an online journal of voice

Spring 2019

s
BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
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BlazeVOX 19 | an online journal of voice
Copyright © 2019

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

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the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

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21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10
 Spring 2019
Table of Contents
Poetry
Barbara Strasko Bob Whiteside
Brandon McQuade Brian Anthony Hardie
Casimir Wojciech Chelsea Bayouth
Chris Bullard Ciara Banks
Daniel Y. Harris David James
David Rushmer David Wyman
Elena Botts Erik Hernandez
Erika Howsare Fae Sapsford
Heller Levinson Janis Butler Holm
Gregory Autry Wallace Iain Britton
Irene Koronas J. D. Nelson
Janiece L. Malone Jeff Bagato
Joan McNerney John Clark Smith
John Grey John Sweet
Jonathan Everitt Kevin Ryan
Lawrence Upton Liz O’Connor
Marcia Arrieta Marjorie Sadin
Mark Prisco Mark Young
Mary Newell Nicholas Alexander Hayes
Peter Donnelly Rey Armenteros
Rich Murphy Robert Sheppard
Roger Craik Roland Kuhlmeyer
Sabrina Ito Sandra Kolankiewicz
Shira Katrina Cluff Dave Shortt
Sasha Newbury Sophia Canavos
Sugar Tobey Sulawulf Valor
Thomas Fink and Maya D. Mason Tiffany Flammger
W. E. Pierce Walter Odom
Yunbai Kim Zach Da Costa

Fiction
Rich — Adam Druck
Bedbugs — Benjamin Joe
Aunt Viola Convalesces — Robert Wexelblatt
A light switch goes off — Beyeni Da
The River — Ana Vidosavljevic
Landlady — S.W. Campbell
Guiniver — William Pruitt
The Ordinary World — Barbara Gurgel
Good Girl — Nakahara Chuya
Translated from Japanese by Marissa Skeels

Text Art & Vispo

Crayfish Calico — hiromi suzuki

Two Works — Vernon Frazer

Sentimental Clobber — Thelma Stays

Acta Biographia — Author Biographies

 Spring 2019
IntroductionIntroduction
Hello and welcome to the Spring issue of BlazeVOX
19. Presenting fine works of poetry, fiction, text art,
visual poetry and arresting works of creative non-
fiction written by authors from around world. Do
have a look through the links below or browse
through the whole issue in our Scribd embedded
PDF, which you can download for free and take it
with you anywhere on any device. Hurray!

In this issue we seek to avoid answers but rather to

ask questions. With a subtle minimalistic approach,
this issue of BlazeVOX focuses on the idea of ‘public
space’ and more specifically on spaces where anyone
can do anything at any given moment: the non-
private space, the non-privately owned space, space
that is economically uninteresting. The works
collected feature coincidental, accidental and
unexpected connections, which make it possible to
revise literary history and, even, better, to
complement it.

Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies these piece appear as dreamlike images in which
fiction and reality meet, well-known tropes merge, meanings shift, past and present fuse. Time and memory
always play a key role. In a search for new methods to ‘read the city’, the texts reference post-colonial theory as
well as the avant-garde or the post-modern and the left-wing democratic movement as a form of resistance
against the logic of the capitalist market system.

Many of the works are about contact with architecture and basic living elements. Energy (heat, light, water),
space and landscape are examined in less obvious ways and sometimes develop in absurd ways. By creating
situations and breaking the passivity of the spectator, he tries to develop forms that do not follow logical criteria,
but are based only on subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make new personal
associations. These pieces demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story
about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the
binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves.
Enjoy!

Rockets, Geoffrey
an online journal of voice

Spring 2019

s
 Spring 2019
Adam Druck

Rich

There was a certain sinking feeling spreading across parts of America in that time. One that no one
could seem to grab onto and know exact, and how much more so did it spread, slow and hidden beneath the
gloss and gleam of what was, in financial terms, years of great boon. A kind of lowering of spirits in some as
if they’d finally been looked away from, unappreciated and unsought for, as if the truths they’d once built
themselves up on no longer reigned true. Then more and more as it spread, a misty veil began to cover their
eyes which the grand lot of our lucky-plenty could still not hope to see. But then again, how could we? It was
September 20th, 1987. The New York Times would not be writing about that sort-of thing or those kinds-of
people for another 15 years. It was still just a feeling, for each affected to struggle up against silently, in their
own way; hardly any allowed their fellow other to become aware of what was building inside, hardly any
allowed their own self; so how, then, could we have known? It was as if, in the darkness of each night, they
were all wrestling against the very same one of God’s sent angels. Yet it was as if, at the end of every night,
they all looked up, in dissatisfaction, only to their very own moon.
James was 27, and though still young, his soul already felt to him wearied and depleted, like there was
only so much more time left to lean upon it. It was for that reason, more than any other, that he was now on
the interstate, speeding up the east coast from Georgia, where he’d of late been aimlessly drifting, to the
town in North Jersey in which he’d first grown up. That town in North Jersey that he’d not been back to,
since first leaving at 18, eager, then, only to get as far from his pregnant high-school sweetheart as possible,
thinking confidently that all the chains that’d ever formed between them would have to, with enough
distance, break. Yet, in the near-decade since then and now he’d thoroughly realized his youth’s foolishness,
as in every part of America he’d ever found himself, what he’d felt and carried in his heart for her had never
altered in the slightest. So now, finally, he’d decided to come back to her, to that hometown she never left
and to that house of another man’s, where he’d learned from some friends back-home, she and the child had
ended up.
For so long, before that decision, he had been in a kind of turmoil that he couldn’t yet admit to. Not
until a moment, in the earliest hours of that same day while driving on a local highway, as he began to lose
control of the car that he’d sunk everything into, and the driver-side ripping apart destroying all the added
cosmetic value along with it, and slamming his foot down on the breaks that very instant before it would’ve
flipped right over as the chunks of his life passed before his eyes like a picture reel, it was right then and
there that it hit him; none of this mattered in the slightest. Whether he lived or died, there was no difference
as there was no longer a direction he wished to go towards on either side. It was as if everything for him on
the ground and in the sky had already been expended, or as if, he wondered listlessly, he’d truly never had a
chance.
Only once he got his car back working and on the road did that stark notion begin to really shake
him. Then, oddly, like a lifeline or a distraction, or maybe just a counterpoint to all in his mind more-heavy,
he thought of his son for the first time that year and he wondered how old the boy was before quickly giving
up on the math. Yet, for the very first time that deeply, and almost catching him off-guard, he suddenly
remembered that he didn’t know his son’s face either and he felt a great wave of familiar shame then wash
over him; an unwelcome reminder of why he so rarely let his thoughts wander in the boy’s direction. It was
only a few hours after that accident which should have scarred him, yet only had scarred his car, that he
found himself impulsively back on the road, loaded up on his one last speed-ball and with but a single
thought in mind. It was time to see his son’s face.
And simply to have somewhere again to go towards, it all caused such a reinvigoration of hopeful
thought, listening to early Bruce all the while and telling himself the world was back at his feet. He no longer
had any means of making a living for himself. His shoulder clicked, his head hurt, and the age of his spirit
had made it so he was no longer capable of carrying out a single day. But it was only, he told himself,
because he couldn’t still be pushed to work these same couple-of jobs doing the same couple of soul-
crushing tasks, whether it be on a rig or in a factory, on the road or in a field, it all never building towards
something greater, and yet him still always telling himself if he just remained in the same place long enough,
then maybe it would, like it does, if you’d only build roots.
In that way, there was a selfishness to James’s decision, solely in his need, finally, for a home. It was
that, most of all, which kept him from really thinking out how he was going to present himself; or how he
was going to be accepted; or how Carol would look at him after these nine years with not a word between. In
the part of his ego that had been fostered since as early as women had been involved, he just took as a given
that she would be happy to take him in; even if he was looking a little haggard; even if he’d lost a bit more
weight than she’d be used to. He took as a given that, now that he was ready, he could come home and be the
father that he needed to be. He’d already forgotten about the step-father, step-child, and their shared lives
entirely.
As James drove farther north, the leaves continued to change colors in ways they hadn’t before, and
even some on the branches looked ready, before their time, to fall. Occasionally, he’d try to sing along to the
music, as a means of distraction, with that same force as Bruce, who’d always represented to him the ideal of
what an American should be, self-reliant; an individualist; unbound by his past and in-control of his story.
Yet James couldn’t bring that same power into his voice, that feeling inside like it could all be his. He could
no longer say it aloud without a sudden wave of unexplainable tears striking up against him. The very tears,
he’d just told himself that morning, had finally been thought away.
A few hours later, he pulled up in front of a one-story home not all that different or far from where
his father had once lived, with the same lead paint chipping from the outside. It was in the later hours of
Sunday afternoon, when everything is hushed, and almost immediately the door opened and the mother of
his child and another strange boy in a little-league uniform came rushing out. His son was nowhere in sight.
He got out of his car and simply yelled “Carol.” It struck a panic into Rich’s step-brother, Nicky, that a
savagely battered car door from across the street should swing open and that a pale, emaciated figure should
then be coming towards and yet his step-mother didn’t seem to react at all. All Carol could do was stand
there stiffly, trying to convince herself only that this strung-out man coming towards her was anybody but
the one her lingering memory had always told her Rich’s father would, one day, once more, be.
“Carol come on, it’s me. I need to talk to you.”
 The searching in his voice lent a weakness to its sound, briefly softening her still unshaken anger
towards him, which despite long before ceasing to grow, she’d never fully been able to release.
“Of course I know who you are James. I can’t talk to you now. We have to go.”
She motioned for Nicky to go towards the car, but hesitated an instant longer than would have been
natural, and she said “Now” like there would be a later as James’s sleep-addled mind continued to tell him it
was all proving as favorable as he’d imagined it; so charmed had James life once been when still able to be
around her.
“Okay, can I follow you then?”
A panic entered into her as she began to question whether or not he was fully on the level in that
moment. She looked closer into his eyes, unfocused and glazed over. He was still handsome though, despite
his deteriorations, and she brought a harshness into her voice to try to knock him out of that daze she saw
clouding over.
“No you can’t follow me. Are you crazy? I’m taking my son to a baseball game.” She suddenly lowered
her voice as she noticed how closely Nicky was trying from across the front-yard to listen in. “I mean my
husband’s son.” Then, she looked away from James almost with fear, as if it’d only just dawned upon her
how shaken his presence made her. Somehow, it only seemed like more of an opening to James.
“Okay, but I need to talk to you.” He looked over at Nicky and their eyes met; the little boy’s defiant;
his panicked; but each recognizing something of their own in the other. “You know about what.”
Still looking away, she whispered hesitantly. “You can call me tomorrow. At 12. My number’s in the
phonebook.” Yet then like a miracle, she looked again into his eyes with a boldness and smiled; a real, honest
smile forced upon her and suddenly forcing some part of their years together back upon them both. No
longer was it a memory with any real precision or attention to detail, like a sculpture, but rather in a cloddy
and unformed shape; like it was only the heaviness of the material of sculpture that could be remembered,
the heaviness of something built, and yet it warmed her up to him more with each rising instant they
remained in each other’s presence. But the innocent lightness of it all just as suddenly made her remember
this was all something not right and it weighed her back down, finally, to that kind-of floating malaise that
he’d long subjected her to ever since he’d first forced her to learn, when barely a woman and able to know
any better, that she’d always be alone in this world; the other beside you barely ever there at all. And seeing
him smile back at her, how his teeth were blackening and caving in like an outward mirror of what she soon
realized must have been his soul, she began to pity him, and she hated him once more, as was normal, and
she so wanted, then, to see the safe, stable, terrifyingly heavy arms of her husband around her. Without
another word, she turned her back on him, rushing towards Nicky and the car. James could do nothing but
stand in place, silently watching her go.
Carol drove Nicky to his game without a word, and so little did they react to what had just occurred
that it soon seemed like it would pass away as smoothly as the wind; but another unmentionable, in that
house, like so many others. In that way, Nicky went right along with her and soon forgot about it all, and
when they were a minute late, he was mad at her only for having missed the last green light having already
forgotten the added minutes of that familiar stranger entirely.
But only for as long as the game lasted could each hide from their own thoughts. As when Nicky’s
father never showed up, like he’d promised, and it was only the two of them back in the car after Nicky’s
team had lost and it was just beginning to get dark, then, she cried right there in front of him. The first time
he’d seen it in the three years he’d known her, and in the simple fact that she showed him her vulnerability,
Nicky realized for the first time how greatly he loved and wanted to be loved by her. Yet it only lasted a
minute, and then a minute later, she pulled herself back together with an unmistakable mark of shame on
her face which told Nicky those tears had never been for him. It then hit him, brief but hard, what that pitiful
creature this morning had managed to teach him. That no matter what he wished, they would never be a
true “mother and son.” That no matter what he wished, his actual mother was still far, far away.
Ten minutes later, Rich’s mother and step-brother were in a nicer part of town, waiting for Rich to
come outside after having spent the whole day at the house of a school friend. Carol honked once, but was
hesitant to do it twice, as everything seemed so much more peaceful and quiet here, like such a brutal sound
from her was not even proper. As a result, they waited there awkwardly, with Rich’s mother unwilling to go
to the door and get him and Rich’s brother unable to realize it must be done as he just continued to stare
longingly out his window at the homes all around. “So much larger, so much nicer,” he thought as a lump,
he could not yet explain, entered into his throat, “How peaceful they all seem.” Finally, Carol worked up the
courage to tell Nicky to go to the door. He did as he was told and when it opened, Rich came running out
toward the car barely noticing the brother he ran past. Behind him stood Daniel’s mother, there at the
threshold of the entrance, waving at Carol gingerly; a subtle opening that said if Carol chose to come out and
meet her, Daniel’s mother would be so greatly pleased. But Carol knew she couldn’t, so often she felt like she
couldn’t breath in a house like that, as if there was an air in there she wasn’t used to. She just smiled in a
slight way, without waving, and when Rich came in, and then Nicky right behind, she found herself speeding
off in a panic, her face red with embarrassment. Daniel’s mother hardly thought anything of it, she assumed
the woman must have been in a hurry and then she turned back, smiling, to her precious child, both content
and unworried.
There was a similar, satisfied smile on Rich’s face all throughout the ride, even after they’d turned
onto the main street of the town, even after passing over the train tracks which so conspicuously divided
their part of town from the other, that smile still never wavered as his thoughts only reflected back upon him
all the earlier moments of the day in such indiscriminate directions. He thought about the funny meal they’d
all had for lunch, the whole family sitting together around the table, and Daniel’s father making jokes which
Rich barely understood yet he knew must have still been funny, and so he laughed and laughed and
laughed. He thought of Daniel’s older brother, a year or two older than Nicky and already so self-assured
and able to take care of himself like he was more an adult than any of the adults Rich knew. He thought
about Daniel and all he had, and all the toys and games they’d played with, and then, he almost wanted to
laugh. Because he knew it was only a matter of time before he would have precious things too.
The whole while, Nicky watched Rich from the rear view mirror with a measure of envy. He’d never
bridged that gap with the kind of kids Rich had just been with, and even though they were all from the same
town, most went to the same schools, it was always, to Nicky, as if they were an entirely different breed of
people than him living under an entirely different sky. As he continued to watch Rich, he began to wonder
what he wanted his little brother, so moldable like him, to be. Rich never had been taught to expect or
believe in much of anything, whereas Nicky had expectations to measure against, ideals and images his
father had taught him to face. Yet all those ideals and images seemed to do was weigh both father and son
down, filling them up only with the false illusions that they never seemed willing to give up, even after they
knew for certain they’d turned sour. Soon, Nicky reasoned that they should be just alike, after all, they were
family now. From the moment he’d seen Rich’s mother shed those slight tears, she became his mother, and
then it was like they were a family complete. Just the three of them. “Even if those tears had never been
meant for you! Even still!” He told himself forcefully.
Carol had none of these childish thoughts in mind, all she could think of was her husband, and her
child’s father, and her own, and how they’d all seemed to think they were allowed to just leave and enter and
leave and enter into her life whenever they so damn pleased. Suddenly, she got lost between the faces in her
mind as they all molded into one singular image left without a personality but rather just a vague sense of
underlying color which scared her to internalize and had her speeding up, driving a little recklessly so that
she could just get them home and away from those thoughts on the road.
When they got back, no one but Rich was surprised or disappointed to find the father of the house
not there. He wasn’t even sure why he wanted to see him, yet ever since he’d been around Daniel’s father,
there had entered into him this vague desire to see his own. He just wanted to see the man who was
currently filling that role in his life like maybe he could study him, to simply try to understand why he was
not like the father Rich now saw that others could be. But for the rest of Rich’s night, that father would not
appear. The three of them would gather around the table together silently and the three of them would split
a single box of macaroni and cheese barely enough for two, and then afterwards, she would send her two
boys off to sleep at Rich’s normal time, but for Nicky, the hour and a half before. They went to their separate
rooms and tried to do as their mother asked, and though Rich, further down the hall, always could sleep on
these night so obliviously, Nicky never even bothered. He simply understood these things too well, and he
knew that whenever this kind of tension would enter into the home all it meant was that by the end of the
night his father would finally come back, and then they would scream, and then he would be woken up
regardless, and be so helpless not to listen to their every single, broken sound.
Nicholas Sr. arrived to the house at half-past eleven after a day out drinking with a few others from
construction. As he entered the house humming a Sinatra tune he didn’t know anything about beyond that
his own father used to hum it, he was dismayed to see his wife awaiting him at the entrance with a question
on her lips she barely had to say aloud.
“Did you drive back drunk?”
“What? You know I can’t ever understand you when you talk that low.”
 He walked past her towards the kitchen and sat down heavy, soon looking up at her expectantly like
some food should have already been lain in front of him.
“I don’t like you driving back drunk, you know that.” She said, as she followed him into the kitchen.
“Well I don’t like you waiting up all night worrying about me. I don’t like you repeating yourself
either.”
She spoke softly once more as she began to fix him his plate, and yet with every gaining word there
seemed to rise a kind-of authority to her voice that was still barely discernable to him, yet all the same,
becoming undeniable to her. “Worried about you? I’m worried about us, your kids, you know you promised
Nicky you’d come to his game. What happened? Did you just forget?”
“I needed to do other things today. He’s fine. He understands. He probably didn’t want me there
anyway.” He told her with some annoyance.
“And whose fault would that be?” She asked loud enough for the whole house to hear, looking into
his eyes intensely in a way she never before could and finally instilling the slightest bit of fear to briefly rise
in him; at least just enough to better notice her.
Eyeing her down warily, he said, “I swear Carol, I don’t get involved with you and how you’re raising
Rich, you don’t get involved with how I’m raising Nicky.”
She laughed back spitefully as she dropped his plate on the table and muttered to herself more than
loud enough for him to hear, “Who are you raising? Like you’re home long enough.” But he pretended he
hadn’t listened, and with that refusal to acknowledge, a silence conspicuously crept up between them.
As he ate the leftover cold cuts that she’d prepared, she sat across the table from him unsure exactly
what she wanted to occur, conscious only of his own desire to be left alone and it was only that which kept
her there; her anger manifesting itself no longer in her sound, but in her presence, her nuisance; this role
that he had forced upon her. He didn’t think much of it; he didn’t want to engage any longer with the
troubles and worries of the day and he knew if he just remained silent, his wish would soon be granted. Not
long after, midnight struck. A new day began and the phone instantly rang.
Instinctively, they both looked at the time and then back to each other as was so natural when a
strange call appeared at a strange hour. But too quickly, he saw her eyes change over from that immediate
confusion they shared to something more intimate and hidden, as if she knew exactly who it was calling and
there was even shame in the knowledge. He thought he could see, entering into his wife, that same bashful
look of resignation he’d always believed must have first been given to Eve when realizing her true sin. Yet
contrary to what normally passed between them, he didn’t feel worthy of judging her in that moment, as he
could feel a strange sense of kinship to her gesture, a sense of responsibility even, as if he were both the tree
and serpent who’d led her toward that temptation.
He rushed to the phone while she remained at the table, almost paralyzed; how well she knew that
the fool had screwed up the time, the A.M. and the P.M., and yet how quickly did she resign herself to its
consequence, as if there’d just been this sudden break in her which she’d yet been building towards since as
long as, when still barely a woman, she’d first been made into a mother. This break that made it so a man
could do anything to her, from here on out, and it wouldn’t have to matter; like any more pain could be
justified so long as it pertained solely to herself, and not Rich. Never again Rich.
It was a man on the other line, not sounding confident or self-assured like he was calling his lover,
but rather strung-out, nervous; lost in and out of place. He didn’t wait for someone to say hello, assuming it
could only be Carol picking up, and his words came out like rapid fire, unaffected by the lack of response.
“Carol, we need to talk now.”
“I’ve been waiting all day so let’s just talk.”
“It’s for our boy Carol, our boy. Please!”
A fury slowly spread through Nicholas as he looked down at her, certain she already knew so much
that he simply couldn’t. Yet that look of indifference she then returned back swiftly stole away his anger and
left him feeling only weak and confused, so unlike how he ever wanted to be made to feel by her. Slowly, he
moved across the room and handed her the phone.
“Come on, answer me. I don’t have much more time Carol, come on!”
She couldn’t help herself, as soon as she heard how weak he was, how weak her husband was, how
weak they all were, she just wanted them to destroy each other, and then, to destroy her too. This appetite
for destruction which erupted in her, for deceit and more than that, amusement; this appetite for anything
which might bring some actual change to her life as finally now, too late and yet it never could have been
earlier, she didn’t want what she’d always yet been given; this way of life, this way of being, she resolved,
right there in that moment, that she would never again accept it like this. All she knew was that she would
need to take the first step. Her men would handle the rest from there.
“Hello James. I’m here. Where are you right now?’
“I’m at a bar on… Cedar Lane. Cottage Bar, do you know it?”
“Cottage Bar?” She repeated aloud.
“Yeah. Can you come here and get me?”
Her voice was cold but her words, how could he hear anything but the words?
“Ok, I’ll be right over. See you soon.”
She looked up at her husband breathing menacingly down upon her. Yet how comical also was the
gesture, as she knew he’d never hit a woman. He may have been a brute of a man who occasionally hit his
kid, but he had been raised by a brute of a man who also beat his wife, and she knew then that he would
never allow himself to cross that same line. In that way, at least, he could still tell himself there was progress
in his home. She let him go on standing over her, till finally, she could take it no longer.
“Well, what are you waiting for, then?”
He didn’t think about her words or their reasons or intentions, simply allowing them to carry him
right out the door. Within minutes he was standing outside The Cottage Bar, the very place he’d first met the
other love in his life long before he’d ever met Carol; “The mother of your child, long gone who knows
where.” He sadly repeated half that thought back to himself, “The mother of your child,” letting his memory
linger over her for the first time since he could remember before entering that familiar bar which should
have already been reminding him of that past, time and time before.
Immediately, after scanning the sad couple of faces still there, he knew exactly who he was looking
for. It almost caught him off-guard, the sorry look in the man’s eyes; not in its gesture or appearance, but
rather that Nicholas had never till now, noticed that very look so deeply mirrored off his own.
The bartender was a rough-looking, middle-aged woman in her sixties, who ignored her customers
while they ignored each other. It almost made Nicholas feel like he was disturbing her just by ordering a
drink. So rarely had he ever felt such a lack of pride like this before. The bartender recognized him though,
with a smile, and told him it was on the house as she’d already made it last call. He took it appreciatively and
sat next to his prey. James didn’t acknowledge or look in Nicholas’s direction, instead maintaining his focus
solely on his own glass and the ice inside near-completely melted. Nicholas watched him out the corner of
his eye as this sinking feeling of impotence continued to grow inside which he thought himself only so
unfamiliar. He questioned in his heart, over and over, where it had originally come from. He wondered
where eventually it’d go and, to his dismay, all he could see in his mind’s eye as answer was his son Nicky’s
face. Then, he noticed the marks on Rich’s father’s arms and finally, he could take the silence no longer.
“She’s not coming.” He said matter-of-factly.
Without thinking, James responded back, “No, she’s not.” Then, finally looking over at the man now
sitting next to him, this stranger already so far inside James’s head that he could be repeating aloud James’s
very thoughts, James peered into the man’s unknown eyes with a measure of hope that instantly caused
Nicholas to bring his own gaze shamefully back down to the ground. Without ever having touched his drink,
Nicholas rushed out the bar, eager only to get out of James’s presence. But James, intrigued and confused,
lost from so much hope but that tiny bit still left and, with it, letting himself believe this man turning his
back might be a true sign, a signal, to follow, impulsively went right after Nicholas into the darkness. It was
quiet out there, with Nicholas only a couple paces ahead rushing up the steep incline of a street that was
normally so busy, but always deserted at that hour. James could only ask his question to the back of the
man’s head.
“Hey? How did you know I was waiting for someone back there?”
Nicholas turned again towards his wife’s first love. When he looked back at the man, weak and
pitiful, unwilling to be anything more, his tired eyes, his worn-out jeans and his faded one-colored shirt
ripping at the seams, Nicholas could see so much of his own self inside. A heaviness then entered Nicholas’s
heart as he suddenly saw his own self clearly, as he suddenly wondered if they were one and the same; these
two men lost from their first purpose and place and yet searching for any other that’ll never do. But
knowledge, or empathy, even when they strike, there’s no law that says they need be adhered, and that
hungrier part of himself, so frustrated and angry, could still notice that there was no one else outside in that
moment who’d see what he might do in the darkness.
Nicholas then rushed towards him with a raised fist. James watched it come only with a kind of awe,
never trying to defend, as the light of his moon shined down upon Nicholas’s head like a halo, his brain
already so wearied from waiting and doubting and suffering and asking for something, anything else but
this.
Nicholas looked down at the little junkie lying unconscious on the dirty ground, pleasantly surprised
by his own strength, and he told himself this was how the man probably spent a lot of his nights, cheek-to-
cheek with the concrete and the cold wind swaying through the trees above. He thereby reasoned there was
nothing else to feel bad about. He didn’t hurry from the scene, but rather sauntered back up the hill, ready
now to just be home, thinking there would no more be a thing to worry about in his life till the sun would
rise again. How there simply couldn’t possibly. For some, for as long as it’s not yet made otherwise, that’s all
it really takes. Even a thing like guilt could be thought away.
When he arrived home a few minutes later, he was surprised to find that his wife had begun packing
her things, her bags hastily laid all-around his empty, living room chair. He made himself small and silently
took it in. So much so, that she didn’t, at first, realize that he was back in the house. The suddenness of his
presence then struck her all the more. Yet he didn’t emanate strength in that moment. There was clearly
anger in him, but it lay too closely beside a heavy exhaustion that never, till now, had he been all that
conscious of, yet one he still somehow knew had been growing in him since that first moment he’d believed
himself a man. It made him feel weak and rejected by the world, but more than that, it made him feel like he
could have been anyone at all. Like the man he’d brought to the ground; as if neither any longer had any
control over their own story. It was that kind of distance from the moment, that clotting of the deepening
subjectivity inside, that allowed him to hover over and away from his body and its hunger, and it was in that
vein that he was able to accept a thing more ably than in so many others moments which could have led
them both through such terribly dark doors. The abruptness of his voice, so hollow in the quiet, sent a
particular chill down her spine.
“Where are you going to go?”
“Back home for awhile.” There was a hurt in her voice, and it brought a pang to his heart to think his
way of life, and all it fostered, could have ever been the cause.
“But this is your home.”
She finally turned toward him and away from her things, their voices each beginning to rise with
every passing moment their sense of silence slowly dampened.
 “I can’t… I don’t want to do this anymore. We’re not happy, neither of us are and that’s all I want. Just
to be happy.”
He stood there only in the same spot by the door that he’d first seen her bags, his shoulders still
sunken and his head hung low.
“I don’t want to do this anymore either. But what about Nicky?”
She’d never heard him say his son’s name so lovingly, and she repeated his own words back to him
with some mild surprise as if Nicky had always remained the farthest thing from her mind.
“What about Nicky?”
He pretended he hadn’t heard her indifference.
“I don’t want him here with me. I don’t want to do it to him anymore, to keep giving him what I have.
I try not to, but I can’t help it. The world, sometimes, it gets you so angry, and then to see out in it something
so weak and breakable and yet it looks just like you, and you think you’re only damaging yourself and you’re
only hurting yourself and yet it’s always him, always him…”
Suddenly, he broke into ferocious tears and had Nicky not already been awake, he would have most
assuredly been awakened by this. Carol didn’t approach her husband; she didn’t want to relate to his pain,
and though some part of her had never wanted him to, it upset her that he was, only now, willing to open
himself up like this as if it were only some last grasp at holding her. She felt cold to his plight, his epiphany,
to the sudden waves of remorse which strike men, so often, only at the most opportune times, only once
enough of the best parts of life have already been enjoyed and lived and it can only be downhill from there.
She tried to ignore the minor scene breaking inside and outside him, and she wanted to push past it. She
knew the sound of a single name would calm him down.
“What did you do to Jimmy?”
“Jimmy? Jimmy’s fine. Jimmy’s a bum you know?”
“Of course I know that. I don’t want him around anymore than you do.” Her voice humbled saying
this, more in her common way, and it restored some stream of power back into him as he began to feel like
things were slowly reverting back to their natural order.
“So what are you doing?”
 “I don’t know, but I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to say it again. I don’t like what we do to each
other. You make me feel so helpless, and seeing James again, and yes I did see him today, I realized I’ve
always lived my life for other people, for what they’ve wanted and never for myself or even Rich for that
matter…”
He was barely listening, barely reacting. There was no more fight left in him and he began to wonder
if there ever had been against anything, in particular, beyond that lingering feeling of helplessness that he’d
found himself carrying since long before he’d ever met her. Never had he been taught, like so many others,
that a woman or love could fix that type of emptied space inside, rather, it was just the unfillable hole that
made us all broken. He thought back on them, all the men in his life, and the sad women, and the mothers
and sisters, all the tragedy in when things never change. He let her go on rambling and he didn’t speak a
word as the memories, hidden and slow, flowed through him in a way akin only to those flashing moments
before a lucid mind’s solitary death. When she finished, he asked her once more his first question, the only
one still consistent in his already-so-far-come-down-heart.
“Can you take Nicky though, take him with you?”
Immediately, a thousand implications flooded over her widening eyes.
“I…I can’t take him; you know that? He still looks up to you, he wouldn’t just want to leave you.”
“You know that’s not true.”
The distance in his voice and the fact that he still never looked up from the bags on the ground, the
oddness of it all allowed her to better realize the weight of this moment all the more easily without that
added panic and rush of bringing your thoughts together in times of conflict. Suddenly, it was like there’d
never been a conflict between them at all, only a negotiation.
“But I don’t have room for him, I haven’t seen my folks in almost a decade, since the moment I first
told them about Rich. You know what it took to call them? You think I wanted to? I can’t just bring another
kid with me too.”
The harshness in her voice, and the lack of subtlety that crept out and carried her hidden motivations
to light, that trait once so perversely endearing to him in the way it always made him feel in control when in
reality, since the very beginning, it had only meant it a matter of when, from each other, they’d slip away, it
all brought the blood back to his head and a sense of cold beating to his heart. Finally, he could look back up
at her knowingly.
“I know what you’re getting at Carol. Take the house, take the divorce, take whatever else you want,
but stay here with Nicky. Let Nicky be yours now.”
The direct way he spoke, with a voice she’d almost never been allowed to take in as a younger girl in a
religious home, a voice of solidity that had led her astray since from that first childhood home she’d been
cast out, it made her feel weak again, as if she were only something to be pitied.
“And you’ll go?”
“Just as long as you take Nicky, you can have whatever you want.”
She didn’t respond at first, just letting him continue to stand there awkwardly as a kind of hideous
anger spread through her to think over if anything would really change if she was still to be, in so many
ways, under his thumb. But then, she thought of Nicky, of how much better it would be for him if she just did
the right thing and simply let herself love him in a way she never completely could. In her thoughts forced to
the forefront, she quickly acquiesced to all parts of the transaction while never letting anything yet on her
face be shown, and, still never looking into his eyes, but rather just at the tattoos on his arm of the crucifix
and the snake, she told him calmly.
“Fine, but you have to leave now, you can get your things together over the weekend. I’ll take them
out somewhere, but you have to go now.”
All he then said was “Okay,” and all she said back was, “So go then,” and only once the door shut and
he’d heard his father leave could Nicky’s own tears begin. He’d been listening to their every word. Curled up
in a ball on his floor with his ear to the door listening now only to her empty silence, Nicky imagined Rich
jumping out of bed tomorrow for breakfast and never even realizing their father was gone. How he would
just shrug at the absence till someone would eventually tell him it was permanent, and then too, he would
only shrug, because he’d never expected any better out of it. He’d never had a father of his own to make him
believe otherwise. Nicky was angry, growing angrier, not with himself but with the mother who he was
unsure he was supposed to still love; with the father who’d given him away like he’d thought Nicky wanted;
with the wave of contradictory thoughts coming from every direction and paralyzing him as he tried only to
be quiet, rocking softly back and forth, on the ground of his own, safe room. He felt like he’d been infected
by something that was not ever to leave him. He couldn’t tell whether it was a feeling or a thought. He hardly
knew a thing about it at all aside from when it’d first entered into him; at that singular point when Rich’s
mother had been able to repeat Nicky’s name back to his father without any hint of love at all. With only
indifference. At that point, it was almost like all the bad air of the world had suddenly replaced all around
him that had ever been good. He could feel something spreading in him, this twelve-year-old boy, and he
thought it was only the silence, like for the first time in his life he understood why it needed to be defeated.
Then, so thankfully and gracefully, the phone rang and put an end to the stillness. He couldn’t hear the
other side of the conversation, only the abruptness of his mother’s frantic words before she quickly slammed
the phone back down.
“I don’t care what he did to you, don’t call here anymore. I don’t want you around him, I don’t want
you knowing him, just stay gone!”
And so much of a black mark did the clicking sound of her phone-line breaking leave in James
battered, weary heard that he almost couldn’t breathe the air afterwards, turning short of breath and light-
headed like something had truly scarred his lungs, or his heart. He rested his head against the pay phone, a
few blocks from where he’d been laid out the hour before, and closed his eyes, letting all his weight upon it
for support. It felt nice, the particular rush of calm that entered into, as if now it could be reached once more
like when he was a child, like when he still could believe in the world only in his father’s terms. Yet soon,
unavoidably, he had to open his heavy eyelids back up and the force and pain of that strange angel or devil’s
fist was all the more harshly felt now that he was certain there’d be no warm, familiar home to put ice over
and take care of it; how much more a pain is felt once you know it won’t soon be lost? He thought on her last
words, how she could so intuitively have known that a man had hurt him and it took him awhile to connect
the dots, so innocent still could she be in his eyes right up until no longer. But even when he realized what
she’d done, it didn’t hurt him all that much more than what he already felt, nothing of late really could, as it
all just seemed to wash and billow into an endless sea of broken and unified parts and how the Caspian
knows not what sings in the South Pacific and how we never can see the ways that each pushes and pulls at
the other, so too did this final wave of pain strike up against him and them all.
He walked aimlessly up the unlit parts of that street, utterly unsure where his car was and or where
he’d go if he found it. Slowly rising to the top of the incline, he grew more and more heavily dejected that
he’d not found another place to go. Yet as the sidewalk then began to dip back downward, he could see there
were more prominently shining lights only a bit farther below. Suddenly, he remembered the church where
the light was, and he found himself almost running towards it, his whole heart inexplicably rising with hope
as he’d never believed or gone to that church, or any other, as a child.
When he reached his desired destination, he found the building barely intact and clouded in
darkness; abandoned by its congregation, fallen into disuse, and sprouted like weeds on either side, the true
cause of that false deceiving light-a Bank of America and a Dunkin Donuts. From then on, he simply
followed that street which goes from one end of town to the other with no more a desire in his heart. A few
leaves above his head began to fall and a cop car drove past with sirens wailing, back up the hill the other
way and never noticing him walking alone at all. It made him laugh seeing them rush like that, how they
were all rushing towards nothing but their own doom as they slowly took so much of their fellow neighbor’s
life away leaving a hole in a community that they’d all shared. He’d spent some time in prison, not long, just
for a minor possession, but once that happens, there’s nothing to do but live on the margins and outskirts.
That fact had never bothered him much before as for so long he’d thought he deserved such punishment.
Still, he’d never believed in this country’s right to exact it. A kind of sorrow then floated into him thinking
back on that time, and when he came upon a bridge above the train tracks, he remembered his father who
used to love the trains. That was where James had first thought, as a boy, he’d long work among. But trains.
No one cares about trains in America any longer, and then, how can you feel good about putting every part
of yourself into something that… when nobody seems to care.
He thought there was a better place to end his night than there, and he walked on towards a strange
part of that familiar city. So weighed down of late had his footsteps become, and so much of him now, in
contrast, enjoying each singular moment of this walk, of this silence that he’d long thought you could only
find in the country. How little did he ever know what some parts of suburbs could be? It made him feel
satisfied and broken all at once, how he’d never been able to walk like this and feel safe and whole in his
own hometown; how no one ever could but the faceless faces here who never could look at his kind straight.
By now, he had turned off the main street of the town and towards its most affluent parts. The lawns looked
trimmed, the happiness manufactured, and he wondered where these people who had such things could
come from. He worried over how close they were to Rich that he should always have to see them, these ones
who’d started from this place on high where the struggle never had to be faced, all it took was walking up
and back down a hill. How quickly it had all changed. It didn’t used to be this obvious which parts of town
were for whom. Then, his mind went back to the call. How all it meant was that she’d sent that large man,
who reminded him only of his father, to exact that familiar anger. He didn’t blame her for it; he knew, only
through her, how very deserved it had been. Suddenly there was such a pain in his heart to be admitting that
as he finally thought he understood how he’d failed her, and only her. How all life he’d been tested and
tricked into believing that the sky he looked up to was his own, while in fact everyone who’d ever lived a life
that was full looked up to a sky that was shared. Tested and tricked into thinking it was only his gaze he
looked through when for everyone else who ever lived fully it was because they’d all managed to see
through the gaze of another. She once had been that chance to break him; the bridge only some know how
to take; the offer to build one way into two. He realized then that he could never be like these people, and
these homes, but he could have had their happiness in the first hours of his child’s life, when still the lungs
and mind and the eyes of his child were not yet taken out of such a sterile and distant place. How he could
have been there once and now to come twice was a farce, and he laughed at himself for it as he came upon
another bridge, this time not above the forgotten trains but rather a bridge above a bustling highway, “Route
4”, he remembered fondly as he began to climb over the barrier which prevented any happy people from
ever tipping towards that sad place below. Perched up at the very top, James Connors looked back down at
the cars with his vision no longer obscured by the steel points of a separating-fence that he’d never had a
hand in building. For the first time in a long time, he felt, like his fate and destiny were back firmly in his
own control.
It did not take long for Carol to realize that she wanted James to call her once more, how she might
relinquish some small part of herself to him and let her child see him if he were to just call once more. She
sat there unable to go to sleep in the dark until the blossoming light of that endless night would finally rise.
She sat there waiting for another call from him and a final bit of proof that he was willing to actually be
there, that he was willing to be serious about all this. How irrational her thoughts became as she continued
to force her mind from wandering away from James and his smell all around her, and that sense of
protection, in spite of the realities, that it had always fostered. Yet, in that forced place were not memories,
but rather only these flimsy little fantasies in her head that could never actually be true. Of James cleaning
up, of them being a family like they should have been, of him always at Rich’s side. She didn’t picture
Nicholas then, and she didn’t picture Nicky, though she would have wanted to, as simply to think of James
again in that light, it was like Nicky had never existed if that very glaze of light must still, and she sat and she
waited for James’s one more call.
James hurled himself over the highway. His last image looking up was of the trees and leaves and sky
blending together like a broken sea from a forgotten dream. His family and his community had never been
religious, there was no place he thought he was going towards. But there was still here, and there would
always be here. He wanted just to have some final effect; or if not that, at least to be noticed.
Luckily, the roads below were not very crowded, as the time of night, and only so few, then, were
forced to see the most gruesome parts of his smear as the authorities were able to clean the area in almost no
time. A few hours later, when the good, happy workers and schoolchildren like us and Rich would be
commuting in the early light of the day, we would never need know the exact parts of ground that he’d
spilled over, the parts we’ve been driving over since then, time and time again, never will we need know
where a lonely man’s mark will forever be stained upon. But then again, how lucky that we don’t see the
many stained points and marks of our roads and highways? How fortunate things are for us in this good
country where we can still drive, blissfully unaware, over our own blood; happy just to be content; where the
lucky are plenty, and the unfortunate are few.
 Spring 2019
Ana Vidosavljevic

