged on a mother’s lower jaw / there is something between us which undulates beneath a skim of name / you can spin a lover’s name into your grandmother’s / anne marie / mary anne / i have given to strangers the names my parents weighed against each other for me / i have given the names of boys / i have given them a pickling of androgyny & outlines of men who already exist / i hear the middle sandwiched as subsoil / i hear the question of syllables in my sister’s name, sarae / like two random ingredients slushed together: s-er-ay / my coworker leaves her signature in the form of absence / c.l. dunklow / she is neither man nor woman / but something left unfinished / i allow my hand to spasm when i write my name / to scrunch and hide letters behind the shoulders of their neighbors / i want to write something new / in the optional middle name sections of documents / something that reads like it can be loved //      

Liam Strong is a transgender-non-binary writer and the editor-in-chief of NMC Magazine, Northwestern Michigan College’s creative arts magazine. You can find their works in Impossible Archetype, Painted Cave, Dunes Review, Clementine Unbound, Monday Night, IDK Magazine, 3288 Review and Leaves of Ink.

For more Editors’ Choices, please visit:
Knock, Knock. Who’s There? Blasphemy, Who? – Jennifer Maloney
you lift your finger carefully as if heavy with paint – Kate LaDew
Bottled Ship – Aris Kian
Before Sweat Had a Name – Katherine Hoerth

Photo by Andrea Walker

Greetings in summer! We hope that during the heat of the season, you took time to savor the simple beauty of things. They abound! Issue 13 abounds with simple beauty as well, for which we thank our contributors. This issue includes an unusual number of longer pieces, many pop culture allusions, and a higher quantity of pieces with real attitude, verging on irreverence! As usual, we think you’ll enjoy the wide variety of themes, styles, and voices.

Look for Editors’ Choices weekly beginning in September. We’ll also have a new chap book review and our annual nominations for the Pushcart Prize, a real highlight for us all. Thanks for reading Panoply. Stay cool and reverent.

Best wishes,
Andrea, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors

Table of Contents

13th and Island Detox – Robert Rickelman
After 10 days roughnecking Oklahoma oilfields – Steve Gerson
After a Revolution – Susan Tepper
Agony of the Leaves – Blaise Allen
And So She Missed Early Spring – Amy O’Hearn
And Then She Walks Away – Kathleen Hogan
Avalon – Patricia Nelson
Before Sweat Had a Name – Katherine Hoerth
Bottled Ship – Aris Kian
Burial Site – Remi Recchia
Cactus Flower – Tova Feldmanstern
Chasing Grace – Lauren Scharhag
Coughing at the Wake – Linda Johnston Muhlhausen
Cynthia – Lenny DellaRocca
Daughters, spring – Arlyn LaBelle
Day 63 – Robert L. Penick
Dream Back – Timothy Pilgrim
A Dress to Die For – Sarah Brown Weitzman
The Epicurean Candidate – Nick Romeo
Epiphany – Sheila Black
Faye Taking a Breath – Rikki Santer
Feeder – Max Heinegg
Generations Heeling – Greg Maddigan
Green Pastures – Seth Grindstaff
Grief in 3 Years – Nicole McCaffety
hatchlings – Leo Levinsky
Hermits – Jessica Sommerfeldt
How to Live Stoned – Bob Hoeppner
It’s Aye Been – Carol Stewart
Joint Custody – Sherri Wright
Knock, Knock. Who’s There? Blasphemy, Who? – Jennifer Maloney
Learning by Heart – Laura Foley
Linnets – Hilda Weiss
Looking for Tommy Underwater – Zack Hutchinson
lord and taylor – Wayne-Daniel Berard
Loug Kya Kahen Gay – Laiba Fatima
Love Letter to the Blues – Adrian Potter
Museum – Diana Donovan
My Block of Time – Barbara Crane
My Way – Patricia Carragon
The One Who Always Gets Away – Philip Kobylarz
Outer Banks Beach – Ed Ahern
The Palm Reader of Hempstead – Gianna Sannipoli
Pass – Chad W. Lutz
Perfect Date Night – Lucas Shepherd
Why We Stopped in Petra – Andy Oram
Protected – Frances Koziar
Reflection – Laura Johnson
Reindeer Beards – Susan Kay Anderson
The Return – Karen McAferty Morris
road-house – Stephen House
Silver – Robert Nisbet
Snowdonia – Alan Parry
Stranger – Jason Emde
Suburban Wild – Joanne Furio
Summary in Free Verse 2 – Ann Mikusinski
Synesthesia – Gage Crowder
There Were So Many Apples – Elena Nailyevna
These Days – Erika Noel Johnson
Through the Keyhole – Christie Marra
Understory – Stephanie L. Harper
We Were Sitting by the River – Alec Solomita
What a Middle Name Is – Liam Strong
Window – Mzwandile Poncana
Windows Taught Us One Thing – Jonathan Yungkans
you lift your finger carefully as if heavy with paint – Kate LaDew

