New Poems from Wisconsin Poets

New Wisconsin Poetry

Salvation Hill

I never knew why you waxed gravestones. I remember you young with pigtails.

Then it started raining in the middle of August And everything that could scream was steaming. The wax melts, and looks like tears.

You never got around to the Veterans Cemetery, Salvation Hill. They all died with tears in their eyes Thoughts of home in their heads. (I’m not sure of the jurisdiction Regarding graveyards for patriots, But they probably thought of the same fields You drove past to school every day.)

Up on Salvation Hill They don’t need your saving. God’s got to do something, After ignoring you in Catholic school All those years.

When heroin attacks your brain The eyes bulge and tear ducts are choked. This leads to watering eyes, but it’s not crying. That’s an important distinction.

I’ll go down to my firepit, Melt a dozen yankee candles, (Vanilla, something universal, Your preferences have been Evading me, and even your face Has left me it seems.) Paint the tears you were cheated of, After every summer rain.

Pete Koz

German Hatchback

In the sediment, years of beaten red granite, submissive to current The broken headlight lies. (The old woman, down off Highway 164, could tell you It comes from a 20th-century German hatchback. Not that it matters much.) Ten feet under water, the wires Have long forgotten what to do with a DC current And a crayfish has overwintered next to the filament, A carcinogen according to California

Mill Creek. The memory of the namesake died With the grandfather of that girl you have eyes for Who drinks too little and never says enough.

The children swimming here Know this is the place their fourth grade teacher Flipped her car and drowned. (She opted for the creek, over the oak tree. She always loved water, And had fond memories of her youth, Catching dragonflies.) It wasn’t Chappaquiddick, But there are guardrails now. The children swimming here Don’t know what a mill is. They like their Wonderbread With twice as much jam as peanut butter, And the crust cut off.

Pete Koz

Pete Koz is a poet from small town Wisconsin. He spends his time toeing a happy medium with the northwoods. His work has previously been published in Midwest Review and Oracle Bone.

The Coyote Killers

Howl something you want heard,

guaranteed you’ll be hunted.

Howl something sweet and it won’t matter either.

Someone will start a murder club built for your friends,

holding contests for the most killed.

They’ll shoot, yell, smoke you out of your own company,

take a sharp right when they could’ve made a left turn,

leaving the cold meats of a movement quelling in the sun.

Gunned-up hides, dogs barking backward.

Our growls only get more bountiful from here, honey.

A gust through a forest of lowered eternities.

When a baby comes, they’re born on behalf of the lost.

Nikki Wallschlaeger

Poetry (October 2019)

Rogue Corn

My fav event as harvest season approaches is the rough seed that escaped the plots.

If there’s a cornfield adjacent to another bed of vegetables, you can count on imperfection,

you can see stalks standing where they’re not supposed to be, the winds have ideas,

seeds who choose wildness, here they are, with red potatoes, alfalfa, peas, sunflowers,

they look pleased w/ themselves, outfoxing clever farmers, making it to the unplanned

ground where nobody is around, recovering where the amiable dirt will welcome them.

Seeds are so fun and determined, there’s no concept of liberty, no need for it,

guaranteed if I were a seedling I’d abstain, you know I would, I’d find a way to renounce

what’s expected of my common name, gliding over the roads until a dream takes root

Nikki Wallschlaeger

Poetry (October 2020)

Nikki Wallschlaeger’s work has appreared in The Nation, Brick, American Poetry Review, Witness, Kenyon Review, and Poetry. She is the author of the poetry collections, Houses, Crawlspace, and Waterbaby; a graphic book, I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel; and an artist book, Operation USA, acquired by Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. She was recently a Visiting Associate Professor of Poetry at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and lives in the Driftless.