The River

I twined through the valley escaping endlessly the mountains and snow and searching for the warm breeze
and birds’ song. My whirlpools became calmer, less angry and less hazardous. I had to leave my aquamarine
dress in the mountains, one of my most beautiful garments, and put on my dark green skirt. Even though not
that pretty, it was neat and clean.

Once I reached the valley and the village of Cassino, I walked slowly. My pace slowed down and I looked
around at the small wooden houses with tall roofs that protected them from snow and storms in winter time.
Those small houses and tall roofs withheld stoically weather quirks and mischiefs. And they were the pillar
of Cassino’s beauty.

Children played in the field next to the church while the church bell tolled. Maybe someone had died, or it
was time for Mass. Or maybe a baby was born.

I looked carefully and watched people gather in the church yard. The priest was in the middle encircled by
the curious faces of the villagers. They swarmed and waited for something. I wanted to know what they were
waiting for. Therefore, I sent one of my curlews to go closer to the church and the group of people gathered
in its yard and spy on them and their talks. My curlew cheerfully approached the gathering point and
wandered around, but then, something strange happened.

The priest’s gestures were fretful and panicky. He talked to the people with some strange fear in his eyes.
And people looked at him puzzled, flabbergasted and full of anxiety. And that anxiety rose high, high to the
clouds. Those clouds scattered over the village. They became numerous and ominous. And they threatened
to burst and destroy everything that was below them. The strange noise filled the air. It was the noise that
was building up with every new second. It slyly filled every inch of the air and the worried faces of the
villagers turned up toward the sky. “Planes, planes, bombs…” The whisper turned into the panic that left no
one calm. The people started running off in all directions without a clue where to hide and what could be
their shelter. There was no shelter from the sinister dark birds that were approaching at high speed. They
seemed to take over the control of the sky and left it numb and insensible. Once these perilous birds were
right above Cassino, they threw away the heavy balls they carried in their beaks and those balls caused a
disaster. Within minutes, the serene village in the valley became the burning maddening mess. The whole
village and the whole valley were in a shambles. Fire, smoke, dead people, destroyed houses. That was the
scenery I had never seen before or thought I would see. The deadly havoc, widespread destruction, ruins and
chaos painfully filled my eyesight. And I cried. I cried loudly and for a long time. But no one heard me. All
people in Cassino were dead.

My heart was broken and I was trembling with sorrow. Even the sky got back to its sense and started
shredding giant tears. But once the reality kicked me and I realized what a devastation had occurred, I
decided to go back to the mountains. The next year I had no strength and will to go back to Cassino village
again. There was nothing and no one left there anyway. And my heartbroken feeling let me abandon the
village and the valley for a year. The drought took over and dried every corner of otherwise splendid valley.
It was not pretty and green anymore. It was sad, ugly, ruined and shriveled.

However, my guilty conscience bothered me and I knew it was not fair to turn my back on Cassino and its
valley. They needed me. They needed my green waters and I knew that if I didn’t go back there the process
of its healing would take longer. Therefore, I discarded my beautiful aquamarine dress, left the mountains
and, in a plain dark green skirt, descended to the valley and Cassino.

There were some people, probably cousins and friends of those who had died in the unfortunate villainous
birds’ attack. They were trying to remove the ruins and clean the chaos that was left behind that terrible
event. I watched them and gave them solace in my waters. They worked hard during the whole day and once
they got very tired, they made a break and swam in my waters. It made me cheerful and I promised myself
never to let down Cassino and the valley again.

Many years went by. Cassino still had scars of that terrible attack. However, those scars seemed to be healing
slowly. The village was alive again, and those cousins and friends who had abandoned it a long time ago,
before the birds’ attack, came back. They built the monuments and statues to honor those who had died.
Those memorials would always be a reminder of the malevolence that had once happened here. And
everyone would reflect on them with a sadness in their hearts. But hopefully, neither I or anyone else would
ever witness those kind of unsettling events that killed many and caused an overwhelming shock and grief to
many others.

I still keep going back to Cassino and the valley, and I will never abandon them again. They like me and
enjoy my waters, and seeing their joy fills my heart with delight.
 Spring 2019
Barbara Buckman Strasko

World to Lean On

A spring orchard against mountains in a lavender sky, I painted

this morning so I can live in the deep purple of this world.

Rachel Carson said, “Nothing lives unto itself.” If one thread is altered,
its destruction follows, ending one small microcosm of the world.

Matisse stands before an open window, giving us a glimpse of Notre Dame

in late afternoon. He is looking into a future interwoven with a past world.

I taste a sandwich on Chapala bread near the Smithsonian: thin slices of lamb,
micro greens, tomatoes, olives. Beet salad with pistachio in a Spanish world.

I celebrate O’Keefe who painted New York, not as it was, but how it felt, crying out
between clock towers and church steeples, saluting the soulfulness of the world.

At home the tiniest grape vines on the arbor hold twenty inches of snow.
They’ve bent, but they have not broken under the heavy weight of this world.

In the silence of the river behind my house, the fish swim freely under ice
as I begin to dive inside myself, again asking why I am here in this world.
Chagall

was born dead, then brought to life

by someone who dipped him in a pail of cool

water at the same time a fire raced through town.

He said his father’s clothes shone

with herring brine. When his father lifted

the heavy barrels, Chagall’s heart twisted

like a Turkish bagel. He watched his father stir

the fish with frozen hands. His Jesus was a Jew.

In White Crucifixion the villagers flee the fire

carrying the Torah. In his self-portrait the artist

poses by the canvas like a dancer against the yellow

pine floor and red walls. The Eiffel tower looks in on us

through the window, and the artist’s brush

moves in flames to the tune of a fiddle.
A Ribbon Around a Bomb

He paints her as gorgeous plant forms, flamboyant plumage, delicate tears, thick eyebrows the wings of a
blackbird. Years before, red, red, blood flowed from the bus accident. A painter in the seat next to her had a
pocket filled with gold dust, and so she lay naked with golden specks spilled all over her, naked and bleeding
on a billiard table. In the hospital death dances around her, and her thick black hair sprouts on the white
cloth of night, the pillow and sheets. The yellow blanket grows roots while vines climb the bed post
protecting her contented sleep so that her skeleton rests on the canopy as she blends with clouds, legs
hollow, one arm clutching lilies to her chest, always floating there, always asking—
First Day of School

In the city a child waits for me—

she’s perched on her front stoop
unsure how she will get herself up
while her mother sleeps,

or how she’ll keep track

of her brothers
jumping fences into quiet
yards they have no business in.

She wonders what route she’ll take to avoid

the girls who have declared
they hate her more than anything
and how she will face the boys who
know her father’s in jail and why.

She is not sure how she will

get permission to walk the noisy halls
to my office, or what I might say when
I read her poem on crumpled paper.