Once again, we pause to thank the many donors who help sustain our little e-zine. Panoply is a labor of love, growing organically, buoyed by the generosity of our readers. (Bandwidth ain’t cheap!) We hope you continue to enjoy what you read here and welcome you to tell your friends! You can also Like our Facebook page (Panoply). 

Recent donors include:

• Victor Alarcon
• Anonymous
• Ginger Dehlinger
• Grove Koger
• Randy Mazie
• JC Reilly
• Sharon Rubenstein

If you’d like to make a donation, just click the link in the right-hand margin. We do appreciate it!

Look for Issue 13 in late August.

All our best wishes,

Andrea, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors

32 pages, $14.99
Finishing Line Press
ISBN 978-1-63534-689-3
Available at Amazon.com and finishinglinepress.com
Submitted by Ryn Holmes, June 2019

For a novel and humorous take on that old, old story, male and female, one must jump in and sail away to the Galapagos Islands. It is there that Caroline Simpson cleverly draws upon the courting behavior of its native life to provide us with an analogy of both touching and ridiculous human romance in seven chapters of narrative poetry form.

As she compares and contrasts our behavior with such wild life as that of blue-footed boobies, frigate birds, giant tortoises, etc., the writer also links them by offering options; if the courtship style of one creature doesn’t suit your needs, jump backwards or forwards to a different poem and try out something else. Intriguingly, the seventh and final “chapter” relates the seductive behavior between an Ecuadorian sailor and a single American woman aboard a cruise ship bound for the Galapagos Islands. They try out many actions, such as various facial movements, touch, language, etc., to draw in each other with success.

She rounds out the chapbook with poems that continue the dance between men and women while still utilizing animal life in the opposite of anthropomorphizing, In “The Scent of a Man,” she effectively relates her interactions in various scent, becomes a snail in “A Snail’s Life,” youthful in “The Fawn,” and so on, wrapping it all up in the graceful, “Love Story.” Ms. Simpson’s language is provocative, approachable and well-suited to the topic and the “primitive” life of the Islands.

Caroline N. Simpson teaches English at the Tatnall School, Wilmington, DE. Her poetry and nonfiction have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she won Honorable Mention in Hot Street’s 2013 Emerging Writers Contest. Her chapbook, Choose Your Own Adventure and Other Poems, was published by Finishing Line Press in October 2018. 

For additional chapbook reviews, please visit: Previous Chapbook Reviews

Photo by Andrea Walker

Spring has sprung throughout North America. Trees have been in bud here in Pensacola for a few weeks now, the joy of rebirth and renewal. Our contributors renew our own spirits, and we hope they renew yours as well! 

Once again, we happen upon bunches of work that touch on certain themes. Coincidence is nearly a rule here at Panoply! Issue 12 features a clutch of poems about sex; another about family; another about home towns, both current and former. And of course, there are a host of other wonderful works on a variety of other themes, all flowing with art and wonder. We hope you enjoy the issue!