She only knows she will wait there,

and I know when I see her
I will remember the line of starlings

I saw this morning, making

new designs on wires all the way
down the bend in the road,

each new design another word

I gather from our sky
to give her.
 Spring 2019
Barbara Gurgel

The Ordinary World

Afghanistan was a place that Seth Smith would later try to forget. It wasn’t the heat that bothered

him the most – despite the lame jokes that civilians liked to make when they learned he’d been deployed.

The worst part was the sand. It got in his ears, in his food, in his gear. The sand stuck to the ever-present

layer of sweat on every bit of your exposed skin and made you itchy and coarse. Actually, that may not have

been the worst part. Afghanistan smelled like burning gasoline more than half the time, and shit, and vomit.

And (don’t you hate yourself for thinking) something that with a horrible, deeply morbid irony, smelled like

roasting pork but was not roasting pork.

Seth Smith was average-looking and tall, with that kind of stretched-out quality that he had not yet

grown out of by the age of 20. His mother always commented that his face seemed so thin and pale when she

saw him these days. She had apparently forgotten (doesn’t make people feel loved even if that’s how you mean it)

that this is how he had always looked. He was bright enough and strong enough to make a good soldier, but

not so bright that he had any inclination to return to the college degree he left unfinished back home. Seth

had attended an unremarkable community college in Lynn, on the outskirts of Boston. The faculty liked to
say that it was actually in Boston, but having been born in Southie Seth couldn’t bring himself to call

anything north of Orient Heights ‘the city’.

Seth had come from a Catholic family, with several brothers, average grades and exactly two

girlfriends. “Two, so far” he used to say to his friend Evans, who’d had lots of girlfriends. Evans was also not

extraordinary. He was originally from Arizona, so he was not as bothered by the heat and sun, despite his

very fair complexion and sandy-colored hair. Evans was shorter than Seth (people were always surprised by

this for some reason, Evans wasn’t even that tall) and had a broad, open face that seemed even broader because

the boy was always smiling. At 19 he already had laugh lines around his large, brown eyes. Evans was

friendly with lots of people, but he was really only friends with Seth. Evans had a friendly, cheerful

demeanor (unbearable), and people either thought he was phony, and therefore irritating, or people thought

he was sincere, and therefore weird. Seth thought he was both (and so funny; funny fucking Evans), and he

liked him.

“The fuck even is there to be so cheerful about out here?” Seth asks, while the two boys drink their shitty

non-alcoholic beer. He looks at his friend in an accusing way (sometimes you get confrontational even with the

O’Doul’s which is such a predictable psychosomatic response, so typical) and says

“Seriously. You are always smiling and laughing at everything. It’s kinda creepy, dude.”

The boys sit side by side on a low stone wall, enjoying the respite that the night air provides, even if it wasn’t

exactly cool. Their quarters were air conditioned, but somehow still stifling. The boys had taken to

occasionally spending time outside in the evenings. Evans looks completely untroubled, the hair peeking out

from his cover matted down with sweat and his small nose bright pink from the day. Seth’s left hand finds

sand clinging to his hairline and the back of his neck, and he pushes his own cover up a bit at the temples as
he scrubs off the grit. Seth’s right hand holds his weapon, strap wrapped around his shoulder and the cold

metal and plastic resting solid and intrusive and ever-present against his leg. Evans shrugs and laughs, and

says

“Hey man, like I said. I can either smile or I can blow my fucking brains out. Everything out here sucks, but

what am I supposed to do about it? Gotta make the best of it or some inspirational shit like that.”

Evans puts the first finger of his right hand to his temple, with his thumb sticking up, and cocks his head

back as he pulls the imaginary trigger. Evans is also tethered to his weapon, but he takes both hands off of it

for the (ha ha very funny) gesture. Seth laughs, and the two boys pretend that had been a joke. Evans was

good at pretending things were jokes, and especially good at making others laugh in inappropriate

situations. Their Sergeant (Sir) called him ‘Funny Evans’ when he was being particularly un-funny.

Seth and Evans didn’t always stay up drinking “beer”. Often, they were too lazy (working too much,

working too little, you’re exhausted either way, it’s probably all the sun) and Seth didn’t really like to drink, even

the fake stuff. He could never quite shake the feeling imparted on him by his mother the first time he came

home tipsy at 15 years old. She hadn’t yelled at him, but the look on her face when she caught him trying to

sneak back into the apartment was enough to send him to confession for the first time since his

confirmation. Seth believed in heaven and hell just fine, but he mostly believed in his mother. But when

Evans drank, Seth drank with him, and it tasted vaguely of guilt.

The two boys walk through the base, having just finished dinner and too tired to do anything but

head to the barracks and to bed. They take a winding path through the interior of the base, rather than the

more direct path from the chow hall. The boys liked to figure out new paths to get where they were going

occasionally, just to (as if that was possible in this place) break the routine. Their thick-soled boots make
crunching noises on the gravel and sand, and they pass boring square buildings and too-small trailers as

they walk down what was meant to be a road. The two boys stand close enough that Seth sometimes whacks

Evans with his animated gestures, and Evans’ weapon swishes against Seth’s uniform every couple of steps.

Against their better judgement they had accepted those two bottles of wine from those Italian pilots, who

regularly had wine in their chow halls. The airborne Troopers (and the nurses, specifically one nurse, specifically

the wicked pretty nurse that very un-sneakily delivered the bottles) had been celebrating, and it seemed rude to

refuse to celebrate with them. They were talking about their lives back home (because really what else is there

to talk about when you do everything together) and Seth says

“I know this sounds like a shitty thing to say, but you are lucky you are an only child, dude. Honestly. Having

FOUR older brothers is like… I was hazed into a fraternity I never agreed to join. AND! And, I was The

Pledge until my mom got knocked up again.” Seth laughs (was it really meant to be funny?), and Evans laughs

with him. He always laughed at Seth’s jokes.

“At least you didn’t have to be a lonely weirdo your whole life. Well, I mean I’m sure you were always a

weirdo. But being an only child makes you a lonely weirdo instead of just a regular weirdo.” Evans looks at

Seth very seriously as he says this.

“Yea yea, I’m the weirdo here, Mr. ‘Oh I have a girlfriend but you don’t know her because she goes to

another school’”

Evans laughs again, and Seth smirks before adding

“I don’t know, dude. I wasn’t lonely, exactly. You literally can’t be alone in my mom’s house. But, I don’t

know. My brothers weren’t my friends. They were fine, I guess it was nice to have people to hang out with,

but they weren’t my friends.”

Evans looks at Seth with wide eyes and asks, with well-feigned shock, “am I your… first friend, Smith?

Should I feel honored?” but Seth shoves him and says

“You’re a fucking asshole, I don’t even like you.”

The boys laugh, again.

“And I did have friends, asshole. But, when I was a kid I guess my best friend was my mom’s youngest

brother. My uncle was literally the funniest guy, dude, I swear to God. Every single time that we all got

together at my mom’s, he had everyone cracking up. It always kinda seemed like his wife was sick of his shit,

but everyone else thought he was hilarious. Including his kids and my brothers and me. We all kind of grew

up together, you know? My uncle was the best.”

Evans doesn’t say anything to this, so Seth continues

“Yea, I don’t know. He was just such a good guy. Even when he wasn’t being like a clown or whatever, he

would just talk to me. He would call the house to talk to me and ask me about school and stuff. We never got

to hang out like, just us, because he was a busy guy. But he always tried to make time for me. It was really

fucked up how he died. I was like, fourteen, and they just told me he died they didn’t even tell me he killed

himself until I got to the actual wake and my shit-head aunt, who was hammered at her own husband’s

funeral, told me that he jumped off their building. Like, how do you not tell someone that ahead of time, you

know? I wasn’t a little kid, just tell me the truth, you know?”

Evans says “yea man that’s fucked up” in the way which means ‘I’m sorry’, and the boys walk the rest of the

way in an easy silence. Evans even has the courtesy to laugh when, as they approach the entrance to their

barracks, Seth says “although if my best friend was my uncle, I guess that probably does make me a weirdo.”
 The days passed, one indistinguishable from the other. The boys pass the time working and talking.

Seth would talk about home, and Evans would just talk. He knew that Evans was from Arizona, because

their Captain confirmed that before they were even deployed. He knew that Evans had a cousin and a

mother, because they wrote him letters. And a father who died in a car crash (or maybe brain cancer?) when he

was eleven. The boys walk through the nearest village, where they had walked a dozen times before. Evans

had just told him a long, long story about his father taking him to see Santa Claus at the mall (this might even

be a true story) when Evans was nine. Their feet kick up two identical clouds of sand behind them when they

walk together, and Evans’ cloud of sand chases him as he jogs up the row of men and past the head of the

column. He had just said

“I didn’t even have the heart to tell my dad that I was way too old to believe in Santa, because he drove like

35 minutes to the ‘nice’ mall as a Christmas surprise, just for me. I felt so bad, dude. So I just sat in this old

guy’s lap and told him I wanted an Xbox or something.” Evans had cracked up (funny Evans) like this was the

funniest story in the world, and Seth had seen the people behind him rolling their eyes (funny Evans, with his

funny way of making jokes in formation, his funny way of volunteering for all the shit duties, his funny funny way of

getting fucking blown up by a fucking IED and leaving his friend in this place all by his fucking self). Seth doesn’t

quite remember what Evans had left to do when he was called up, not having finished his story. Seth does

remember a blast, that smell of burning gasoline, running towards the explosion and screaming, praying

(ohGod ohJesusohGod, fuck), please be dead God please let him already be dead.

There wasn’t even gunfire afterwards to distract him. At least, Seth doesn’t remember any gunfire.

But Seth doesn’t remember much except for (the fear) the smell. Sitting in his quarters later, Seth does

remember something. That morning at breakfast Evans had asked Seth for his blueberry muffin, because he
was still hungry, and Seth told him to fuck off and get his own muffin, fat-ass (and Seth didn’t even like

blueberry muffins and it hurt Seth so much, God, deep down in his guts he could feel it there and it just hurt the way

nothing is supposed to hurt without killing you). And the days carried on as if nothing had happened at all.

-X-

Much later, Seth comes home. He tries not to think about Evans every day (they didn’t even let him see

Evans after they took him away), but he does. He marries the wicked pretty Italian nurse, and her name is

Rezzie. His friends thought they were marrying young at only 23, but his mother is elated. Seth loved her,

fiercely, almost from the moment he met her. Rezzie loved him too, though she hadn’t known it as quickly as

her husband had. Seth knew that they would make it because even before there was love, there was youth

and lust and that unnamed transcendent feeling that made you immortal. Seth believed in real ‘true love’,

like children believe in magic.

Rezzie had long, wild chocolate brown hair and freckles that Seth somehow hadn’t noticed until they

had been married for six months. Her English was perfect, but her accent never quite dissipated and it made

her very self-conscious. Her toenails were always painted black. She laughed when she was nervous. She

hated New England Clam Chowder, and the first time Seth tried to feed it to her she thought it was a prank.

They move into a tiny shithole above a Chinese restaurant just outside Back Bay. They could barely afford it

but Rezzie liked being in the middle of the chaos. Where she grew up, nothing stayed open past 8:00 pm.

Rezzie wanted to be where there was life, she would say.

Rezzie was not as superstitious as Seth, but she was also raised with very Catholic notions and never

felt quite right arguing with his personal mythos. He had always had these funny ideas (on their first date he

got a bag of chocolate candies and ate all the yellow ones first, for luck), and so it was a long while after they had
settled into their life together that Rezzie noticed that his superstitions had become something more. It

wasn’t her fault, she would later tell her therapist even as she was wracked with guilt.

“One time, he told me that… his mother’s parking garage was haunted” she says to the counselor, almost

laughing.

“What was the context of that conversation?” asks the older, friendlier woman.

“I guess it was right after we started sleeping together? We were talking about… something, I can’t

remember, and he just came out with it. Like it was just a fact: ‘my grandfather is haunting my mum’s

building, we see him on the fourth floor of the parking garage all the time.’ I didn’t question him, I didn’t

even laugh.”

“Did you ever talk about this again?”

“No, I just changed the subject because I thought, well, it’s probably harmless… and it was too early in the

relationship to call him crazy to his face, you know? People are allowed to believe in ghosts, aren’t they?”

“Do you believe in ghosts, Rezzie?” asks the counselor

“Well no, but I still never parked on the fourth floor on his mum’s garage.”

Rezzie remembers that conversation now, lying in bed with her sleeping husband whimpering softly

next to her. It had been hours since they had gone to bed and her strong, almost harsh face was still

illuminated by the dim glow of her cellphone. She had a note app open, and she was counting the number of

times that Seth had asked her ‘what did you say?’ when she hadn’t spoken. When this started, almost

immediately after they were married, it had been easy to dismiss as hearing issues from his deployment. But

today she counted it 15 times, and Seth no longer looked quite convinced when she assured him that she

hadn’t said anything.

 That night, he woke her up around 4 am to tell her she was talking in her sleep. And the following

day, he accuses her of muttering things under her breath. The situation didn’t start to seriously worry her

until her husband began complaining about the neighbor leaving the TV on too loud, when the apartment

next door had been vacant for weeks.

Remarkably, once confronted, Seth had no problem accepting that he was hallucinating.

“My uncle – the one who fell off that building – he had hallucinations too, my mom told me way after. Don’t

these things run in families?” he said, almost casually. “And it’s not like they’re saying anything sinister,

right? It sounds like someone left a baseball game on in the next room. Or like, someone trying to get my

attention, but they’re just outside my peripheral vision, you know? No one is telling me to like murder my

whole family or anything” he continues with a small laugh.

It wasn’t enough to be worried about, and it certainly wasn’t enough to bother a doctor over, he

assures his wife. Rezzie, being a nurse, knew that this wasn’t true. But she reasoned with herself that she and

her husband spent almost all their time together, since Seth couldn’t work anymore and stayed home during

her shifts. She would notice if things got worse.

Coincidentally, things got worse. At first, Seth ignored the whispers as best he could. They never

called his name, they hardly ever said anything recognizable as words to him. Until the day that they wake

him up in the middle of the night with a

“REZZIE”

His heart pounding, he lays there listening hard, but the whispers go back to their unintelligible mumbles.

As he lays next to his wife, he thinks that the far corner of their tiny bedroom is far too dark. Eventually, he

falls back asleep. The whispers say his wife’s name again the next day, and the day after, and twice on the
day after that. They never say anything more than just ‘Rezzie’, but it was…. wrong. It wasn’t a call or a

warning. It was a threat. Seth doesn’t know how he knows, but everything in him tells him that his wife is in

danger. Of course, he would never say anything (he’s just losing his mind his wife is fine it was not a big deal).

Seth continued to tell himself it was no big deal the day he saw a glimmering eye emerge from the dark

corner of the room, and even as he sees a very wide mouth with too many teeth whisper his wife’s name.

One day, Rezzie comes home hours before her shift in the ER was supposed to end, with a black eye

and rapidly purpling welts around her neck. She says she’s fine, and then starts to cry. Seth can feel his heart

beating in his throat for the rest of the evening, as he sits and holds her on their (too small) couch. Rezzie

apologizes for the crying, but can’t stop. Seth cries too, but he doesn’t tell her why. That night, the one-eyed

thing shouts her name for hours. The next day, when Rezzie goes to work, Seth leaves their apartment with a

heavy coat and no bags.

-X-

Seth is jostled by the movement of the train car in his (ugly dirty) upholstered seat. The train is

crowded, being a Tuesday morning. But the Red Line is always crowded. The passengers (lawyers and policy-

makers and students and tourists and moms and children) stand around Seth. In reality they just stand, and Seth

happens to also be there, but to Seth it feels as if they stand around him. Seth had always had difficulty

believing himself worthy of other people’s time and space, even before he started living on park benches.

Now, he radiates remorse for imposing his company on these people. Seth’s coat is thin for the weather, and

his beard is long on one side of his face and singed on the other (thank you hot ventilation grate and

drunkenness). He carries a worn duffel bag, and as he sits, he takes the time to sort through its contents. Inside

are
a (translucent red hard) plastic cup from a cheap restaurant, thrown away for missing a large chip along the

rim

a (small greasy) moving blanket stolen from the back of a truck

a Charlie Card

a travel toothbrush and toothpaste in an (unopened) plastic pouch that a well-meaning Samaritan had given

him.

There were also

a box of cigarettes (mostly) filled with cigarette butts (he didn’t smoke)

a pair of very dirty dog tags (he never wore them).

Seth remembers his first week on the street (was it really so long ago?) and Ada explaining

“For a dollar and seventy-five cents you can ride the Red Line from Park St all the way to Alewife and back.

That’s a whole 40 minutes of shelter, and it’s always crowded so it’s less obvious that some bum is riding

back and forth. It’s still better if you get out and switch cars if someone is looking at you too much, just in

case. I’ve never had the cops called on me but you never know these days.”

This was good advice on days that he could get enough money to put on his Charlie Card. And on some days

when he had begged enough, Ada had continued, “sometimes it’ll be more worth it to grab a couple things

off the dollar-menu and a handful of napkins. No use being warm if you’re just gonna be starving the whole

time, you know what I’m sayin? And napkins are always useful” and she wheezed out (what was probably) a

laugh (it may have been a cough).

Ada spotted Seth on his third day on the street. Apparently, she could tell he had no idea what he was

doing. He had been sitting in the Common, fascinated by the erhu player who came every day. Seth had no
idea if the player was actually any good, since he didn’t even know the instrument was called an erhu until

Ada sat on the bench next to him and said

“this fucking guy, huh? He’s here every single day with his little speaker and shit. Ever see him go on a

bathroom break? Some lady in a big hat comes out of nowhere and sits with his erhu while he goes to The

Thinking Cup to take a dump or whatever” and began to wheeze/laugh loudly.

Seth was alarmed at first, but the (skinny filthy) woman thrust her hand out and introduced herself. She’d

been at the park early enough to observe him sleeping on a bench, with no blanket and clean clothes. She

showed him the areas where the guards hardly ever patrolled, she taught him how to stuff crumpled pieces

of newspaper between the layers of his clothes to trap the heat, and she warned him about which corners to

stay away from if he didn’t want his ass kicked. She smiled broadly (her bottom teeth are so long and skinny they

stick out of black gums like a rodent’s) and her face wrinkled in a leathery way around the eyes. Seth hadn’t

decided whether he liked her yet when they decided to hole up near each other for the night. When he woke

up the next morning his wallet and phone were gone, and so was Ada.

Some days Seth feels the wind cut through all his layers to his spine, and on those days, he has to

make the choice Ada had warned him about (what use is eating if you’ll just freeze to death what use is a warm

seat if you’re so hungry you can’t sleep?). Today had been one of those days. For the portion of the route where

the train was above ground, the car shoved back and forth from the bluster outside and the age of the tracks.

At least it’s not the Green Line, where the alarmingly loud screeching of the brakes at every turn makes it

impossible to sleep. Seth looks at the well-dressed figures looming around him and imagines they would

resent the idea of having to choose between the misery of cold and the misery of hunger. Seth had felt both
so constantly this winter that he wasn’t sure he remembered what it was like to be warm and fed. He puts

everything back inside his bag, hugging it to his chest. He tries to sleep.

-X-

The profile of a face peeks out around the side of Seth’s head. He doesn’t seem to be able to look

directly at it, but Seth can feel it there all the same. Its mouth is too wide, but otherwise it is a blackness with

only shape and depth. Seth is sitting on a (sticky) wooden bench, waiting for the train at the Hynes

Convention Center stop on the Green Line. He had come here a dozen times in the two years (he’s been away

from home for so, so long), willing himself to return to their apartment and then turning back at the pivotal

moment. He had tried every path he could think of, had been to every other stop in the area surrounding

Back Bay. It always found him (RUN), and he always fled.

The face asks him what he had expected would happen this time, but Seth doesn’t really know. The

face suddenly takes on a furious tone and repeats its question over and over (and over and over), screaming

into Seth’s ear until the sound is incoherent and becomes the noise of The Next Passenger Train Is Now

Arriving. The train stops, and the doors of each of the crowded cars open. Seth is still sitting (are you really

waiting for a train if you don’t care which train you get on?) on the bench closest to the stairs leading up onto the

street, and he feels the power coming off of her (REZZIE) before he sees her (REZZIE) step out of the train.

She’s (REZZIE) coming out of the last car, and she (REZZIE) hasn’t looked up and seen him. Seth watches the

pieces of his heart fall out of his open mouth and scatter into small white flowers on the ground, and feels

the darkness looming next to him vibrate with excitement. A hundred voices chant her name. The darkness

begins to grow, and grow, until the blackness is enveloping him so completely it feels like he is staring down
a very dark tunnel, and at the end…. her. The air is reverberating around her, sending off waves that pulse

faster and faster with Seth’s skipping heart.

He needs to get out (OUT OUT). He knows now, more than ever before, that he can’t afford this risk.

She won’t understand, hurting her shatters Seth, but the darkness reaching for her (REZZIE) fills Seth with a

panic that is like being injected with frigid water. She is making her way patiently toward the escalator with

the crowd, she will pass him in a moment. Seth gets up suddenly and pushes his way across the crowded

platform, trying to beat her to the exit. People shout at him and shove him back, he’s causing a scene (HEY

man what the FUCK), but he doesn’t care. He hears her screaming his name as he tries to rush up the left side

of the narrow (so slow) escalator. Her screams are drowned out by his own.

Seth runs out onto the equally crowded sidewalk, and keeps running. He turns right at the entrance

and right at the corner and runs down this street, dodging the people that walk (so slow) along the shops and

restaurants. The blackness is close behind. He keeps running until he reaches the park, sprinting across four

lanes to the sound of honking cars. He collapses in front of a small fountain in the entrance of the garden.

The figure above the fountain has been bound up (lumpy and white, funeral shroud) in preparation for

the winter. Seth, panting, stretches down into the small pool of dirty, partially frozen water remaining at the

very bottom of the fountain. But as he raises his hands to wipe his sweating face, he sees they are covered in

red. Seth looks down into the fountain to see the water clogged with flesh and gristle and hair (THEY TOOK

HIM AWAY HE DIDN’T EVEN SAY GOODBYE). It clings to his hands, and just as he is about to scream (Jesus

Christ, what the FUCK), a large, important-looking vintage car backfires as it drives past the garden, turning

on to the street with the expensive shops. Seth jumps, looking around for the gunshot, and sees that the
garden has been deserted. He looks again at the water and sees only mud and rotting leaves. The sun is still

shining as it starts to rain.

-X-

Seth despaired of getting any more money in the snowed-in park this morning, so he boarded the T.

He found a white paper coffee cup by the entrance and sits down in the corner of the car, far away from the

man at the other end with his head on fire. Time passes in weird intervals during these times, sitting with his

head in one hand and the cup in the other. So he isn’t sure how long he has sat when he feels a (very small)

hand on his rough cheek. The small (butterfly) hand is connected to an arm is connected to a little girl

(wearing sunlight) who stands too close to Seth and looks him full in the face. The child is warm, and seems to

be glowing. He knows that she is human because angels (and demons) don’t wear puffy yellow jackets. The

girl says to Seth

“It’s ok to be afraid”

And after a moment is yanked away by her mother, who looks at Seth with a face full of something

cold (he does not notice). He is looking after the girl, who totters happily down the aisle towards the other end

of the car. It is then that Seth sees that the corner of the compartment is shrouded in absolute darkness even

in the (golden) afternoon light. Seth remembers, knows there is something in that darkness, even though it

has been so (so long, so so so) long since it has come out to feed. Seth thought they had reached an agreement,

assumed he had done what it wanted (hadn’t he suffered enough hadn’t he hurt himself enough hadn’t he). But the

blackness pulses when he looks away from it.

The only person who seems to notice the air warping slightly around the child is Seth. He keeps

looking in her direction until the mother and (messenger) child get off at their stop. He thinks about her when
he stands at the Broadway station, he thinks about her when he counts and deposits his change in a busker’s

(not an erhu) hat, he thinks about her when he walks onto the crowded platform of the inbound train. Seth

hears the approach, rhythmic and soothing, and the draft coming down the tunnel preceding the train lifts

his long hair gently from his face. With the breeze, Seth feels a thrill, like a small electric shock from his

navel to the top of his head. But this is quickly replaced by guilt. He feels terrible about inconveniencing his

fellow travelers as he steps onto the tracks.

-X-

Seth wakes up in a hospital room. There is an IV protruding from one of the large veins on the back

of his sun-spotted hand. A strange, very young man is sitting by his bed, reading out loud. His hair seems

very fair, back-lit as it was by the light of the streetlamps outside. His nose is pink in his round, boyish face.

When he notices that Seth is awake, the young man shuts the book and gives him a tentative smile.

“Hey, you’re awake! How are you feeling?”

Seth clutches the bed sheets closer to his chest and doesn’t answer. The room is too chilly and smells

like a piece of bread that has been left too long on the kitchen counter. Seth always imagined hospitals to be

clean and white, but this one has walls painted a (terrible) light green color, with pink and green and beige

linoleum tiles on the floor. The curtains dividing his bed from the rest of the room are a dull beige, with

flecks of the same pink and green, and some beeping equipment stands off to the right side of his bed. The

room looks to Seth like it hasn’t been so much as rearranged since the 1980’s (it definitely hadn’t).

The young man grins, embarrassed.

“It’s alright, you’re in the hospital” the young stranger says with a chuckle. “I come here to read to the

patients sometimes on my breaks. I work at the Starbucks in the lobby…”

 When this fails to elicit any reaction, he clears his throat and says

“My name’s Pete, it’s nice to meet y—“

“I know who sent you” says Seth abruptly, in a rusty voice.

Peter starts at the suddenness of Seth’s declaration.

“I tried, ok? I didn’t die but I tried. It’s not fair! It’s not my fault! I tried to do what you asked and that’s

the only thing I can do and I just want you to leave us alone now, ok? Please”

Seth doesn’t explain any further than this, and stares out of the wide, (un-openable) fourth story

window. After another few moments of silence, Peter earmarks his book, gets up awkwardly from his squat

vinyl-covered chair, and leaves.

Peter comes every day and reads to Seth after that. Seth had never read any of these books (who has

time to just sit and read), but they are always tragic, which he likes. Peter carries on reading while the doctors

help Seth figure out what is real and what is not. The heavy-set woman who comes every day and injects

mysterious fluids into his IV: real (probably not trying to poison him). The creature with the blackened face

who wakes Seth up every night with his screaming: not real (Seth is the one doing the screaming).

After a few days, the young stranger looks up from his book to see Seth staring at him, instead of out

the window. Seth seems reluctant to speak, but when the young man stops reading, Seth asks

“Kid… do you wanna help me find someone? On Facebook or something. Do people still go on

Facebook? I’m a little behind the times.”

The young man stares at Seth. He had said before that he didn’t have anyone to reach out to. Just as

Seth was about to tell him to forget it, the young stranger bursts into a grin.

“Uh, yea! Yea, sure. No problem. Who do you want to find?”

 “Well, I had this… friend. He’s dead now. I wanted to see if he had any family left. I know he had a

cousin living in Philly. Do you think she’d mind if I asked her where they stuck him?”

The young man looks up from his phone for just a second. The look on Seth’s face is indiscernible. A

few more bits of information lead to a possible match in a 50-something blond teacher living in Philadelphia,

and the young stranger crosses his fingers (he had worn yellow that day, it was good luck) as he hits ‘send’. He

wants Seth to have something good. Seth is smiling to himself when the young man looks up.

“This one time, right? Me and Evans and Mulley were fucking with this one kid in our unit. I think his

name was…. Bill. Bill Rogers. Nice kid, real young. We fucked with him a lot, kinda. It was just too easy. He’d

believe anything. We told him that if the Sergeant caught you trading cigarettes they’d take the chocolate

out of your MREs. Sure as shit, poor bastard wouldn’t bum anyone a cigarette for the whole first month. So,

this one night- “

Seth is laughing so hard that he has to stop speaking. The young man hands him a flimsy plastic cup

full of water. Seth takes a gulp, holding the straw out of his way with a crooked finger. He keeps on laughing,

and the young man begins laughing with him.

“One night, Evans gets into the crawl space under the barracks. Don’t even ask me how he fucking

got under there. Middle of the night, too. Mulley and I were pretending to be asleep on either side of Rogers.

He’s a light sleeper, you know. We had this whole thing planned out. Evans begins calling Rogers, right?

‘William… Wiiilliaaaammmmm’ Real spooky, if you’re superstitious and kind of dumb. So, Evans is under

there, whispering his name and Rogers sits straight up in his bed and wakes me up to ask me if I hear that. Of

course I tell him I don’t hear anything and go the fuck back to sleep. Mulley was on the other side, trying so

hard not to laugh that I think he pulled a muscle. Funniest fucking thing I’ve ever seen was the look on that
kid’s face. Get this- Evans does it AGAIN, a bunch of times. None of us slept for like a goddamn week. We

never did tell Rogers that is was all a joke. Kid probably went into the shit thinking that the afterlife was

already calling him. Fuckin Evans, man.”

The young stranger is laughing in earnest now. But suddenly, Seth’s laughter turns into crying- the

uncontrollable, shaking, frightened crying of a man who has suddenly found himself very old. The young

man holds Seth’s hand, because that is the only thing he can think of to do.

-X-

The new book that Peter is reading starts with a woman deciding to buy flowers herself. Seth rarely

ever asked Peter questions, but this day he asks

“What is this book really about?”

“What’s that?” asks Peter, looking up from the book.

“I mean… the book isn’t really about a woman throwing a party, is it?” Seth is no longer sure if this is

a stupid question and regrets asking it.

“Oh! Not really, no” says Peter. “It’s about… people trying to figure out if they are truly happy with

the way their lives have turned out. It’s also about a man who loves a woman, as always.”

“And she doesn’t love him back” says Seth. It isn’t a question.

“She does, in her way. But she chose someone else.”

“But did he really love her?”

“I believe he did” says the young man.

Seth thinks about this for a moment, before saying, suddenly very sad

“Yeah.”
 On the day before Seth’s release, the young stranger is just finishing the book.

“’I will come’ said Peter” reads the young man. “But he sat on for a moment.”

“Did you choose this book because it has a guy named Peter in it?” asks Seth with a smile.

Peter laughs.

“No, I don’t think I’m that corny. I don’t know… I guess I chose it because you sort of remind me of

one of the characters.”

The young man doesn’t seem to be interested in explaining further.

“I liked this book. It seems very sad, even though nothing sad has really happened yet” Seth says,

looking out of the windows again.

“Maybe it was in poor taste to read Virginia Woolf to someone in your… condition.” Suddenly the

young man questions himself.

“No, I really liked it. Sometimes feeling someone else’s pain helps you understand your own, you

know?”

Smiling, but not sure what to say, the young man continues reading.

“But he sat on for a moment” he reads. “What is this terror? What is this ecstasy? He thought to

himself.”

Seth takes the pills brought to him by a pretty nurse who enters his room. Her name tag reads “Sally”.

When she turns to go, she gives Seth a playful wink. The nurse leaves the room and nearly bumps into

someone by the door, but doesn’t apologize. There is a woman with one foot over the threshold, but she

seems to be hanging back, as if she were unsure that she is in the right room. He recognizes the woman (is she
from a dream?). She is the kind of woman that you could just tell had aged beautifully. Her face is broad and

brown with gentle lines around the eyes, and she has long, wild chocolate hair which is just starting to silver

at the temples. She made the old man think of flowers.

She doesn’t seem to notice Seth watching her from the far end of the room. She steps away from the

door and walks back out into the hall. She stands there, facing away from the door. The traffic of the hallway

flows around her as if they are small silver fish, and she is a rock in a stream. She does not speak to anyone,

and from her back it looks like she is afraid.

“What is this that fills me with extraordinary excitement?” continues the young stranger.

Not looking up, Peter does not see the woman take several deep breaths and turn slowly around. He

does not see Seth’s eyes widen as the woman approaches. The woman does not knock, and she offers Seth a

timid smile when she finally sees him, as she hesitates just inside the room.

“It is Clarissa, he said” reads the young man.

The woman and the aging man look at each other for a moment. The young man does not hear the

woman start to cry quietly. Seth lets out a shuddering gasp and covers his eyes with both weathered hands.

“For there she was.”

 Spring 2019
Benjamin Joe

Bedbugs

The park was filled with bedbugs.

They were all over the evening news. The residents blamed the homeless population. These idlers had taken
over the park for as long as anyone could remember, said the neighborhood. From November till February
the snowbirds were rushing to the desert city and they brought whatever they carried with them. Outside,
the natives railed mightily with conviction. Inside though, they felt like they were beating a dead horse. I was
a college student going to Arizona University.

“I shouldn’t have left her. She was my sweetheart.”

The old man looked at the ground. Above him was the underside of a bridge. Below him a pile of blankets.
Maybe they’d have to be burned. Maybe he deserved to be burned. That was his point, I think. I’d stayed
there under the bridge with him and that earned some sincerity, apparently. I watched the old man crawl
out of his skin, to bare himself under my gaze.

He’d been coming to Tucson for a long time. Everyone knew him. Sometimes he’d skip a year but mostly
he’d end up in the city while it was still cool enough to inhabit. He was known to stir up trouble. He was a
rabble rouser. A self-confirmed red. He’d hang around the parks and corners. I’d introduced myself at one of
those corners and made a request to see how he lived. I’d been told he was a real inspiration.
“Sure kid,” he said, spitting loudly before agreeing. “You got it, you gotta get it!”

He was a real character.

“The world for the laborer is receding,” he said then. “Somewhere, something or someone has pulled the
wool over the eyes of the worker.”

Animated, head jutting out as he spoke, bent over slightly, knee pressing back and forth in the desert air, he
honed his rallying cry while keeping his eyebrows furrowed on a distant point on the horizon. He always
had a joint he said he was going to smoke, but never did.

“This exodus just confirms the position from the locals,” he continued, looking down with a pious
expression for a moment. “We have to fight back with our own paradigm!”

He was talking about oppression and scams pulled throughout the world. A travesty of lies that he had been
chosen to fight against. But not today. Not now.

“She was the one,” he said under the bridge, away from his audience, clutching his fingers on the blanket
and looking down again with blue eyes. The sunlight was angling its way along the bottom of the
subterranean structure. Despite the shade, we knew we had to leave. The cops were just begging to bust him
on an offense, he said, and he’d only be arrested on violation of marijuana laws.

“Yeah, kid,” he said, holding a paper to roll a cigarette, rolling his fear and regret as surely as the cancerous
fibers. “Don’t let love slip away.”

Outside the day was getting hot, and the homeless who’d allegedly infested the park were walking the main
strip looking for work to get some money and leave Tucson. The world watched a previously useless portion
of the population suddenly rise up and join the local economy. The old man said he was going up north to
see friends. He said it in an easy way, but from the look he gave me, it was like he was trying to confirm
something that I had no right to judge.

“I hope I’m not…” he stopped suddenly, then pulled the last words, ‘too late,’ back to his chest. “I hope I’m
not carrying any bugs.”

I went to my dormitory, still picturing him, talking to his shadow, making gestures with his cigarette. For
some reason, I saw a bit of a hopeful smile that had been nonexistent in his tearful confession as well as in
his daytime bravado for the revolution, a smile that told me that maybe, just maybe I’d never see him again.
That he wasn’t ‘too late.’

I wished him well, stripped down and bagged up my clothes to leave in a trash barrel downstairs.
I felt good, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to get bugs.
 Spring 2019
Beyeni Da

A light switch goes off

There were many others. There was the one who held him when in a sea of concreteness, he seemed afloat,
very much like a waterproof tossed by a breeze. She was light-skinned and fine boned. Her name as exotic as
the alien in the midst of mundane. She called herself Quinta and what thrilled him so much about her was
the slim thigh ever present in the short plaited skirts and blonde wig. They called her pom-pom girl. She was a
status symbol. She qualified as the anchor in an educational milieu where no one cared for nobody but were
constantly in each other’s business, their snouts tossing uncontrollably in the dirt, chewing the cud of
rumour such that a news fled at the utmost variation of whisper and engulfed the whole campus in a heat
wave. There was no real affinity between them. There couldn’t have been. The love was choked by anxiety
and depression and a need to protect one another from rumour such that any expression of affection on
campus was stymied, expressed only either in secret, or as stolen glances and quick hand-holding.

There was also Yohanna. Yohanna had no need for anybody. She was probably a narcissist. The only reason
she even gave a damn was because the boy was the most attractive face to have ever graced school campus.
His nose was short and surprisingly sleek. Possessed of a bedroom countenance, his eyes sloped
enchantingly at both ends such that even Cleopatra could not boast better cat eyes. They were a tantalizing
shade of blue. His lips, oh dear God. His lips were full and soft, and very, very pink. A blood pink that was
not quite red. He was handsome in the extreme.
Jessica. His only sweetness. Jessica is the only one who ever loved him. Of all the others. She, only she was
bold enough to give herself to him. Dear Jessica. She suffered a heartbreak when he left. He fleeted in her
life. She came to him. They found each other. I shall say nothing of heart ache and I shall say nothing of the
long distance, but of love and of the expression of intense sexual attraction, I shall say a few words. Forgive
me, I am privy to details but I have no idea if you know what I am talking about. Jessica was a beauty queen
that was for damn straight. She loved him with a sweet, delicate love. She loved to listen to him talk, she
soothed him with her mouth, she kissed his tummy. She danced for him, she stripped for him, she was
brazen in conduct for him. With him, there was little restriction. She took him on emotional roller coasters.
He did things with her that he never would have done, never had done since then till now.

Her scent was strangely erotic. He was his true self with her and Oh Lord the beauty of her backside deserves
at least 50 pages and that is for her back side only but let us not get stuck describing obscenities.

Jessica loved him abundantly such that the love spilled from her to her cousins and all her family such that
the boy was a guest of honour in the midst of them, and nothing was ever held back from his majesty. He
visited often; in the nights, throughout the day. They received him regularly, Jessica and her family did. She
said she preferred to be called Pragma. The boy conceded. He could have done anything for Jessica...for
Pragma. You could see electric shafts in connection with their gazes every time they met. It was a love that
would last forever, Jessica swore. They could never tire of each other, Jessica declared.

In came Jessica’s elder cousin from Paris. Have I mentioned already the city they lived in? No matter.

The cousin was Laets. She was more sophisticated and she spoke French with an accent that was upper class
Parisian. Now, I shall recount the tale of how the boy came to know Jessica Pragma. In the beginning it
happened thus:

The boy was not a pauper. He was connected with royalty. He lived in a mansion with extended family. After
tiring of routine living with both Quinta and Yohanna, he registered on social media ‘to extend his
acquaintances with socially exposed people. I like the way they express things.’ In less than a month, he had
amassed a great crowd online. His beauty made him ‘the catch.’ Jessica contacted him online, they begun
talking. Jessica came to visit. She was undone with the beauty in his stare and his composure when he looked
at you, a composure that might have been intimidating only that it was tampered by a wry, playful smile...’a
delicious smile that offered’ is the way she put it dreamily to her cousins. In time, when he had associated
with her deep enough, she introduced him to her cousins living in Paris. Life was good.

When Laets got into the country, Jessica took her to see the boy. They hired a taxi for the whole day, cruising
the city, looking at mountains, exchanging stares, loving life. This was routine. Two days binge cruising, one
day’s rest, then repeat. Like clock-work.

On the final day of her stay in the country, they invited him to the mansion. Laets laid siege to him. It was
normal. She was leaving soon, she would not see him again and oh, how she would miss his laugh and his
eyes as they crinkled, and the strength in his arms when she pretended to fall so that he would grab her and
she would pretend to fall even further and the heroic boy would grab her tighter. Whether Jessica saw all
this, nobody knows... Now Laets was crying.

“I will miss you very, very much bébé,” sobbed she. She loved to call him bébé or chéri in true francophone
fashion. The boy said nothing. There was nothing to say. It was all ephemeral. Things came around. He tried
to explain to her about laws of motion.

“What goes around comes back around,” said he, but she would have none of that.

She flew to the bathroom in a hurry, leaving the other guests to their own care, not that they cared. Drinks
were free as was the food, and both were in free fall, abundant. The boy flew with her to the bathroom! He
was a hero! He met her staring into the mirror, her mascara a mess. He approached slowly and placed his
palm on her left shoulder.

“Mon chéri tu vas beacoup, beaucoup me manquer.”

“It is nothing. The night is still young.”

Suddenly, Laets felt a headache. “I need to lie down.”

The boy guided her to a bedroom. She pulled him in and shut the lights. The key turned twice in the lock.
They were absent for the rest of the party.
Now, there was nobody. Jessica had found out. Laets sustained a pang of conscience and blew the affair out
of the water. The boy was still handsome but he had developed a reputation. He was older now, less
exuberant, more in control. He had finished school. He had held jobs. Presently, he had a job as marketing
manager but despite all this...despite all this, there was still an old wound like a bruise that wouldn’t heal.

What if he had blown the opportunity at true love with all the girls in the past? That was his foremost
question. It pricked him. It ate at him. He avoided forming new relationships. He broke it off before it even
got anywhere. He had few friends, mostly male. He preferred to hang out with the older guys and talk shop,
then go gaming with few contemporaries. There was never a girl in his life. Not even a single one. Every
night he went to sleep, chronicling the day in his mind. It was always perfect, always picturesque. You never
got the sense of anything wrong. His phone rang less and less. There were no early morning texts nor late
night discussions reaching far into the night.

“What if I have blown all my opportunities of finding real love in the past?”

The question drove him. It beat down on him. It rained in his subconscious in torrents, like in the time of the
flood. Soon, he was restless from it. He tried denial, he tried projection. He tried sublimation. The
sublimation worked but it only served to occupy him in the meantime. The next moment he met a girl in
passing or was introduced to one by friends and family, he froze. There was no way past the first few weeks
in his head. He knew how it would play out. They would talk for a week, then go out on ‘outings’ where they
would decide compatibility, then they would cohabit and then...what? He always drew a blank. Always,
always! There seemed no point to interaction and he retreated even further into his shell, becoming a
shadow of he who had been.

The girls flooded him though. Some overtly, others not as overtly though they always showed him they
could be interested.

His career skyrocketed and he became the immediate centre of attention soon as he walked in a room. Soon,
he cut down on his circle of male friends, choosing only one or two very close with whom he had special
interests. He turned to a recluse. Nothing interested him anymore. Sleep eluded him. God, it seemed, had
abandoned him to his own fate; of loneliness, despite being a great beauty and very eligible. He was very
wealthy and the older women loved to taunt him:

“I will give you to my eldest daughter. She is studying medicine in Canada. This is her final year.”

“Fine gentleman like this, why is he not yet hooked!”

“The girls these days they are only interested in their own selves.”

“Are you sure he is not...you know, like in a society or something?”

“Maybe he is a eunuch.”

He avoided them. He made his own food and ate it himself. He presided over boards of directors and coming
home, he turned in with a glass of hot drink and put on CNN. He donated to charity. He helped fund
establishments. He became a household name. Many times, he met his old friends from school. They
pretended like they did not see him. He loved to look at them for the longest time until they looked towards
him and then he looked away. Sublimation helped. He took up kick-boxing and tai-chi. He learned chess. He
played golf.

Recently, he was in a chauffeur driven Mercedes. A little girl was standing next to his parking space. Toot,
toot, hooted the chauffeur. The little girl started, evidently in a panic which he struggled to supress. In a
flash, the boy was out of the back door. He reached her in four strides. Strides that were a trot. He knelt on
one knee, regardless of his expensive slacks that most people could only google online. Her legs were
shaking and there were tear streaks on her chubby face. Her hair was messy and there was chocolate on her
cheek.

“Look at me baby,” he said cupping her face in his palms and lifting her eyes to meet his, his heart reaching
out to her. She smiled a toothy smile and he laughed.

“Where is your mother?” he asked gently, inhaling the fragrance of her hair. “Where is she?” The little girl
looked around, seeming lost. “Let’s get to your mother okay?”
He took her hand and started walking to the ice cream shop in the parking lot, a tall, light-skinned adonis in
expensive garb and a little fairy princess in a light pink gown. They were a sight.

Out of nowhere, a voice raised in anger, a yell, strident, very loud. “LET GO OF MY DAUGHTER YOU
CREEP!”

“My name...I did not do...I simply,” he tried to explain with pressurized speech.

“I don’t care,” yelled back the woman looking into his face fully. She was very angry. The little girl started to
cry. She took away her daughter and stalked away. The little girl spared back a glance and waved once and
bounced along with her mother who was juggling bags on her arms while answering a phone call and
pressing another phone.

He watched the scene for a minute then doubled over in acute agony as though a blow had landed on his
mid-section. Dejected, he took out his phone. There were still some numbers in his call log. Eligible women
he had worked together with. Surely, he could suggest food and drinks and perhaps they might be up for it?
The little girl had triggered something in him. A better late than never.

He placed a call. A warm feminine voice answered at the other end.

“How long has it been! My God, what a pleasant surprise!’

He smiled. “I was just going through my call log and saw your number and I was wondering if you might be
busy...”

The voice grew quiet, then spoke again with maturity. “Where are you?”

He told her.

“Good,” said she. “I am fifteen minutes away with my girlfriends. I can see you after we finish here.”

He stammered a little. “L-like, like right away?”

“If you’d prefer. I am very much on the move so you can catch me if you really want to.”
“Sounds fine,” he said. “I’ll text you when i’m there.”

“Good.”

The Mercedes was waiting. So was the chauffeur. He got in and whispered a location. The chauffeur touched
his cap and swung out of the parking lot.

The boy smiled. His name was Koyena and this was to be his first date in four years.
 Spring 2019
Bob Whiteside

here come daffodils

stiff as black eyes

the drunk brains of the sun

surmising a grinning nowhere
in a garden of grinning fire

here comes the moonlight

turned upwards like surgery
feasting on the petals of the sea

somehow some of our follies

will catch safe landing
and we will be sad for that
the blue feet of the
sun like
ethereal wads of
chewing gum
in this ninja sky
an insomnia of love
is absolutely possible
a hazardous getaway
as the end of birds
spectacularly distant
jump into vanish
stirring our already caldron
brains
with our hearts as spoons
whisper whisper tears the
highway of loose change
is all we have for lunch
the mountain is bigger than you
you are the mountain
the blue sky
and the moon
are trees with roots
the mountain is
more than you can count
and yet as it rains
the rubbish of sunset
is meet with the banter of stars
and still you listen
for mountains
 Spring 2019
Brandon McQuade

TEA PARTY

I swear I can see through the clouds

as we make our descent

through the sea of green grass

houses
highways
streets

my twin sisters sitting down to tea

with our father

their bodies are so small from this height

the green grass is screaming to be mowed

their dresses are like pastries

puffy and white

hiding their legs

carving halos

deep and round

in the green grass

*

My brothers are behind me

half-asleep

in their seats

their eyes fluttering

under heavy eyelids

their feet keep falling

heavy and slow

they are breaking

through the floor

*

Is there anything I could throw

starboard

to keep my father from leaving?

Their mother in the kitchen

has been gone

for so long

she can’t remember

ever loving him

her head buried so deep in her cellphone

she is beginning to lose her kids

they flash like stars behind closed eyelids

nerve endings

overtaken by dreams

my father’s eyes are fading

dark and grey
faster than his hair

his hands shake

his breath stinks

of beer and vodka

he is staring down the barrel

of the bottle
*

If only I could jump out this window

Brandon to the rescue!