Issue 13, unthemed, is scheduled for publication around August 23, with our Call for Submissions, July 5-28. We’ll update our announcements as those dates approach. As usual, we’ll be posting our weekly Editors’ Choices starting before the end of May, followed by a chapbook review in late June. Thanks to all for submitting; thanks to all for reading.

Best wishes,
Andrea, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors

Contents

#38 – Brendan Connolly
Amid the Alien Corn – David Swerdlow
Among Stones – Jeff Hardin
April Snow – Ginger Dehlinger
Aqua Pura – Charlotte Hamrick
Being a Bishop – RC DeWinter
Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered – Patricia Carragon
Caminata – Lorraine Caputo
Caught in a Snare – Gloria Nixon-John
County High Point – Craig Finlay
Delphi Falls – Ellen Austin-Li
Footprints In the Snow – LindaAnn Lo Schiavo
Galahad – Patricia Nelson
The Hostages – Niles Reddick
How to Tell an Old Man He Can’t Climb a Tree – Brooke Schifano
I Saw Myself – Jacquelyn Shah
I Didn’t Know Snow Then – Lauren Davis
In the knee-high grass of Eastern Montana, Independence is a luxury few can afford – John McDonough
the irreversible future – Mike Jurkovic
Japanese Kites – Peter Scacco
The Joys of Sex – Ciara Dall
A Kind of Nothing is Prominently There Instead  – Nancy Jentsch
Lazarus Explains – Bruce McRae
Legend – Max Heinegg
Like the Big Bang – Catherine Arra
Mother’s Fudge – CL Sostarich
My First Death – Ellen Sander
Naive and Sentimental Sonnet #10 – Thomas Zimmerman
Newton Corner – Andrew Furst
Night Eagle – Dee Allen
Night Watch – S.E. Clark
Noah’s Ark – Betsy Mars
A Note on North Stars – Emma Johnson-Rivard
The Patriots – Traci Mullins
Pleasant Lane – Jeremy Voigt
Promise #9 – Tony Burnett
Reconciling with Home – Brian Fanelli
A Ribbon at at Time – Ann Howells
Saturday Morning Remorse – Adrian Potter
Sex at Sixty – Cheryl Caesar
The Shape of Rain – Lois Harrod
Show Me the Way – David Lohrey
A Simple Gesture – Robin Wright
Smile – Billy Thrasher
Sorrow Bed – Kimberly Becker
Something There is that Doesn’t Love a Neighbor ~ – Ken Gosse
Special Carousel – Gary Glauber
Spend Less Time with Nightingales and Peacocks. One is Just a Voice, the Other Just a Color – Rebecca Macijeski
Spider Catch – Mark Youssef
Stenciled With Palm Trees and Flamingos – Francine Witte
Sugar – Christian Fennell
Summer Festival – Paula Kaufman
Thanksgiving – Joy Gaines-Friedler
They’ll Call Me Deserter – Darwin Pappas-Fernandes
Tornado Watch – Carl Boon
Tune – Gale Acuff
Wasco Woman – Penelope Schott
Without Speaking – Eliana Swerdlow
Your Son’s Birthday Party – Kimberly Wright
Your City, My Unincorporated Town – Laura Voivodeship

Issue 12’s content is set. We’ll be completing notifications to contributors later this week. Look for Issue 12 on May 3.

Please note that in our effort to read blind, we are now tightening our policy regarding the inclusion of identifying marks in submissions. We focus on the submission, not the submitter. That enhances diversity and helps new voices be heard. In the past, we’ve overlooked identifying marks on submissions if they did not interfere with our blind review.

That is changing. Please do not place any identification anywhere in your submission. Submittable allows for a cover letter and third-person bio. That must be the only place your name or other identifying information should appear. Here are examples of identifying information that will disqualify submissions:

• name, etc. as header or footer on a submitted page (attachment)
• cover letter as part of the body of the submission (attachment)
• name, etc. in the title (e.g. – Panoply Submission, Ezra Pound) You can use initials if you must.

Thanks for helping us concentrate on the quality of the work! And thanks so much for submitting such wonderful art.

Andrea, Jeff, and Ryn, Editors