If only I could save them

from themselves

my red cape flapping in the wind

I would put a cup of tea in both of their hands

turn their heads

their eyes

like manikins

change their minds

*

Surely some resolution could be at hand

if this plane would speed up

if we could just

sit down

and rewind

my brothers waking up behind me

finally

but divorce is all that’s left

the twin cups of tea

spilling like the tears of my sisters

apple juice

spilling over the edge

table to earth

ants marching below

on the brink

of civilized war

over dissolving molecules of sugar

FISHING
I

I think it’s worse

insects

crawling over my skin

than a corpse

I can feel mosquitoes

their mouths and legs

penetrating

epidermis

like tiny scalpels

II

The fish jumped

coming up

out of their beds

for air

in the river

behind us

The sun shined

speckled trout

the light was heavy

on the water

over our shoulders

like diamonds

I dug my hand

into a bucket of earth

dangled worms

before them
III

The first fish I ever caught

like a soldier in the trenches

gutted

mouth to pelvis

His carcass splayed

my hook barbed

sharp as a grenade

my fingers

pulling the pin

IV

Laid up in bed

I was punished for my sin

My fishing rod

in the corner of my room

the hook dangling

over my head

like a chandelier

I sat up

to find it

buried in my eye

When my mother found me

screaming

she fished it out

so tenderly

my tear ducts

formed a dam

around her fingers

MEMORIES

You are riding a tandem bicycle

in your sleep

puppy dreams

you are trying to keep up

with yourself

your whiskers are horse hair

stitched

to bumps on your face

beneath your chin

my brother got high-sticked

his chin splashed across his jersey

an impressionist painting

one of your whiskers is broken

discoloured
dying

like discarded toenail clippings

*

Are you tired?

Are you hungry?

My dog eats her own hair in clumps

swallowing whole pieces of herself

her past

the dog she once was

but she grows them back

if I could roll up my memories into one giant ball

I would eat them all

like cheese

spaghetti Bolognese

one by
one

erase the moments

I have spent
so long
trying to forget
*

It’s sleep-dark now

the lamp has long been switched off

a thin tail of light

sneaks in under my door

my brother is asleep
beneath me

my mother kisses us on the forehead

(him first)

her little angel

my brother full of light

my eyes are shut tight

she tucks us in

slides the board across my bunk

like a gatekeeper

all she ever wanted was to be a mother

she closes the door

whispers good night

 Spring 2019
Brian Anthony Hardie

Untitled fragmentary 1

Returned addressing the issues at hand for with which I write by fate my band within plays improvised sets
of android deployed syntax or relays from days twisted undated scribbled stained page portraits//Electrified
soil beneath my feet for the ground I again retreat into

Untitled fragment

Only. at large souls color /clouds my mind knowing within my will a strength/ voids lately pressing my
purpose alarmed/ how long most of all it took to force feed/ my self the experience to retrieve the muse one/
lost so confused at best however/not one nerve has been content forever
Temper

Dont
ask
me for
the
vomit vapor
muffling flub oopsy
before us robots
in this swirling
dust storm
canyon of
My secret
Dimly lit judgement
Free caress
Says "you're spent"
...?
 Spring 2019
Casimir Wojciech

OFFERING
for Philip Lamantia

There’s nothing for the dying to eat

straying in the reliquary
hidden seeds of voices
charged in the air
teething coming dawn,
red dirt deserted eschaton
illumined by blood of the stars.
Waves of wind flash but once
against penumbras
etching bitten grooves into bone—
a prayer, an emptying;
soft by soft incense dissolves
enough distance in the right eye
to lay down lash first,
then ash.
QUESTION
for Jim Carroll

Determined to rule
the land/a man passes
from himself
from the final moment
which is every moment
across rivers of music
stilled in the air
across streets with no names
across deserts
into clefts of
monolithic wind pipes
turbines in the Mojave
green houses on the Ritas
poppy flickers
leads to a fear of dreaming—
what if it is all
going to the same place
a prayer in my cheeks
clawing
I don’t know
I’m not in my right
mind—drop
a match in the well.
Question: is the demise
of mankind the fact
that we’re killing our
planet, ourselves, each other
or is it just
symptom?
of something far
more sinister
THE WAY MY STRAYING SPEAKS

It’s useless to ask what’s within

these deserts
desolation
sets in like light behind rain,
or tame these oscillating worlds—
I’m thinking of a word that doesn’t exist
an uncontrollable urge
to believe
every strand of mesquite smoke
is a voice lifted
is a memory unravelling
and wind thrown at the flame
is born without us
blossoming
endlessly
from the womb of
the unseen
 Spring 2019
Chelsea Bayouth

Back Seat Driver

They are called Montgomery glands,

the bumps that line the outside
crest of a woman’s nipple. Which

after giving birth release a homing hormone,

a perfume map that only a newborn
can read so that she knows

exactly where to place her mouth.

Like a car driven for years,
with a compartment found

free of dust or dog hairs, what a marvel

to live in a body whose tricks
& secrets have existed all along.

Pretend we are the captains.

Move the legs, turn the wheel,
while something else governs—

Set the glands to clock and breathe.

To digest supper, organize its fats
so that incrementally our hair may grow

and eggs may ripen by moonlight.

We speculate, with the job of passengers,
admiring the hills as we go.
Do we take into account
the geometry of the succulent?
The oxygen of leaves?

Never minding a foot on the pedal,

or bump
on the nipple of a woman ?
Tethering

He is holding me so tight
my hands turn white,
the clammy under bellies of fish
They are digging around in his guts again
To find the source of the leak in his J-tube
to find why he spills bile when he moves or walks or laughs

Torture is what I’m thinking when his face,

so drawn now from my rosy girlhood,
looks up through me in grinching pain,
and claws at my arms like some dark hole
gaped at this feet, yawning around his existence,
a candle growing small in an airless cave

The doctors can’t figure it out

They remove and replace the tube,
bile dribbling down his side and he arches
His pupils constrict to pin heads
I am watching my father leave his body
Look at me I say
Remember when you painted
the swing seat with mountains on it?
And our jeans wore it down?
Remember last week, when I got married?

But they hunt and they tug

Remove a length of tube from his intestines
and guide it blindly back in, the doctor unsure
if it’s going into Dad’s bowel
or the outer space of his body

My hands are white fish

Look at my eyes
Don’t watch what they’re doing

You made me
Isn’t it a miracle?
Hard Summer

It’s only been five years since—

not a fight fight. The first disagreement.
The first time a shadow passed over us
like a seagull on the shore—
what must this large darkness be?
He thought it was the end for us,
he tells me years later.
& his perfect head is framed in candle light,
the glass of this place, everyone’s glasses shining
in the dark clink & mumble. His osprey eyes
golden & Autumn colored with pupils so wide
& dark I can see our children swimming there.
His nose that is straight as the arrow in blue ink on my wrist.
That I paid for one month after that summer, another fight—
I had been crying while I walked down the street
& passed a tattoo shop whose bone rattling stereo
mirrored my mood. It was the first time I heard about Saturn
& what it does to us as we chip away toward thirty.
That tattoo shop is a dress store now & our first spat
an anecdote. An inch worm
compared to the fire of learning as growth.
Of instruction vs. destruction. That summer, a sweaty,
fertile bed. Questionable haircuts, walks to Food For Less
for chocolate that melted before we got home.
Bike rides through the city traffic under chemical sunsets.
& dubstep cut by the ceiling fan, always on.
No plants lived, while coffee stains accumulated
on the front seats of my Volvo.
Last night after we came, I fell off the bed & knocked
the fiddle leaf fig on my way down. Coming to
he asked, why is the plant moving? & what started
as giggles, how far we have come, turned into hysterics.
A motor in my gut that churned tears from sighing smiles.
I made my way up to him naked & tingling
flopped on his chest, my home of homes, & my
wild laughter turned briefly into two sobs.
I know,
I know,
he said.
Older Brother’s Room

I was allowed to sit on the bed just this once

and lay my eyes on everything in this forbidden place.
To cross the line of lava in the doorway
where the siren of his voice would alarm if one foot
trespassed. To look at his candles that I longed to touch,
and the black light posters whose velvet skin
I once dragged my grubby child finger across.
When he reveals the portrait he’s been drawing of me
for the last thirty minutes, I’m so fat you can see
the items of food floating in my belly because
when you get as fat as me, he says, your skin
turns clear. Along with the floating cheeseburgers and
chicken wings, a luxurious braid of hair, like a
horse’s tail cascades in ballpoint from my underarm.
I had imagined our father lighting up in his way,
hanging the drawing on the fridge, ruffling our hair.
For when he was proud of my brother
it made me proud too.
Brother who put a fly in the microwave, pressed
a nine-volt to his braces, convinced me lightbulbs
tickle to touch. Who once sprinkled my Ovaltine with
rainbow marshmallows and cut my PB&J into a heart.
I don’t cry over the drawing, whose thirty
minutes of focused attention are as sweet as cereal pink milk.
I make my own off-limits room. Where dad’s spankings,
being sick at school, peeing in the sandbox, and this drawing
all live. There’s a sign on the door. I am not allowed in.
Our Neighbor Knows The Devil

I noticed something was off with Robert when

I said hello while walking back from my car.
Barefoot on the sidewalk in the moonlight
pressing his back into the ivy, he didn’t reply.
Then he began having animated conversations
with Obama in his driveway. The devil

was after him. It was so commonplace by December

we were in the habit of telling company
not to worry when they heard him screaming.
That’s just our neighbor, he’s lost his mind,
but the cops never came when we called
and when they did, said there was nothing they could do

he wasn’t a danger to himself or anyone else.

After the electricity was shut off
he stopped closing his front door.
It sat open, a dark hole which seemed to tilt sideways,
a gaping mouth. He would appear and disappear
through the doorway for weeks, sometimes rocking

in the frame. Every time he stood in his driveway

shouting at the sky, sometimes swatting the air
with his free hand, he held his pants up with the other.
He’d become so thin but somewhere within him
where Obama was his friend and the Devil
was keeping his daughter hostage,

he knew that to let his pants drop would be indecent.

The nearby citrus tree bare, orange peels
scattered across his driveway,
I knew he was starving.
So away from the eyes of my husband, who believed
him to be violent, and the other neighbors,

whose faceless shouts sometimes yelled

at him from a window to shut up,
I made him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
and snuck it over to him.
As I walked up he recognized me
used my name, said he’d just ordered a pizza

and a buddy was on his way to pick him up to see a movie.

Up close his long, soiled nails, scabs covering him,
silent wild around his hollow eyes,
he ate the sandwich in three bites.
So began our relationship of me sneaking him food
and him taking a break from the devil. Even

though some nights his ranting dragged on

and I was the faceless neighbor shouting
from my dark window for him to shut up.
When the cops did finally listen and take him away,
for I had chosen the right combination of words
and unlocked their help, he yelled for me

as they dragged him to a gurney

with his howling eyes and mouth like a vacant house
called me by my name, she’s my friend, I’m fine, tell them I’m fine
all the neighbors now filtering out to watch as
they rolled him away, to watch as
I turned into a fruitless orange tree
 Spring 2019
Chris Bullard

Continued

1. of mist.
2. a CT scan.
3. match the colors he painted on a canvas.
4. then secretary to Jacques-Emile Blanche.
5. compositions.
6. that their work can gain nothing by it.
7. and also controversial.
8. used to being out on the streets at that hour, and I found I was in a different city.
9. inside the car, behind the wheel.
10. latter method.
11. unassembled pattern pieces.
12. writer.
13. long before Christ born with long white hair
14. Appendix but are beyond the scope of this text.
What I Did With the Body

1) Burned it for three day in a pile of wood that I’d cut and split; scattered the ashes on the local public
golf course.
2) Took it to a party and got it drunk, so it said stupid things.
3) With some fava beans and a fine Amarone; you get the picture.
4) Brushed its teeth, rolled deodorant across its armpits, combed its hair and made it gargle.
5) Imagined it was gone.
6) Hacked it to pieces; put all the pieces in barrel full of lye; put the barrel in concrete.
7) Deported it.
8) Told myself, “This is not my body. This is not the place where I live.”
9) Weighted it down with stones and threw it in the air.
10) Put words in its mouth until it choked.
11) Kept the eyes, threw away the rest; kept the hair, threw away the rest; stuck the head in the freezer,
threw away the rest.
12) Made it stay up all night long.
13) Pushed it down some stairs, then, more stairs, then, even more stairs; at the bottom, picked it up and
brushed it off.
14) Locked it in a mirror and threw away the key.
More than a Few

The other side of this statement

is a lie; this side too.
That, my dear Watson,
is what gives it a kick down the Möbius
of meaning. Not without reason
am I pained as a Promethean torso
by the idea of staking our Weltgeist
on a singular event
in space/time. One thing
is never less than many one things,
though a shut eye
has its own viewpoint.
Seeing is what’s blinding me.
I prefer to age backwards like a crab
using eight thousand lenses
to piece together the multiple world.
This is another true narrative
I am making up
as the necessary
carapace I continually shed.
 Spring 2019
Ciara Banks

Metamorphosis

“Don’t take it as an insult”

How many of us have heard this and now it’s instantly your fault.
I don’t even want them to finish their sentence, because my instinct will be to revolt
Rub salt in my wounds…
It’s okay because I’m currently working on my cocoon
I better hurry up and finish it soon
before my last bit of sanity is consumed
Maybe it’s for the best I make room
For the changes that loom
One day I emerge all shiny and new
But you don’t recognize me, do you?
Head in the Clouds

Disassociating is what I do best,

If you truly knew me you’d expect nothing less.
I’m not all here with this world, I’m that weird, uninterested quiet girl, if you talk at me too
loudly I’ll completely come unfurled.
You learn so much more by observing, I think that’s why people find me a little unnerving.
They wonder what I see, and why I refuse to give up certain parts of me.
You have to understand I’ve lived my life secluded and now I’m looking around expecting to be
included.
What I want for myself contradicts the voices of my mental health.
I go from being manic in a self deluded panic,
To flying high, a little baked, then completely fried.
My heart and my mind refuse to coincide,
But even still I try to take each day in stride.
One day it will all be better,
They say shit has a strange way of just coming together.
I truly hope so, I don’t think I can stay in this fucked up mind frame forever.
The Moon

I look on mystified, as I do it seems like its glimmer intensifies.

Have you ever done that?
Just sat and watched the moon, wondering what’s looking back at you.
The moon has never looked more lovely than this night.
It reminds me how small I am, and that I take shit too seriously.
It’s energy is all consuming, I feel it pulling at me.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath,
I want to take in this occurrence in depth.
The air is cool around me,
The faint scent of fabric softener, someone is doing laundry nearby.
My body starts vibrating,
Her rays surround me, I’m grateful this experience was allowed to me.
On this night she wanted me here.
I needed to be revitalized,
It was running low, and it was starting to show.
That special thing I have, that I need to be me.
It’s necessity is key.
Now I’m prancing around in this moonlight glow.
What did she tell me?
....wouldn’t you like to know.
Untitled

Baby let's take it back to basics,

I let you into all my minds empty spaces.
I let you consume me, due to no fault of your own.
This outcome is my reality,
I’ve reaped what I’ve sown.
Truthfully I didn't think you’d ever leave me alone.
But how fucked is it that I expected you to stay.
After all the biting words my tongue let my mouth say.
I always worried about another,
While you swore you didn't want any other.
It was the fear of my lacking,
Knowing I was slacking.
The insecurities lead to me seriously over reacting.
Saying things I didn't mean and later retracting.
I just want you to know this time I was ready to try.
You got fed up with that shit.
You just wanted to be loved,
I wish I could have covered you and given that love.
But now it's too late,
And this is my fate.
I hope my absence has lifted some weight.
I won’t be bitter,
I’ll just strive to be better.
I wish you the best in all your endeavors.
 Spring 2019
Daniel Y. Harris

excerpts 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9 from The Reincarnation of Anna Phylactic
(Volume III, The Posthuman Series)

2.5

+ pitz + putz + patzu + e EL si chiamo poi: undoubted

Averroist sympathies. Vagrant back, scrutinies, archai bruit
doled out with ribbon sticks, the “reversal”
that it heralds HC-110 at 7:1 dilute B at 68°
straight-hypo into cans (Eruditio ex Memoria).
THEORYSPPCCHHHChhgggccchh
ARF ARF ARF, or construct improved rZK
and rsZK protocols in the relaxed bare
public-key model [CGGM00, MR01, DFG+11]. (AdI),
inserted peritext (PERITEXTI), coarse boot nestled
on the lug once the sceop or griot is no longer RADI OS or Pry,
flash from the FLOODLIGHT gauze. Intentional,
as in r-e-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r, shank in brunt böwö böwörö
böwöböpö, nor were the Modistae, dies martyred. Permute
n!/(n-t)!, for “domini” or “dei”; “h allb” is the German
“halb,” survive + execl (“/usr/
contrib/mh/bin/msgchk”, “msgchk”, NULL).
Injects no survive. Both tarp bias + unsi
gned char kludge_telopt[] = {IAC,WONT,TELOPT
_TTYPE,IAC,DO, \ De legibus 27 1:90aF-91bC exfoliates
its bound. Taste the dead brine melt SAMPLE ELEFANTEN
KARAWANE jolifanto bambla ô falli bambla, the brietal
perfusion cc -o /tmp/kungfoo crazymonkey.c,
from pomerania, extent without length. Why is leZWoiseauXX
the FINAL product? P = (u[1]:u[3])+ {r}(u[3]:u[2])+{r}2(u[2]:u[1]),
only if cenoscopic +# MSADC Trojan Run Script
in Rome where Francesco was at work during the Sack.
Ding an sich, at last a contrapuntal recitative quati basti
bo . . . lalu la + (‘tamquam ab
iniustis possessoribus’), confide ratings
range from—3.1 to 1.8 F(5, 70) ¼ 2.2, p < 0.05.
Competitors maximize expected payoff, which is piP
2.6

-xi or PPEGORHRASS eringint(o-aThe): l eA!p:

SINHABITED by storic souffleurs + http://x.x.x.x/manage
/cgi/cgiproc?Nocfile=/name/path/of/file. Why then Ile fit you.
Hieronymo’s mad againe.
Unregard hold, late heckle, dollop
or dissolves the hum base, moxie spent.
What familiar tremor in jointure?
Liberators become a malefactor, pestilential if(x
read(s, &len, 4) != 4), a solar anus. Psalm L, 17 Labia mea,
Domine: yes, the heteradelph
is a crustacean. The agon’s embryogenesis,
a lolling body, excrementia or (ignoble) pink penis,
white gloves and monocles, a puffy satrap
prances on one leg sin.sin_a
ddr.s_addr = inet_addr(XS(“128.32.137.13”)).
With many a tempest hadde his berd ben shake
[R]-[R]-[F], escape character ‘^]’, emote gassho,
DolphKnob falls asleep, splut zaphod. Silas
(#35480) is in The Body Bag (#50997). We ad-dire
that we are adonné, adorned, addicted. Pick recyclage (Neo)
as ‘Ç.E.V.ø.R.M.E.N.’, that epigones proffer under a thousand
sobriquets “pontice, quod numquam futuis, sed paelice laeva / uteris
et veneri servit amica manus.” Inner émigré, pull back
a tribe’s messianism without messiah + {0, “Redhat 6.2 (nfs-utils
-0.1 .6-2)”,} masturbatus. Nothing’s sequestered.
Ax = max(fileno(stdin), sockd) + 1 belched out
as parole in libertà, gaudy, stale chant nègre
from authentic xenoglossia. Kp’erioUM lp’er
in a tabula generalis, part hence sex when de co’n
pone’s hot, when de worl’ jes’ stahts a-spinnin’
else fprintf(stderr, “Transmission loss\n”); balloon pop
dull, twit letterklankbeelden. Old MacDonald
had a farm EIEIO, For, backward, Duddon! Aletheic
2.7

reversal: first a false or 09:44:23 tEvtLgMgr 0: Security

[12] Management: Request for cgiproc denied. Requires login,
inadequate, puny flaps, part a desuetude part a decanonization
on mylar (foambreak),
Fellows-Brunch_KWH-UPenn_4
–29–2014.mp3 was not found on this server.
“Rædon” (O.E.), i.e., “figuring it out,” rooks croak
havoc in sunglint return(pop_msg(p, POP_FAILURE,
“Unknown LIST argument: %.128s”, issued from hazard, trifle
pass saw sprout. . . . Dada m’dada. Dada mhm’dada da,
more hints: +echo -e auth\
\trequired\\t$PWD/_pamslam.so >
_pamslam.conf +Tenderenda the Fantast = nine
dignities. Lizardquick tongues. Migrancy stalks, scintillant
in the minute, gloss side considered is-apostolicos
not post-ejaculatory in the convex mirror + greets: herf,
ytcracker, mosthated, tino drop the englobe, the morose
chiaroscuro if (strlen(op
targ) > MAXHOSTNAMELEN) {sings
In Exitu Israel de Aegypto. On a crystalline
stratum, the amorphous milieu if formed,
bursts with ‘cran et gloire’ and rouge
gouts + Program: Qpopper <= 3.0beta29 (2.53 and olders
are not vulnerable), streyt was comen from the court. Intensity
(#50242) is in The Body Bag (#25489). Reach
down the throat and pull forth an ontic mooze,
said “SQWUAAK” and throw
it down > outer(1:3, 4:1, Vectorize
(function(x, y) max(x, y))). The second terrace
fosters charity. Grout in the prebiotic soup?
[Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013], pp. 39–52; chap. 2,
on ‘Cenography’ or empty writing’s unoriginal recreation+ht
tp://RIGHTFAXHOST/rightfax/fuwww.dll/c=urol2zi29uncz0/
2.8

?load1 as Abilene paradox. In Itinerarium exstaticum

(1656), Athanasius Kircher jerks a palindrome
for splashdown. Last call for the Hippocrene Well.
Check Urania for regret+ht
tp://RIGHTFAXHOST/rightfax/fuw
ww.dll/c=other-session-number/?FOLDR
&FFFF and staccato effects in high stakes head.
“Alle Kultur nach Auschwitz, samt der dringlichen
Kritik daran, ist Müll.” Talon sex romp, go if(stat
(_PATH_SKEYFILE,&statbuf) == -1 && errno == ENO
ENT){wol holden hym a lewed man in this.
Arveragus’ soveraynetee which in fact is only the scaled-up
pixel/8NS6rT7zw/2006by5By3WlfZEkKX/1ERoy
TBaemR7SJoJOjNlsZJVq/MXMok4SK6G0s2GQ8 3
0×1, Page 0, Vanitas. Diegesis, even if the user works
for the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority’s Aztec data
pyramid, his body stops – he “flatlines.” Printf(“co
nnection from %s:%d\n”, inet_ntoa(clt.sin_addr), ntohs
(clt.sin_port)); paraphilia
or dildo for acts, senescence
denied by imperial rage. This single, discrete self,
bead on a rosary + char *expcgi = “GET /cgi-bin/plus
mail?login=pluz&password=pluz&”, gender
the deliberate, delude fidelity (“Sur Le Pont D’Avignon”).
Bang! Boycott color in the rectory: “Module
E:\IMATIX\DEVELOP\SMT\XILRWP.C,
line 265,” the haunt, asphyxiated by utilitarian
constraints, not phonophilics. (See also the Jesuit
Athanasius Kircher, Ars magna sciendi, p. 14),
such as AMOR, MORA, ARMO, RAMO; the Capetian
line flirts with disaster. Let these lunarias be assigned ans[[i]]
<- tryCatch(rpois(round(rnorm(1, 5, 10)), 10), the Ecumenon
and speak with Oderisi. Nail them at Golgotha. The crowd’s
2.9

moral torpor + if (write(sock, remotedos, strlen(remotedos))

< strlen(remotedos)) {Crucify him! Ans
<- do.call(’my.other.fun’, c(list(x=x), Crucify him!
Fat Caritas! Execl(“./posadis”, “posadis”, buf, NULL);
epistrata for these intermediaries, Maximus a metal
hot from boiling water, braid [--] o kill. Watch 23 r
(+ check over 11-22), e pluribus unum
after the disaster, “some terrorists //
barbaric // A Rab,” erything eral stantly ined
ards cal nize + fprintf(stderr,“\nbuflen = %d, nops = %d,
target = 0x%x\n\n”,strlen(buffer),nop,esp+offset). Judicious
choice tells false annals, FETISH Each thected,
(see Congresentates, the House’s Emolutive unifor
thority.) Perts declare BRAIN
DEATH. Which Pierre Menard?
Sample the mashup and posthumous revenge +oPr,
Reggie, F_F, Shaolin_p, Segfault, NecrOmaN, Zym0t1c,
l0r3, resentences on conceptual X reside in the countersignatory.
Together, cellulose sacraments and eggshell
testes leave their boiling gloves in anaphoric units.
Frisson prongs, wields andirons, the sun a severed
neck imposes symilar restriction in *BSD
kernels: +*- Sierota, oczy niebieskie mowia wprost,
wczoraj wyjatkowo aktywna noc...hack the brainstem,
romp by apache rotor ensures the dative mode.
Fast immediate satis- / faction or slather, + *
funkysh, cliph, yeti, detergent, kris, ja hire crie
are more, not less, linear than the codex. Static, SUD
such as turux (with Dextro) and re-move. Fig. 152: Droom
Zaacht, three flatline sequences:
N, 140-47, 202-8, 276-90, but Anna Phylactic’s lord
choked her off + *) echo; echo “--Too low user IQ – picture
is saved in `pwd`”. Let ABCD be a convex quadrilateral,
 Spring 2019
David James

EXPERIMENT IN THEATRE #1

the man enters & removes his legs

with pliers.

the two limbs walk off-stage

as a keg

of beer drops down from above.

the man, a devote liar,

claims to be thirsty and drinks

himself into oblivion.

in the wings, a car screeches and a single tire

rolls into view, hitting & waking

the man, who thinks

he’s been run over.

so he dies in a long drawn out

death scene, complete with winks

& sighs, with screams & groans

& promises to his lovers.

four women run on-stage, dig a hole,

lower his torso in

& quickly cover

the man. lights out. the audience does not applaud.
EXPERIMENT IN THEATRE #3

In a field of swaying wine glasses

a butterfly lands on the nose

of a young girl, maybe six or seven.

With no intent to harass,

the butterfly says, “I like poetry

better than prose.”

Looking cross-eyed, the girl grabs the insect

and eats it, but wonders

if it’s supposed
to taste like butter.

With a large knife,

she dissects herself, finding the butterfly

lodged in the stomach, whole, alive

with no ill effects.

It flutters into the air, giving her the finger.

The lights go off and stars shine in the sky.

The wine glasses clink as the wind

picks up, and the girl stitches her stomach

back together in the moonlight, without a cry.

She licks her lips. And waits.
EXPERIMENT IN THEATRE #9

Stripper music.
A sexy red triangle
enters stage left,
dancing by herself,
to herself.

A green circle
and black rectangle
come in, sit at the table.
One yellow square
brings them beer and leaves.

They stare at the triangle,

entranced by her movements,
those sharp angles,
the bare redness of it all.

The circle holds up two blue ovals

and the triangle saunters over.
The circle rubs the ovals
slowly down her hypotenuse
until she grabs them.

Holding five white stars

over his head, the rectangle calls her over.
The red triangle sits on his lap,
rubbing his right angles,
groaning to the music.

The two figures finish

their beer and exit.

The triangle dances

by herself again,
touching each of her points
over and over
until her hands, dripping in blood,
fall to her sides.

She stares at the audience

as the lights dim
to black.
EXPERIMENT IN THEATRE #16

When the lights come up, a dinosaur

sleeps on stage, the size of a van.

The body looks like a stegosaurus, but has the large face
and head of a human attached. Through a door,
stage left, a woman enters, dressed in a nightgown.

She lies next to the creature, pulls an afghan

over herself. She turns and turns again. She flips
from side to side, clearly restless.

Then she rises and stands

on the dinosaur’s head to climb toward that level space
on his back, between the plates. She slips

once, twice, before reaching the top where she lies down,
covers herself and sleeps. The eyes of the dinosaur
open, and he purses his lips

to kiss the air. Sometimes, even freaking dinosaurs feel blessed.

 Spring 2019
Dave Shortt

Phosphorus

the illuminative properties of earth,

love evolved in Sundays of the foxglove,
chemiluminescence
asks: 'how did you find loneliness?'

crows gloat over the humility of buckwheat

which they'd coaxed into being a mentor
to richer porridges

if there was a reason

for packing up again & again,
it was known by wornout soil
or a salmon passing through your birthplace,
activated by a cough
above the twitching of a baby scorpion's tail

beef grazes, jets growl

in fires of entropy's
caravanserai, 'sundog eat
sundog,' merchants of bliss
say, selling no winged thing
& no ingredient of suffering

chemistry wounds the silence with

waxy newborn smile-flashes made of
Milky Way wilderness quickly adopted
by consumer parents, more fuel
for their ovens
'belly laughter & anguish felt in the throat'
(too much to be tasted or breathed)

with consciousness a chunk broken up

& sprinkled on the ground
is the one whose gift makes life easier
for all,
the hero or heroine who never even tried
to cheat death

lightning in yang stimulation of

imagination's humid stagnation zigzags
through unemployed metals, sparking as it
picks away for something to do
at old mountains holding vast deposits of
finely flaked criticisms

burning (burning), the pesticidal fire

(that a coyote avoids)
unnerves spring with hints of slobber
whose bouquets supplying a fruitarian point in aerospace
are monitored by moths

a nano-person hutted in the DNA

polishes the genes
(musical instruments in their humors),
pairs of mouse teeth shining like chromosomes
are bait for bodily entrapment

subtle (subtle), the genetic code be spliced,

& will the hereditary line be 'who
are you?' attached to? whose
ear, climate, element, geopolitic &
'forever imminent end'? dissolving
along with judgments
& personal accounts (translated)
of aborigines?

the fight against disease is stemmed into

'forest-filtered light' seen
as birthright
GMO's wanting & needing conformity
grew so lost in free association
that their earth never returned home

'designer babies'
looking for love,
'the drug of love,' or beyond,
guided by speech's glow
Uranium

reproductive failure, a defective ritual

in trying to gain the clean energy behind
making love in the gras-s, wheat & barley
susceptible to contamination
trapped in the kidneys with the sex trade,
92 memories of antioxidants antioxidants
move across the blood-brain barrier
to cool consciousnes-s preparing
to risk another scrap of its radiant meat
that covers other 'cheap materials' hidden
in the bones

earth's elementary toxicity

the nukeable delicacy of kis-ses & much to be done
is revealed through working rivers of bile
stretching to a glacier heart

earth, corrupting & genius, hot & cold

with diverse solids, stones
inviting priceles-s & dubious
contact, it was
an experience of their catapulting power
the ore wasn't safe from the beginning
infants in the womb would be malleable, politically
comfortable for awhile if not freaking
during gestation, fuel rods
incubating in water's steamy i-i-ideals, reactors re-
active agents apples clay
sunflower seeds say they
introduced late archaic chelators to life
expectancy's ominous glow now baby
on the periodic table of natural disaster

radon in the bones was another inexpres-sible feeling

like a soldier/callgirl meltdown under Ouranos' (anal) control,
the swoon through brainfog
back into paleolithic carvings of deer
on antler spear-thrower, isotopes of love already
lethal with enduring ingenue tidbits of supernovae
skygod hot as hell the heavy stuff
aroused from ore slumber
anti-wizdom? of coiled
radioactivity density, dementia
asking 'can anything more be shared'?
as mutations centrifuge into (wait)
a hallucinated voice (delay)
an insatiable desire/demand for pow-
'rrrrr
(delay)

there were things there that appeared made

to be avoided,
no mistaking but that with or without sleight o careful
hominids would make contact through innate
attraction to the mint condition
of the earth, which crystal
would protect them from nuclear winter?
before a cleanup was neces-sary of the core
of the imagination,
leaving the free radical instincts burning
for another way out through the ice
(mung bean energy bars all exhausted)
barely enough ir- or un-
radiated matter to eat on the way,
sexual function 'guaranteed unmodified' however
wherever-ever in the z-z-zodiac

this half-life is a twisting tale of alpha particles

burning holes in information zipping up & down
ukr'Urania euchre'd fuko-
nuke a -shima 3 mile bikini
atoll
(to beat lead), Mayday chlorophylls
Frigga flower of youth & kelp help haikus
to personal detox protocols down-
wind of fallout of fis-sioned responses
of Pluto to his own enrichment, in the waste
of chances to begin to pas-s these things
in urine feces sweat
back to the stars
whence they came
 Spring 2019
David James

EXPERIMENT IN THEATRE #1

the man enters & removes his legs

with pliers.

the two limbs walk off-stage

as a keg

of beer drops down from above.

the man, a devote liar,

claims to be thirsty and drinks

himself into oblivion.

in the wings, a car screeches and a single tire

rolls into view, hitting & waking

the man, who thinks

he’s been run over.

so he dies in a long drawn out

death scene, complete with winks

& sighs, with screams & groans

& promises to his lovers.

four women run on-stage, dig a hole,

lower his torso in

& quickly cover

the man. lights out. the audience does not applaud.
EXPERIMENT IN THEATRE #3

In a field of swaying wine glasses

a butterfly lands on the nose

of a young girl, maybe six or seven.

With no intent to harass,

the butterfly says, “I like poetry

better than prose.”

Looking cross-eyed, the girl grabs the insect

and eats it, but wonders

if it’s supposed
to taste like butter.

With a large knife,

she dissects herself, finding the butterfly

lodged in the stomach, whole, alive

with no ill effects.

It flutters into the air, giving her the finger.

The lights go off and stars shine in the sky.

The wine glasses clink as the wind

picks up, and the girl stitches her stomach

back together in the moonlight, without a cry.

She licks her lips. And waits.
EXPERIMENT IN THEATRE #9

Stripper music.
A sexy red triangle
enters stage left,
dancing by herself,
to herself.

A green circle
and black rectangle
come in, sit at the table.
One yellow square
brings them beer and leaves.

They stare at the triangle,

entranced by her movements,
those sharp angles,
the bare redness of it all.

The circle holds up two blue ovals

and the triangle saunters over.
The circle rubs the ovals
slowly down her hypotenuse
until she grabs them.

Holding five white stars

over his head, the rectangle calls her over.
The red triangle sits on his lap,
rubbing his right angles,
groaning to the music.

The two figures finish

their beer and exit.

The triangle dances

by herself again,
touching each of her points
over and over
until her hands, dripping in blood,
fall to her sides.

She stares at the audience

as the lights dim
to black.
EXPERIMENT IN THEATRE #16

When the lights come up, a dinosaur

sleeps on stage, the size of a van.

The body looks like a stegosaurus, but has the large face
and head of a human attached. Through a door,
stage left, a woman enters, dressed in a nightgown.

She lies next to the creature, pulls an afghan

over herself. She turns and turns again. She flips
from side to side, clearly restless.

Then she rises and stands

on the dinosaur’s head to climb toward that level space
on his back, between the plates. She slips

once, twice, before reaching the top where she lies down,
covers herself and sleeps. The eyes of the dinosaur
open, and he purses his lips

to kiss the air. Sometimes, even freaking dinosaurs feel blessed.

 Spring 2019
David Rushmer

STILL TIME

.
catch yourself
in
speech
shattered
moons
and
nothingness

blue, blue
flame
you roll
inward
in a dream
windblown

.
the choir
of rain
shall emerge
out of the gills
copulating
beyond you
.
white
ocean

come
by eternity
& the marrow

when I touch
you

.
mouth
of
time mute stars

plundered
of sleep forms
joined up in me

.
we are
the thorn of
time
inserted into
speech

blood
glimpsed
in lightning

.
your eye
in the circle

open

layered
with fire
.
behind death
thunder
hollows
II

.
the
tomb
opens
toward me
swells
our mouths
in whiteness

.
the swarm
where
I forget from
where
the radiance
orphaned
into the seeing
pores

.
bright
abyss
in glowing
empty
time

I lose you
in snow

whiteness
open, forever

the constellation

the wound

marks
tuning
draws the
circle
 silencing

.
star
you carry
infinite
pulse

skin
swimming
into
a
fist
III

.
outside
the singing
hands
half rupture
the
earth

.
you hear
the world
in its
dwarfing whisper
in the
chamber

soon it will be
dancing
toward
the invisible
wind

behind the eye

 Spring 2019
David Wyman

Violet Ideologies
“You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a
squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.” Hal Borland

Let the poem as poems do talk about itself. Not what or how but that. Resist a category of invented words
chronologically culled by the poet himself daubed in red ochre & rescued from syntax cradle and all.

Warts appear then disappear spontaneously. I said I’m ‘partly Dave’ too, a beast that wants discourse.

Anarchists! Question the flushing portrayal of people as skinny beautiful wicked sexy frequently with such
dexterity! I dreamt this cruise was all-inclusive, that my dreams are all-inclusive, beyond the picturesque
representation of ‘the glorification of randomly common household objects.’

White leopard for avatar, active suitor. Later, cuttlefish for breakfast, peacock sightings in Cancun and the
commercial being an image of the sun’s magnetic field. (But I get the feeling I’ve copied this before.) Light,
illuminate, enlighten

finagles its own trope. But every bad movie ends, Katarina. Blogging is a great way to soothe your mind.
Tomorrow’s sunlight gleams on white semantic fields. I try and break out of the funk I’m in but Frank says,
‘it has become our imagination, it has become our power to envision…’ By

the time they were both done running he gives the image and can see his feet burning and he said the color
red, said save me the hectoring!
Hegemony Of English
‘Money is speech’ SCOTUS

What the hegemony of English sounds

like, according to one COO, ‘ad
load will play a less significant
factor driving revenue going forward.’ That
to stimulate meaning/value—
as it could provide the color for how
one sees the world (Whorf). Where
in translation, risky as it is,
the soft parts may be gutted out like
with oysters. In a vision I keep seeing stars
falling from the sky and people running—
protests, unrest, stress in the population—
the sign of infinity (not sure what it means)
fires, more images of drought, no
snow where there should be snow—
a caterpillar dissolving into liquid as
the unraveling of the old system. It’s
like, every day, you can't believe this is happening,
where ‘neo-liberal oligarchs
get to keep raking in the cash with their
ecocidal war-
mongering exploitation.’ Here it also means
a spiritualized process, one
we internalize that makes us who we are not
just manufacturing things we can sell. But
then we are more interested
in the performance than in whether
it’s true, aren’t we, it says as
a printer’s devil crosses
the half-lit stage, muttering. It’s
never quite possible to hear
what he’s saying but he’s the key.
He knows something. But someone
pulls his beard, flicks his face—
OK so where does this go?
He knows something. Shit
yeah, he knows we’re doomed. So
what are we going to save on next?
It’s true we share a common
corporate language
which is, after all, what we have
to close a deal. But our words still
slide along edges and disappear
like notes, scoffed up in that vacancy
of air, its eddies moving
almost at right angles to us. Pinker
cites ‘an ingenuous study on
the mental life of infants,’ suggests
a comparison to monkeys but
for the moment, we’re stuck
in a whirling phonological loop, our
prisonhouse, the austere
limits of an austere world. And in that
shadowed against a burning sky
a flea. Tremble at the voice
heralding us in our
international language, fluent
and deterministic,
a cacophony—all of that species
‘grinning and snatching…’ its sound
like coins crashing—Blake’s Hell
is a verbal possibility too, an unstable
isotope, elusive as an unmarked grave.
Euphoria Script

How to sum it up then, their candid jabber,

the glass changing every time you look at it,
those objects we dreamt of

made of ivory, marble and rare woods accessible

only to the rich. The play of ideas - otherwise known
as inspiration - is one of the amazing things

about working with others, rising

in colorful creation for a new dance of awakening… So—
Take a million selfies. Look relatable. Is it because I am

a public person, a conceit, a bit of left-hand English?

Fleeting yet held onto as a fiction, I said I am this weather.
Scripted lives caught on tape making a zigzag for the exit—

dark backward, blend and clash, fallin’ down like hail,

yet I have crossed safely over
via platitudes or prophecies exerting my hands and feet.

Ignoring trolls is always the best way to go, unless

you’re going to pull a Steve Nash. We always encourage that.
Find strength within you and be kind to yourself.

We are here to serve a population from real

to imagined that can seem ungrateful.
—Tired of owning junk? Insert trendy electronica here.

O, I might harp on trivial issues but nowadays

I try to stay as positive as possible,
I want the haters to know my life is fantastic.

(Still why do I dream this, that I’m not welcome in the house?)
Yeah, I understand some of its meaning even
if I know there can be many meanings in this prophecy,
‘a paradigmatic figuration, as in the force
of the composition is paradigmatic of strategies
of inter-disciplinary reading,’ generally, like

the temporary value a poem provides, the ability to just

walk around (outside) and let the breeze kind of rush over,
a buoyancy in old age, like a kind of design.
Talking To Myself On My Birthday
Who is speaking in this way? R Barthes

In the end it makes you spectral, diffident and cool.

However the ruling astrological planet for this particular day
is Mercury.

Blank pages indicate a return to mindfulness.

The imaginary mark (or marks) acting as a guide.
Its exteriority lit only here and there by Christmas lights.
Next a diminishing figurine ambling along a shoreline not
focused on anything. Gulls coming into view and
the blue of the planet as seen from space…

The great turning begins in earnest.

We are working toward providing enough
connectivity next week to satisfy
taking away the occasion for speaking,
the voice. The effect is real but
the photo only captures water, ionized air.

The blue of the planet as seen from space fading, days

the color of factory brick
but no windows no doors. It’s useless to look
for an exit, beyond filtered perceptions or the sense
of having seen it on TV, to a place somehow
miraculously freed from commercial development,

its bright horizon extending infinitely like the soul—

its big-screen adaptation ‘glossy, well cast and a consistent hoot.’
Toast sesame seeds in coconut oil over medium heat.
Check less interest in things you used to enjoy.

Landscape is temporary too. They said, it seemed hip

in the sixties, a state of pure exchange—mill to
mall and gun for fun. Into which you fall continually
disappearing, at last becoming spectral. Like de Vere.
A Guest Of The Internationales

In a dream called A Guest of the Internationales

my ideal house appears
on a green hillside
on an island. It’s white
eco-friendly brimming
with natural light—
but when I go out in the world
everything
presents itself at once, everything
is displayed
as if it were all on sale. Turns out

materialism restores
dignity
and
intellectual
integrity with

easy-to-perform (sublime)
mysteries
though
it can take the form
of a spiritual
consumerism
tailored
to one’s own unhealthy
individualism

in a false autonomy. So
if we really are out to monetize
the revolution, to move away
from familiar safe texts
toward innovative
writing, a critical and exploratory
poetics driven
by
the innovation that marks private
enterprise, then—what? Partially
dissolved, exhausted—but
doesn’t all text feel
manipulated? In a lucid dream we
could redirect
the action; today we’re moved along
along wide interstellar
intervals, proper
nouns.
Invisible like the silent b
in debt, it begins sleep or trance…
as a time comes to sweep away

the dust, the individual

granules of crushed stone
that make up the moments

of our attention. Till it strays

off target again, like
nineteenth century prose.
 Spring 2019
Elena Botts

what aches
of extremities are laid out like winter trees shivering in a nonexistent breeze,
blood has an end to it. i could watch where it runs frantic
but i do not mind and tend these aches like the premature child
that i am this is only a skeleton of thoughts
no longer color but an in-utterable light that is the fluctuation of your ribs when there is so little air in them
and a heart that slows like the soft feeling of the moonrise just over the hill which was once dark in a way
that was like no other darkness that we might remember but that does not make it so
i am tired, everlastingly. a vacant sun today and the sky just
a vast haze. i would take you to my heart but that is in the hinterland that i am
not blessed or cursed to roam any longer. i cry for elizaville, and milan, yes,
and the lake of the deli which is god the surrealist's fond memory.
i have lost my sound, the crows flung out like dusk
and the waterfalls now pooling only in my veins
underneath the skin, unbruised and perfect. this is ruin,
to be unloving, to be taken out of suffering,
to be a fool giving nothing to the world. this is
deepest surrender.
i wanted to be alone all day!
time has become directionless or at least i cannot determine which direction it flows in, do i have yet to meet
the ones i have lost and the ones i have never met, have i lost them too, as i lose time and in losing, am a
composite of loss and an unsubstantiated universe but to what end does one fill a harmony in or a poem of
thoughts or a focus in the midst of that river which is to say an island and as you brush your teeth you say to
yourself that love might mean crying about someone years later because of a slight motion that someone else
made reminiscent of them where they were dozing off but someone was talking to them so they half opened
one of their eyes very slightly like he did late at night when his eyes were half closed and i was looking at
him (i guess that ought to happen now and then when you know you probably will live out life (and too
easily) having lost someone you've truly known) and being kind implies being aware of all the horrible
things that one does and doing some but not all of them anyway because you have killed so many plants and
microorganisms in your lifetime and for almost nothing given that most meanings elude you, or you, them.
they say that species were less diverse before the cambrian explosion though that is only determined by the
environment that traits die out in response to and also by our here is what humanity thinks it is governed by.
the difference between gaslighting and constructive ambiguity is when i tell you that the realities of this
poem are not yours to keep. if when someone thinks they can know or see or can save you, they're probably
on the wrong planet. when all my life has already happened will i find you living alone like a blessing in the
neighborhood between the blue dark and the lamplight and the power lines strung down to the water and
yowling cats which is necessary like emptying the room at night of any other lost souls else so that the mind
may roam? when you've lost everything don't go out looking you might as well pass the time walking around
your own mind. they were right about memories, there's nothing better and no one but you can have them
even under the same moon. it is like stupidity a whole new chaotic and uncalibrated world/mind, but not
necessarily synonymous with the universe before it came into being
grocery shopping/i am distraught

death is not at all in opposition to life i went grocery shopping and i needed to buy an apple not to eat to buy
an apple because this is an example of an idea i had when i was grocery shopping to buy an apple but just
because i was buying an apple (not to eat, for the idea) i decided not to buy the cheese because the apple and
the cheese are two very different things and the absence of life is not necessarily death

i went to a grocery store with an imaginary boy let’s call him jack, jack and i went to the grocery store and
jack started to cry in the frozen goods section but we don’t know why. neither jack nor i know why he began
to cry in the aisle next to the frozen peas. i looked at him and i said, well i don’t want to get you down i don’t
want to get anyone down and that is what got him down, so to speak, but i hadn’t said anything and the boy
wasn’t crying so we went to buy some milk because that is after all, what we came to the store to buy.

i got very tired one day and i didn’t get up and nothing happened. the postman woke and he delivered on the
other side of the door and the small animals crept around the spaces of the house and the cats raised their
hackles about the neighborhood and a man spraying the fresh concrete shouted up at the sky that it was all
done and painted but he wasn’t talking to god he was talking to another man and three old women in white
stood outside a catholic church and talked in a very minute and particular way about very lovely small
things and they grew closer and closer about the virgin mary and i didn’t get up and then the sun fell
through the windows and cracks in my house (and through the cracks in my eyes, the cracks in my skull
perhaps to penetrate some strange and ancient heart like an unlikely universe tucked in the darkening but
this was not so and this was not so and this was not

we didn’t buy anything at the grocery store. we drove there and jack wandered through the aisles singing
about someone who had died and i slipped a block of cheese into my bag and then we both walked out and
didn’t say anything and a woman who worked there came up to us to wish us a nice day and jack said yes, it
is a very nice day in fact though jack didn’t know yet that he didn’t exist and that i made him up merely for
the purpose of detailing this brief and entirely fictional episode which is also so pointless) because in fact, i
had never gotten up, though i was wide awake i dreamed through the hours in a dark and i thought i was
dying and it was true, i was dying and i thought i was living, and it was true, there was nothing more
horrifying.
vermont
we went to vermont to observe a man who, in being, barebacked, betrayed
that he was a laborer and she said that she liked that his body said it was so.
while the boy who was meant to be in the woods cried because he was leaving her in the parking lot
outside the national guard and then we drove back from vermont.

he went into the woods as we made new living rooms and hung lights and rearranged the artifice of our very
separate
and seemingly predestined lives and she said it was a beautiful day and it was a beautiful day
and soon it would be over but for the several motorcyclists as they made their way over the horizon and into
the dusk of our lives that were not our lives any longer and i couldn’t hold anything in my hands any longer,
and the sun grazed my face in its everlasting light as it sunk and sunk and there were large pockets of air
sucked in and out of his chest as he sobbed which was not even uncanny, it was normal.

and tragedy was boring, and nothing made sense and we were wrapped like saplings around each other in a
dead fog, grown into and out of the earth with only the sullen protestations of ourselves
but i wanted to feel at home when we reached the morgue or onward for the mass burial in an unnamed pit
on an island where nobody can feel our unfeelingness, that is
and i have already encountered this, it’s true but these days mostly, i am most familiar with the bus station
between here and maryland or is it delaware i know it when i see it, it makes my heart swell like a strange
ugly beast blindly faltering its way through the orifices of mother earth who lies in coma through the toxic
frenzy of our lives and she said it was a beautiful day.

and it was beautiful, i could find you in your house, your bones cracked and uncracked in everlasting light
and i could look you in the eye, i could say hello.
i could run myself into the ground or a clear bottomless lake thoughtlessly, with all the world of dreaming
held intact though i knew what it was i could not hold anything, not even the dying sun, or the moon as it
fades from us as we lose the children of ourselves and so are plunged into ultimate undoing.

to know that you will and have and continue to exist is a miracle were it just a thought i had on a rainy day
when i was walking by myself as the sky collected its darkness into a sound that was like quietude or even
nakedness. and synonymously, that you and i come to the end it is no question but the barest certainty of my
brief and unconscionable soul.
cultural productions

if you were to be on the hill, or if you were to see-

there is a ghost ship moored not far from here-
it is tethered by a strand of wind,
weighted by the dawn of the world,
which is tomorrow. maybe i will see you there
and all the ones i knew before
though no time could keep us there,
hours still somewhere in your heart
which, like a strange unlikely realm
lingers on in the dry
winter. the world does not thaw
just for you-
we are not moved by any particular breeze
there is a light on just beyond these naked trees
do not name it mine, do not name it yours
as it comes on and then goes
december 1
it is quiet now and i dont want the sound of the thought i said aloud to travel up and down the river,
disturbing those in the midst of deep vast dreams of their own
 Spring 2019
Erik Hernandez

A Petite and Petty Pretention

Precocious premium prodigy poet
Prominent predominant pre-eminent for it
Playful and powerful your professors give plaudits
Protecting and polishing a primeval posit

Preening and prompting puritan penchants

Pawns and plebeians we don’t seem to get them
So plying, parading your pretentious poems
Pillage and paralyze your irreverent foemen.
Penny.
“Look at him”
They sneer and stare
“Picking up a penny,
Look at him stoop
Look at him
Bow to
The unwanted
Bow to
The used
Bow to
The forgotten”

To fold your back

And bend your knee
You sell your dignity
At the cost of just
One cent
Your worth is cheap
Apparently

Why else would you expend

Your energy
To glean so weak a thing,
So Ugly
So Pitiful
Solitary
Penny

Its bronze face covered

In mud, rust
In blood and dust,
Dull metal petals
Plucked
From flowers unprized
Dropped
Then left behind
To gather excreted
Crust
From the filth and
The grime
Faces faded
Filed down
Oppressed by puddles
Dyed by murk
Drowned

A fistful worthless
Unvalued,
Dismissed without prejudice

No man
They say
Of Strength and means
And smarts
Would waste
The time
He has packs of bills
And packs of plastic
Golden stacks that
Shine

A brilliant sheen
A heavy hue
The stacks of gold so high
They bend and boil
Light
Until our reaching eyes are blind

Those packs of Bills

Those packs of Plastic
Hover above
And bold
So goodly to reach
To crane our necks
And worship that
Godly gold
Yet I’ll stoop
And bow
I’ll scrape
To search and gather every
Copper face
Off the streets and
Bus stops and
Bathroom floors
And sidewalks

I’ll bring them home

And keep them safe
And bide my days
And wait…
I’ll imagine
All the pennies
Yet to gather
Scattered
‘cross the states

Millions out there all alone

In parking lots and
Ashtrays
But brought together
An awesome strength
Would rise up
Into play

And with their weight

All brought to bear
Their heavy strength
Enraged
They’ll crush perhaps
The greedy packs
And times will truly
Change.
Seasons of Pain
Because the leaves had lost their grip
And tumbled to my feet
They all came down in just one trip
The hillside’s green glass shattering

Because the hills were spiked and dread

Their naked branches stretched to grasp
My sun and warm were leaves now dead
Memories of the summer past

Because the winter cold and bright

Leaves nowhere left to hide
The wind-smoothed snow and glassy ice
Reflect dead sunlight till you’re blind

Because of all the painful things

The seasons to me did bring
I smile wide and take a drink
A hopeful toast to spring.
C Student’s Petty Lament
I write out little diddles
That no person will want to read
I blunder heatless songs
My Metaphors are weak

We don’t want your faithless trills

Or your biting witless rhymes
We want intimate formless details
Your soulful bowels and grime

Revere yourself and your hardship

We’ll nod along in awe
Your tragedy is unique
Rhyme-less similes without flaw

The poems are quite good

Of your bravery and your loss
We owe you our truthful everything
Because you offered yours to us

But did you really do the deed?

I ask myself sometimes
Bestow fresh truth and honesty
In your poems without rhymes

Ever been filled to the brim

With rotten hatred and squirming flies?
Did your share your malice then
The side every person hides?

Did you ever take a chance

Or give an artful care
To tell the hipsters their tattoos
Look as stupid as their hair?

Perhaps these topics are too low

For your poetic craft, unworthy
I say your poetry is inhumane
Because we humans are quite petty :P
Heart on the floor
I like to lie on my bedroom floor
It is usually as dirty and cluttered
As my confused and scattered heart.
I lie on the floor
And stare at the ceiling,
The ceiling comforts me
It is clean.
It is as clean and clear as my dreams
I can’t reach the ceiling
And I can’t dirty it
Or ruin it.
 Spring 2019
Erika Howsare

From “Aged Spring,” Vista with Offspring and Grasses

“Instant, constant.”

The ornamentals heavily armed against deer.

Her daughter festooned me with stickers.

Redbud pods.

It activates the oils.

The moment when perspective on corn rows shifts and lines melt into fabric.

“It’s a decoration.”


Berries not for eating.

Her sudden ability; the bean plants’ color changing from forest-green three days after germination to a lighter shade.

Mulberry sidewalks for two weeks or so.

Catkins in brown and green. “Let’s not pick this. This is part of a garden.”

Fern spores artfully distributed.

Evidence of reproduction, waste, the “mess” a magnolia would make on a lawn.



I love what the centerline brings to the view. Blue and green, then that touch of canary. It emboldens the engine.

He walks, sleeveless, with a leaf blower. He posts messages to passing cars.

The droppings are not even; they drift against the hill.

He put tan gravel around his rocks. He stuck a flag in the gravel.

It is so pleasing, to pull into the driveway and see the bean rows.


And that farm with the cluster of red and white sheds, like eggs tucked into the kerchief of the hill. It stands for
something.

A red plastic cup, thirty years old, carefully guarded. As it ages it gains value.

The stains’ half-life.

The evolution of petal litter on gravel.

Proof is melting, rain washing veins from underneath.



We found the oak leaves we were hunting, on a knee-high sapling near the creek.

Her small hands laying them into the book.

“You want this.” She means I.

They are black as dogs’ eyes on the bushes. Her voice from behind is the treat. “You want another berry.”

Gladly pass it back.



Perennial waters. Nest renovation.

Under the dripline and beyond.

Bodies of trees, grey matter, DNA deposits that helicopter onto gravel or grass, or another mechanism.

Fertile shadows, not exactly round.

Oak flowers swept off the road.

Four different whites.

From “Spring,” Vista With Offspring and Grasses

Disdainful: “Why are you bringing me this?” Her daughter, pockmarked, a fistful of rice cake.

We laughed a bit at the tiny peach tree in full bloom. It seemed furiously confident. Over-spangled.

Outrageous swaths of daffodils, once again, along the creek. The estate shows off its size with yellow outlines. I like the
paler ones, “butter-and-eggs,” written nicely in a format. Red clay between/under their legs. What a design: the bulb,
the aspiring stem, the common trumpet like a campers’ song. What a human endearment: arrangement of futures.

I’d like to put some near the mailbox and the step.

I picture grasses along the wall someday.

Another mother says “She’s a really great tree-climber.”

Later, the moon would be shaved, or I would call it shaved.



The environment is replete with full or crescent moons to her, but the subtleties and mechanics are still unknown.

Elsie cavorts naked after dinner and we keep forgetting to talk, it’s so luscious. Her body belongs to a country of perfect,
unquestioned form. She’s delighted by herself.

I try to explain tides but there are so many pillars missing.

I wanted to apologize for her hair, since it is under my purview.

Envy over the drive to M’s house—the views are expensive and they can see a well-heeled fence from their porch.

N got a new haircut and says her daughter is crazy. About mine, she says “She’s so mellow.” But the impossibility of a
single descriptor when it is so difficult and inevitable, becoming a person.

We see each other’s children as results.

Everything gets decorated in March; it’s the season of scrim. Listen to bottomland frogs.

We see the daffodils as given, unless we planted them.



Sugar of the night air.

Redbud in a blue vase. “I prefer the color just before it blooms.” It continues its progress after being picked.

Some of the trees’ creamy blooms break into green so fast. Their pure stage deserves a holiday.

Desperate for running downhill and tying on a bib.

Her hair had been done in a different way by the time I got back. Now she was another person again.

G’s tiny awareness in the seat—wormlike, sparkling—stopped my walk. I watched his face contort, measuring again how
much smaller their heads are.

Furiously they open. Maple, then oak. Catkins dangle over violets. The pawpaw flowers are red, to mimic meat,
attracting flies.

Dirty business of paint in the soil, catshit in the soil.

Rats’ pantry: hundreds of very clean hickory nuts.

Thousands of shades of green, painted in the field guide.

“No, not there. On the paper.”

She will swell and burst; she will lengthen and lie down.

The buds have their own little theater, peeling bracts in the afternoon when no one’s looking.


I try to identify a peak.

“Do you want to take a walk or check for eggs?”

Photosynthesis, a fistful of maple seeds, a worm in an empty tupperware.

The chair creaks after the baby’s asleep.

Regular planting of forsythia; they bloom like teenagers, stringently bright. One behind another.

 Spring 2019
Fae Sapsford

Necropsy report

Turtle blood coagulates rigid as sadness in a throat. Fresh carcass, opportunity for learning. She
(confirmed by observation of the pimpled ovaries) died on the boat. Propeller strike, the meat is
free from parasites. We get to split her open, the vets explain that the heart keeps beating with a
little stimulation – she was big enough to locate the sinus venosus and feel its toughness. The
gizzard still has sea grass trapped inside, we saw what shade healthy livers looked like, we saw
the body cavity filled with ocean. We have understood her on the nose, rotting in the sun under
washable umbrellas, understood her by measurements, by feeling the muscle her shoulders
pulled, by the contents of her stomach, and intestines preserved in alcohol. We have understood
her as an overanalyzed poem, we have understood her as no amateur is capable.
Half Mile Down

[The observation of living things] eventually tends to become for us merely so much
material to be used in the solution of the many tantalizing problems which it suggests. We
are, indeed, obsessed by problems. No doubt this is the correct attitude for the seasoned
investigator, and no doubt a certain spirit of skeptical inquiry should be cultivated even
in freshmen, but surely we should realize, like the amateur, that the organic world is also
an inexhaustible source of spiritual and esthetic delight.

—William Morton Wheeler, Etymologist in Hades

Subject your relationship to a strength test, to underwater pressures ninety-two

atmospheres at depth, come climb into the bathysphere. The lid is sealed with ten bolts
tightened by a winch, we’ve got a hose pipe to pump air in.

They’re making deep sea camera cases forged out of one sheet of plexiglass – no joins.
What colour are your partner’s eyes? How about the paint on their kitchen walls? How
about the shape of the crack in their corner of their room that you always seem to end up
staring up at while their breathing gets deep and constant as a vampirotoothus squid,
billowing its soft skin in the coolness of the ocean? The curve of a cheek, their widow’s
peak, indelible on the brain as the bathysphere leaks.

There will be no opportunity to diffuse the situation, these are the moments that we either
get through, or succumb to the pressure. You’re in this together. A steel ball, dangling
like a tooth. Male anglerfishes fuse into the female’s bloodstream by the lips, a husk
nourished by her hunting trips; sixgill sharks bite their partners to stay together during
sex; clutch each other by the hand, so you don’t lose each other in the dark.

Pee in a bottle. Let the tray of soda lime absorb the carbon dioxide you breathe out. They
say that experiencing something new together strengthens your bond. They say that their
first child is not a citizen of any country, he was conceived in the unregulated state of the
deep sea. Sometimes, in the darkest places, he glitters like a diamond tiara, lit up with a
million bioluminescent spots.
Factoid
Deep sea creatures come up to the reef only on the verge of death; ballerina ribbonfishes more
elegant than mink settled on the shoulders of women. We gasp while she glistens in the shallows
like molten silver. Fresh -fish cooler, starboard-side gossip. Eleven meters long, scintillating
filaments falling flat like a flounder in metamorphosis. One day they will both sink to the bottom
and never come up again. She slips into myth. We made a sculpture of her from polished cedar.
The leviathans of the triangle live! New-age artists worship monuments of suffering. A
whalebone box ornately portrays hamstringing. Books have been written about the actualization
of rage. The freedom of art is in that it can never be wrong. We’ve made mounted tiger sharks,
handbags out of sheep’s balls, a liquid sploosh made of real wolves. Fishermen proclaim size
between arm-lengths stretching continually wide. She: haggard, confused, death spiraling. It’s so
awkward to die at a party. A skipper claims to have seen her in her throes and gone blind.
Alphabet Soup
Oh! Crushed tomatoes letting their zest off! Six year old hands scrying in the alphabets. We have
no Oracle here, we exist mythless. Today we’re getting a new castle spire. We’re checking the
traps, the yoghurt pots, for captures – it might take us hours. We said “goodbye, trees!” they once
dropped paw paws, fermenting on the lawn, a big digger dropped it in, and we climbed on. Burn
our tongues on metal spoons. David Hockey splits the scene into collage, and we all stick together
our bit with masking tape. One day we will be in Canada, or England, and be teachers, or flower
pickers paid by weight, and be in love with something other than a puzzle, or the refrigerator, or
the pollinated tomato plants swelling to globes. They will never zest as well as this again! Just
like our father said about the Hovis loaves, weaved together with the bicycle and the wicker
basket and the manure, and his mother, as she rode through the farmlands to take his pre-school,
pre-us persona home, home, home. Thanks Hockney for the fisheye you called a ‘joiner’, thanks
Chuck (dad’s friend whose kids are all grown up) for the fort! We slip our skinny torsos into the
metal milk jugs, we talk to stuffed tigers, we find fossils in the mud, though this island was
dinosaurless, and hardened, like candy, in the sea only 100 million years ago.
 Spring 2019
Thomas Fink and Maya D. Mason

Two Poems by Thomas Fink and two poems by Thomas Fink and Maya D. Mason

Thomas Fink

SUBPRIME MORTGAGE BARGAIN LOT 4

Neobiblical
pearl mutter—

canned stampede.

Pitch- perverse
incandescence
squatting

on brain
machinery.

Deviant
con

fidence
in

fullout

risk.
 Thomas Fink

SUBPRIME MORTGAGE BARGAIN LOT 5

A great, great wall.

Perfect
chocolate
cake.
Drone strike
on defiant pipsqueaks.
No gringo tax levy,
amigo. The wall
stands up
for our
America,
jobless
no more.
(Landscaping
crisis
through
the American
dreamspread?)
The wall
sings more
bigly than
Whitman
could. Wall
mirrors will.
(Will the wall
remain immaterial?)
Beltway insiders
to reap
the rap.
 Thomas Fink and Maya D. Mason

I'M BOTHERING YOU SO GO AWAY

It has
come to our attention
that you have
come to our attention,
due to a
system error.

Please
rectify this
at once
by removing yourself
from our doorstep,
our desktop.

You and your

legion of no ones,
who lack, could
distract us unconscionably from our crucial mission.

Warning:
do not expect a
thank-you
for a reflex that should be

automatic.
 Thomas Fink and Maya D. Mason

I DON'T WANT TO SEE HER DAMAGED SO I'LL BUY A NEW PAIR

OF GLASSES AND DRAW HER A NEW FACE

I swear this was when she was drenched.

Think she's had

like 5 jobs.

Sucks.
It was like

So—
I don't know—

Alzheimer's.
We'll try to be right

behind you. You can

only be a friend when

something like that . . .

I'd have to

do everything in my power
to

stop you; I'd have to

save the world.

We were holding her

arm: that's
how bad.
"Oh my god,"

I said,
"You're

so cool, you're
so pretty, you're so

fun how can you

not see?"

Kind of like:
whoa! Lost.

I will be so
upset; I will be

so disappointed.
I need my

monkey
to comfort me.
 Spring 2019
Gregory Autry Wallace

What is the Current

for C.

Cast of plied error

on the steel bed caught
a pink has a rosy charm
like the color
in a rusted moon
tree full of light discarded
in the obstinate links,
what is the current
that could be brought
to bear on the grounds that
a feasible emergency situation
be obverted)
not a dark place
only an edging away
from its famous summers
like the tilting earth
The Black Flame
A dumb arm
strikes without
touching it
earth from which
it springs
unrolls inside
his mind
its design nebulous
a red pattern
everywhere
the green fog
ripples immobile
he raises his head
fumbles for
white column)
he awakened
one day to find
childhood gone
touching these
hidden filaments
of memory

Gates of the solar city

all the light in
the universe
free of time
pressing it together
in his fading eyes
the old astronaut
dissolves in an instant,
bright rays
flash to the heavens
spotted eagle floating
women and children
screaming and wailing
all over the world
Partly covering her emerald planet
The universe, which one
moment had glowed
with such brilliance
winked out, silent and still
the lantern contained wires to catch
faint whispered impulses
above their heads

The man came back toward earth

silent, and stood motionless
the girl, covered by darkness
pulled down the carrier beam
she saw the golden “tree”
now each man swimming through hyperspace
could act as a receiver

He caught the beam

other children extinguished the lights
gripping his room
with a hand other than his own
it's fabric smoothed with the shock,
drifting surges of electrons,
space itself polarized

The driver got out of the car

no one
from a world half a thousand
light-years away
only his own mind
oriented to this variable system
that bore the seas that ring the world
Dakota
Colossal inverter system begins to creak
head surges into solids
devas dance in clouds of cosmic dust
orbit of the first dark spirit drifting in from other systems
Crazy Horse, a whisper of steam
flaming soap, porcelain rain and colored curtains
buffalo appears with hidden zipper
water birds shining

flaming rainbows smolder under one hand

we shall change into a flower under fields of green stars
faint plastic light over “tree”
rusted moon snakes speed to the border of night
milk flows on glassy squares
our sleep reveals rectangle squeezed with irresistible segment
a curtain parts to reveal the ultra-violet
blue flame appears
Blue Tigers
King Arthur comes tumbling
across the middle air
children play with “blue tigers”
inflamed shafts of sunlight
sift down through silver haze
Guinevere stands
beneath the golden tree
face gleams above
the very shape of fire)
untouched by the reflections,
she dreams of darker shadows

Great cool silence falls over the forest

Percival gazes through
lost time ring into another world
a thousand mirrors
like butterflies that flash to the heavens
she saw him lifeless
knights dying against radio grid
like bed of broken lances
storm cloud coming very fast
& Sir Galahad kneels beside
water rushing from my head
 Spring 2019
Heller Levinson

brood in attenuate fever

surplus stripped to cleat-trench, to

circumferential collapse, → cyclonic

funnel torqueing to a condensed am-

algamate. the other side of persuasion, a

flotation pinwheeling through longitudinal

tear-downs, system wrecks, a-

rhythmic nomenclatures. itinerancy

corrupted, fever

stitches

to a

stammering octave
brood quicks the fold

, fold inscrutable

, shirred gather ,

heft reconnoiter

groin hoist

-- fanfare fever flap flail –

lesion

the breakthrough

animation

the art of

song
 Spring 2019
hiromi suzuki

Crayfish Calico

A tea set for picnics is buried in muddy shore

From the teapot at the bottom of the swamp
Sweet tea is springing up

I am here

I am here

I am here

Crayfish is intoxicated a taste of tea

Waving his scissors of red and blue color
A pattern paper of sleeveless dress is floating
The surface of calico in red and blue
Buds of lotus flowers are split
White petals melt into water
With a sweet scent

Spring is here

Spring is here

Spring is here
 Spring 2019
Iain Britton

SHADOW SNATCHERS

the moon digs up fists of dirt the moon sucks in its mouth

& hot & cold deposits of emotion are severed shadow snatchers

hurdle the hedgerows the orchards they cling to priests

on the spiritual scrounge a boy sets aside quality time

for chasing cats & stoats beyond the paddocks known locals

have dug in deep have taken up positions amongst modern-day squatters

who behind closed blinds play at being actors thieves rock stars

the curious get their hands burnt the intrusive get ghost-smacked

we turn our attention to making planets out of clay the pulpit men

drop from high domes gagging in their collars we’ve watched

women colouring themselves into the environment our house

has been jacked up so that its chimney penetrates the sky & every day

a ripe windfall is washed clean the boy squeezes out the shimmering juice

of a plum squints at distortions hand-picks the bruised & bloated

he feels the universe rubbing softly against a diviner’s red skin

TECHNICOLOR REHABILITATION

after the rain the hill collapses

like soft cake a liquid meal of sorts

& the town swallows it she smiles

at the muscular spasms of my mouth’s

sudden gear shift sudden mobility the sun

streaks its greasy mitt through my hair

down my spine she hesitates &

perversely punctures my technicolor rehabilitation

of broken seasons she forages

the beaches for microcosms of who inhabits who

& who for instance rolled me over last summer

in a sack of kelp

pylons stalk the paddocks

voices hang upside down moaning

crying some talking

as if nothing is too painful

what if i’m the one being wired to the sky

what if out of kindness she steps forward

& gift-like guts me a freshly-hooked fish

TEXTBOOK DRAWINGS

from this launched beginning this brief

intake of breath a man

with glassed-in fantasies warms his hands

his home is his refuge every day he has his friends

he needs them needs their trickery their duality

the forced poking of fun soft needles in the ribs
the textbook drawings of a clown’s posture

from this spot of caged emotions he picks a voice plays with it

pushes it in his mouth worries it with his tongue

pushes it in further

swallows it

the result a reincarnated dream

from this birthplace amongst islands we pull out select

put on documentaries record events

play Beelzebub horrors i spend more time with the man

than i should we live amongst bricks woodwork

the stink of plaster

Carson McCullers has her place in his closet

a voice from the wilderness resonates a dialect

a summer’s vernacular in season
IRIDESCENT PURPLE

famous for her obsessiveness

her rapt performances she empathises

with the woman in the wheelchair

with the woman breathing through a mask

her mouth tasting of frangipani she lives

within the differences of a spectrum

within a hunched body made of life cycles

she knows the mood swings of the lake &

shore the swelling categories of foam

she is pushed through gardens of alpine rockery

with her eyes closed the sun

paints her fingernails iridescent purple

 Spring 2019
Irene Koronas

97

link
cious lism
eg

term ascetical
points persona
mask circumflex

accent pros tous opas

cognomen property

face vivlos kata

eutychous kai nestoriou
pros ton asion tou kyrion
kai sebaston patera ioannin
pp.23-24
2.101 person

onti uni ob manners

did not greek but extends
minology. he penetrates
542 ad sell-self-ell-sub
develop me con hego
hergo modern go enters ark

not long. he short i as

an individ. aw. gd. found.
only reason bacons us. fry.
inveigh against eminent exit

link with ruggle rug

with reason lipness
deif masking tape. magi
graphite’s wishes itself
perfect must. puri, illu,
fica. he sychasm castic

third singular nous.

noose. new. ou ou ou
noetic rify vigi wells

win spoon notes. hima father

dogma in confirm pir three lights
above all spital blooms severe mall
free to inn cussion ecu men is mili
scism laps idioms bowtie on a brick.
orations ceptability eunomians.
use to. us it. as usual

stoop down great sample sim sip

participation. pentagal lory ears mere
shake under asp contact, jority bound.
offer lokalia as criptionoetic touch to
clergy tounakia degree connect
assion people liken thirst matter
nagging eye ball water hoe. call off
walrus tongue lash

statue weary. desert narrow. enamel

left overs. wine blurt. cheap and
chintz hot holler. fist pawn cousins
turn dash into heuristic madness
insouciance dyads rough bio prigs
who title paper clips, research couplets
two-line front to back diagrammatic

jerk off danger. sky way fat.

empty edan the pole carrier

co-myotonic intricacy. in minor

thirty eight lucid clothes pins.
pins. magon panue vacuum vir
reqani halal ein-sof emanator.
rakamim. denim dust. alter dow
fashion run with subsume start.
drive. purge. retreat

the sim one olum ba atsilut, beri ab,

yetsassiyab, drew spat. equidistant
circle midrash ark cane. singe point
handbreadth

bundle mass illuminit

stone garments. cupped wafer.
288 sefirot sparks. qeri. tsimtsum,
shivira ba halim partsufim.
mend abba

feet of yetsirab sank death again.

sphere qelippot. despite garden verse
sheds dual root residue
motif, an expanding lesion in fog 28
itself flaw god occurrence. tiqqunee
avonot. clean monday sin. nefesh
ruah, neshamah. rust perfect. spine gall
sackcloth stripes from shell notions

the maskilim wash rite.

capacious forehead. divinair. predict
grasp. extrageomancy proliferates chap
stick. erect sefirot belimah two hundred
thirty one gates open. set emanations on
twisty closure construct. ruah
neshamab gelippah. skin stud. odd
husk inasmuch bulb and high base
letters appear as duvet ponderance.
is it. perform intercourse sab gimeh will sit.
one sign direct even subtle clare sighs
above the imply skill expiate:

1 transfillin shawl
2 omitting shema
3 prac balah
4 mulet birth
5 yayin nesi

6 wear an oaf
7 hot ee ness
8 fat and not
9 sing one

10 milish
11 speak dead speak
12 anger
13 four ins then stone
14 menstruant detector
15 animal xual
16 tile women
17 ultery adds
18 laretious oral drink
19 masturbation
collate sin genesh. laugh for mitzvot
insofarasin 613 preceptions binit gage
corpus slot. sixtyone, twentyseven rolls
on thorn ortigas, plus plen inception.
accept fleshult philo cadaver. the cosmos
hole. lying in cause. tav late 84.
spark yoke. yodel inlieu

photographia destine the toll house

sort of reck. consider a. to point g. to sanc
length. promise GD te deum laudamus
antiphon for bro and sis put inside
vulgate. bogus nagged talk.
thurible sense that slacks priggish
vis a vis pang convergence

shrivel eremitic adslad in silk.

ignite totemic ser elue bryos histology.
caterpillar neurons. vantage scrunt
chamber. staticapters cogito ergo cum.
ignigma measurements hose. protate
coincidence, counter slit twin. kneel.
pray. project the fall probability:
anthropic atomic asstrol 1/137

persons like us 106

periodicities alms for rhythmic poose

repetitive rather. wholly box. absolutis
paraffin discourse melts not a fool. amen.
abrah swind sucks wisdom, moves ceiling,
glide gait plumage leaps. clasp cranny
rough peeps, yes. lid off. delight. we us
we us us. yet et too. dance perhaps
elevate absurd ditto union task. tisk ish.

lory gloves
mortify
i.e. eye satis
lily men. we fracture socrates’ humble pie
holdem blade sharp. us droop error.
cree untus manuotis. alter self. alter
nevertheless revelate venison as pardon
me does it seem oolee sentimental. new
wonders odd margin me sign o men
said you exclaim, recall oleum. racle.
sacks vita anti acta. weak whorl journals.
(postscript) supra pp. 80

banquet frogs
dish
quall arks

in vino veritas: last daze tally, who seduce

two more epithets; youngen lend express
coddle up rouse and tangle theory. the
formal defi rit sourcery. (l) luke 14:19
magic spread lothes our arrange. pot on
highhandedmiss gob kisses the tablet,
stretches fragrance, fuddles blood. inversely
ex tempo, 7 points occur, require mood
rings. ambiguity…

bility it 2257 ft
“itself”
poke jargon

sire member routs require gnomes heave.

chamber faust. we assume gumbo corridors.
shutter rocks. dither pink lipstichusk.
elicit idyllic push. pull. rope a dope.
likewise drank speech. dim host. divers talk
exists hitch. giddy up impresses some arbor.
serve break open speed. joiner veterans femin
eloquence thrums hums woven asp drama.
herism duty ticks in pocket. bible tolen rubber
tire despair translations; afterscript pp 450

dogma impoig
refaction
comical subdivision
 Spring 2019
J. D. Nelson

9-volt lifestyle

on the little boat

with the bat captain*

orange soda
was more like it

little bug earns

glass at camp

I’m up here
in the flying saucer

*that bat was the wrong rabbit

hundred dollar door

this could rattle your daybreak

frog is driving a sports car

the sleeping frost

the honest cluck

packaging king
of colton, calif.

try the ticket machine

for van halen & more
down into the denver deep

one of the brains

will bring another “this”

the nice red

or is it green

really look & see

breaking bread, all right

say the word

“spaghetti“
slow was a p. o. box coin this miller

when I called back there was no answer

so I found the shape of the world and started

between each block are nine blocks

the sound of the only bird here

earth is wet
someone is ruining the poem with a weed-whacker

hee-hee
the elite

the iowa green league

the cake or soda first

that hay until grass glenn

flame griff

ten angry onions

& earth grapes
love was the ocean fish today

& waiting to move thru the wall

was I upset at myself

I don’t remember

room for the room in the room

marlboro tusks

something is wrong with the sun

oh, look – it’s coughing love

earth is a heart in my hands

or a rune in the forest, I imagine

you were remembering something,

remember?
 Spring 2019
James Schlatter

Turns

first date

Sophie stood at the entrance to my apartment building holding onto the doorframe so that she wouldn’t fall,

her legs wobbling on pumps so pointed I marveled at how she’d made it the two blocks from the station. She

smiled slightly, not showing her teeth. She must have sensed my astonishment. She was not the tall, slim

blond her advertisement had promised, but an aging faerie in a dyed black pageboy, her make-up not

masking the laugh lines bracketing her mouth, nor the pits marring her cheeks.

‘Blaise?’ Her voice was soft, almost a whisper.

I hesitated, her perfume thick on my tongue. I had been building up to this moment for nearly a year,

clicking through websites, studying photographs, picking up the phone and upon hearing a woman’s voice,

hanging up, my heart hammering so hard in my chest it made my mouth salivate.

‘Come in,’ I said, and stepped aside so that she could pass.

She walked putting one spike in front of the other, as though walking along a wire. The seams of her

stockings zippered up the backs of her legs, calf muscles flexing with each footfall. Her skirt rode so high up
her thighs that the lace of her stockings showed, her rump muscled against the tight fabric. She sat on the

sofa and crossed her legs, clutching her knees, displaying long, thorny fingernails lacquered in clear gloss.

‘You live alone?’ she asked, taking in my sparse apartment.

‘For a long time.’

‘You’re lucky. I share a one bedroom with two other girls. But at least we live in the city.’

‘I work in the city,’ I said. ‘It’s nice to cross the bridge when I’m done.’

‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a clown.’

‘Come sit next to me.’

She draped her fingers over my knee and told me I was handsome. The truth is I am tall, with a stretched

neck and mutt-brown hair. Though I am bone-thin, I am strong and flexible. Every morning before

oranges and coffee, I do one hundred clap push-ups. I’ve been told my hooked nose gives my performances

a seriousness that they wouldn’t otherwise possess.

‘Do you have something for me?’

‘Hmm?’

‘My donation,’ she said, her voice harder.

‘Ah…’ Lifting my rump, I pulled bills out of my trouser pockets and lay them in her lap.

She straightened and counted each one with parted lips. ‘One hundred seventy-three… that’s forty-five

minutes.’

She dropped the bills in her purse and snapped it shut. She scooted closer to me and massaged my penis

through my trousers before unbuttoning and unzipping them with an expert flick of her fingers.
 I was too nervous to maintain an erection. All the erotic fantasies I’d savored scrolling through

advertisements evaporated in a film of cold sweat. I sat on my hands so that Sophie wouldn’t see them

tremor.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, now pulling on my penis with thumb and index.

‘Take off your clothes,’ I instructed her.

She stood and shrugged out of her skirt, revealing black stockings held up with rubber bands and a g-

string barely covering her newly-shaved vagina. If anything, her perfume was even stronger now and I

reasoned she must have doused her legs with it just before knocking on my door. Still, I grasped the backs of

her thighs, my fingers pressing into tendons so taut they seemed part of a single wire system running

throughout her body, strained from a life of riding trains across the city and visiting strangers like me,

wondering who they were and hoping they wouldn’t hurt her. This depth of feeling, this sympathy for her

caused a desire so strong in me that I could no more control it than I could control who I loved.

Jumping up, I let my arms and legs guide themselves; or, I should say, let my feelings guide them. They

whirled, bare feet scraping the hardwood, hands visible only as flashing white palms. My body suddenly

stiffened into an unfamiliar position, cramped as though sitting, staring toward the living room window,

where sodium lights leapt out of the tunnel’s darkness, faces frowning at the stops, faces I knew intimately-

desperate faces, petty and lonely.

When I released my position, straightening my back and shaking out my aching fingers, Sophie was

sobbing at my feet, knees pressed together and knuckles in her eyes, black grit dribbling into her pitted

cheeks, and her mouth, once so carefully painted, now a smear of raspberry jam.

‘Horrible!’ she wailed. ‘Horrible!’

 I pulled my underwear and trousers up, zipped and buttoned them. It was no use continuing with the

charade of our lovemaking. I’d ruined even a purchased hour, when everything was guaranteed. I sat next

to her and not knowing what else to do, put my arm around her and drew her into me as her shoulders

heaved.

encounter at central station

Dressed in a white leotard, I did my turns as trains pulled in and out of central station. About a dozen

people looked on as I went through my routine, beginning with lighthearted "Fat Man Pulling on Wet Jeans"

and ending with "Hotel Watcher", where a man spies on his wife through a hotel window as she makes love

to a series of strangers, calling them into her room one after another, a sickness of the soul that the watcher

discovers by accident. I tried to vary my routine every few days, sometimes by imagining the lives of others

and sometimes by reading my own life. The turns mostly came of themselves, propelled by whatever

emotion I was feeling. It wasn’t possession so much as letting go, a kind of temporary freedom. It was, in

truth, the only peace I ever enjoyed.

When the audience was moved by my turns, they dropped singles, fives and even twenties into the hat I

kept by my feet. It was not an ordinary hat, but a “chapeau” purchased years before at Helmsman’s, with a

crimped top and a wool, waterproofed exterior. The inside of the hat was lined with black silk and the bills

nestled in it looked even more valuable than they were.

 The only prop I used was a black cane. Like the hat, the cane was unique. It was given to me by a blind

gentleman during my initial year of performing. In those days, I did turns in the Italian district, hoping to

cash in on wandering tourists. It was mostly older locals, however, and I was rewarded with twists of cured

meat, hunks of hard cheese and the occasional centavo. But this gentleman stood leaning on his cane, the

rubber stopper planted on the concrete as I held "Wounded Soldier", one of my earliest and most successful

turns. His cloudy eyes gazed in my direction, though it was clear they couldn’t see anything. Still, after

several moments, his hand started shaking over the cane as he swayed on his wingtips and tears bled out of

those hazy eyes, his lips so pink they looked drawn on, wrinkled and blubbery, ears sticking out beneath a

leather driving cap. His wife clutched at his arm, urging him on. But the old man refused, instead laying the

cane at my feet before grasping my leg with a fierceness I didn’t think possible given his feebleness. He

muttered something in Italian, a curse maybe, a blessing, and then let go, leaning on his wife as they hobbled

away.

In the weeks that followed that first encounter with Sophie, I tried my best to forget about her existence. I

had imagined prostitutes as performers like me. But after Train Ride, in which I felt Sophie’s anxiety and

terror about who she might visit, I could no longer view them that way. I performed out of love. Sophie did

so out of necessity.

It was with great unease, then, that I saw her again. I was nearing the end of my routine, my body

stiffened into "Monkey Reads Sears Catalogue". For this one, I placed my feet wide apart, squatted, and

holding my hands out in front of me, leaned my face inches from the imaginary catalogue as though I were

near-sighted. Laughter rippled through the crowd. I permitted myself to glance peripherally at their smiles

and that’s when I noticed Sophie.

 She was dressed in a skin-tight velour dress of the deepest blue, the material shimmering in the lights of

the station. She teetered on high heels, her painted toenails sticking out beneath the black straps like torn

rose petals. Her eyes stared at me so steadily that for the first time in many years, I lost concentration and

broke off a turn before I was ready. The crowd hardly noticed, leaping forward to drop money into the hat.

After they dispersed, Sophie clip-clopped up to me, wobbling so erratically that I held my hands out to catch

her.

‘I’ve been looking for you,’ she shouted above the screech of an incoming train. Even through her thick

make-up, I could make out her blush.

‘Oh?’ I said, picking up my hat.

‘Yes,’ she said, and smiled, lipstick caked on the corners of her mouth. The pits looked like little bites

taken out of her cheeks and I again saw her riding the trains, imagining the strangers whose arms she was

about to lie in. I tried to shake away this feeling, hating her for it. When the train door opened behind me,

passengers flooded toward us, swinging briefcases like cudgels. One caught Sophie on the thigh, tipping her

so that I did in fact have to catch her. I pulled her into me until the crowd swept by. It felt so strange to have

a woman in my arms, a woman that had probably already been used that afternoon and yet one that was

small and firm, so soft in the velour dress. I held her even after the crowd had passed, already imagining

giving her a few bills for the pleasure. But she clung to me too, her face warm against my chest so that when

she finally pulled away, red lipstick was smeared across the white leotard.

‘Where are you off to?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

‘This way,’ she said. ‘Come along.’

 After pushing my arms through a faux leopard skin coat, I slipped my bare feet into size fourteen Adidas

whites with green stripes and tucked the laces underneath the leather tongue. Clutching cap and cane, I

strode on tired legs, Sophie tottering next to me, her hand around my waist, leaning into me and moving so

slowly that she might have been stepping with broken ankles.

I slid in the back of the taxi after Sophie. Because my legs are so long, I had to put my feet on the floor of her

side.

‘Where to?’ the driver said, his eyes in the rearview mirror.

I gave him my address, wondering if I was expected to pay for this visit or if Sophie was coming with me

because she wanted to. But that’s absurd, I reasoned, of course she wants money. I looked at my long, bony

thighs in the white leotard, the oversized Adidas and not for the first time loathed myself.

Sophie slipped her feet out of those impossibly high pumps and placed them atop my Adidas. Her feet

were as small as a child’s, the toes crooked from being squeezed into tight shoes.

‘Do you always perform at the station?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘For a few years now.’

‘I’ve never seen you.’

‘I’m there five days a week.’

‘I work in stretches,’ she said. ‘Ten, twelve days in a row. Then I take a train south and stay by the shore.

Sometimes I gamble.’

‘Where?’
 Instead of answering, she scooted over so that our hips were touching and leaned her head against my

shoulder. Her perfume reminded me of adolescent girls waiting in line at the cinema. I put my arm around

her and held her close. I was happy to pay for it. Though crowds often laughed at my turns, they despised

me. On the train, in my white leotard, my face made up with white paint, but smeared from a day’s labor, I

suffered the insults and jeers not just of ruffians, but of women as well, albeit silently. Their looks of disgust

at a tall, crane-like man exhausted and stinking on a train, exuding all the pain and conflict that they worked

so hard to avoid.

We do not choose a clown’s life, but are condemned to it. The worse part is arrival. That is to say, the

moment when we step off the train and begin the walk to our apartment, circling around it, delaying entry as

long as possible, even purchasing an overpriced coffee, light and sweet, only to toss it away after a few sips.

Because when we finally cross the threshold into our three rooms, we must endure the countless hours of

the evening and into the night, one where we observe the moon as its light creeps along the walls, so slowly

and coolly that an hour passes before it traverses the distance between fissures.

Sophie! I wanted to shout. But I just held her, the setting sun spinning rays of grizzly light through the

bridge cables as the taxi accelerated.

‘My mother was Russian,’ Sophie said. ‘She died from the swing.’

‘The swing?’

‘They were touring the United States. After having me, she’d gotten fat and the catcher couldn’t hold her.

I was three months old. They said my father was American- some promoter.’

‘You were an orphan?’

 ‘I like the gambling boats best,’ she said, addressing my earlier question. ‘The lights on the shore are like

pieces of gold. They make you see omens. Six lights, bet sixes. Ten, bet black. It’s all rigged of course. But

everyone is nice. They bring you these crispy snacks while you lose. When the boat comes back in you’re

broke, but full and happy…I had a feeling about you when I was taking the train that day. This will be

someone special, I told myself.’ She kissed me on the cheek, her lips now touched with white. ‘What’s your

name again?’

‘Blaise Pascal.’

‘Sounds familiar.’

‘My mother read it somewhere.’

‘Blaise the Amaze. Blaise the Craze. Blaise the Haze. What’s your stage name?’

‘Nothing. I don’t talk.’

‘Mine’s Sophie.’

‘What’s your real name?’

‘Tatty. Short for Tetyana.’

She kissed me again and told me I smelled like wet socks.

seventeen days

We made love all afternoon, stopping only to stumble to the Colombian bakery down the street and gorge

on arepas and black coffee. If she had been working earlier that day, she showed no signs of it. She was
remarkably limber, twisting herself into painful-looking contortions: bending her feet behind her ears;

splitting her legs; balling herself up into the fetus position and then slowly, like an opening flower, unfolding

her limbs. It was performative, drawing on the lessons of her dead mother, the Russian acrobat.

‘Is this what you do for all your clients?’ I asked her after one such stunt.

She laughed, blushing, her hair slanted to one side from lying on it awkwardly. ‘You’re not a client,’ she

said. ‘You’re my boyfriend!’

Tears stood out in my eyes. I, Blaise Pascal, was someone’s boyfriend.

Tatty moved in that very night, taking the train back to the city and returning with a single turquoise

suitcase with dresses and stockings spilling out of it.

For the next seventeen days, I lived out a dream. In the morning I took the train into the city and

performed, the turns singing of my love. Instead of "Fat Man" or "Hotel Watcher", I invented entirely new

turns: "Silent Declaration", "Winning by Creeping" and "Final Voyage", which doesn’t imply death, but

rather an older man, who after years of working as a proofreader, that is to say, working Friday through

Sunday 48 hours straight and sleeping the better part of Monday and Tuesday, knowing no one, loving no

one, alone with his sharpened pencils and dictionaries, his reading glasses and bland tea, yes this man,

nameless and faceless, at last steps aboard a ship, by which I mean one Friday morning, walking to catch a

train, with the smell of the sea in his nostrils, decides to walk along the piers and is taken aback by an

enormous ship, the captain himself standing in front of the walkway in his navy coat with gold epaulettes.

Your berth is ready, this captain announces. The proofreader glances around. We’ve been waiting for you,

the captain adds. Where is this ship going, asks the proofreader. Out there, the captain says, pointing. And

so the proofreader, realizing his destiny, steps onto the walkway. And this is precisely the position my body
remained in: one foot in mid-air, balancing on the other, body leaning forward, nose sniffing the salty sea, a

smile cracking the white chalk of my face.

During the seventeen days I performed under Tatty’s spell, I earned more money than I did in the two

previous months combined. While people will pay to be moved, they will pay more to be moved to

happiness and these new turns drew not dozens, but hundreds.

‘You need to keep this money someplace besides your drawer,’ Sophie said, one evening. ‘How do you

pay your bills?’

‘Cash.’

‘Your rent?’

‘I bring it to my landlord’s in a paper sack.’

‘You get a receipt?’

‘No.’

Tatty shook her head. ‘Blaise, that means he doesn’t record anything. One day, he will find someone

willing to pay more and out you go. Do you even have a lease?’

I hung my head.

‘Tomorrow, I’m going to open a bank account for you. From now on you pay everything with a check.’

And so I gave my earnings to Tatty every evening after performing. She kept a careful account of all the

deposit slips and I must admit, it was a pleasure to watch my money grow so quickly. Because I was making

so much, Tatty stopped working altogether and instead kept house. Her cooking wasn’t special- usually

some kind of ground beef mixed with peppers, beans and too much salt. But we ate at home rarely,

preferring to frequent restaurants along the street near our apartment.

 Seeing how I’d lived through Tatty’s eyes was humbling. She bought sheets and pillowcases to replace

the rent, sweaty ones I never washed, a ceramic toothbrush holder instead of the yogurt cup I used, and a

futon in case we ever had guests. In those seventeen days, she transformed our apartment into a home with

a thousand little touches. For once, I was happy to arrive at the apartment after performing, my hat full of

money and my sweet Tatty waiting for me in a slinky skirt and heels, still dressing like a prostitute because

those were the only clothes she possessed. Our lovemaking continued unabated right up until the day she

disappeared.

On what would have been our third Tuesday together, I walked into an empty apartment. After washing

the paint off my face and changing into clean underwear, I waited on the futon listening to Cuco Sanchez

records until late into the night. It wasn’t until nearly three o’clock in the morning that I forced myself to

check the hall closet where she’d stored the turquoise suitcase.

In the days that followed, I wandered street after street looking for her, riding trains into foreign

neighborhoods and miming at nervous clerks, though my turns were just shapeless displays of despair.

They chased me away with brooms.

I probably needn’t tell you that not only was my bank account probably wiped out, but I didn’t even have

access to it. If I had any friends, they might have said that Tatty had used me, that she’d probably been

kicked out of her own apartment and happened to run into me one afternoon and decided to get what she

could. But they would be wrong, because for those seventeen days I had a woman on my arm. When we

visited restaurants, took the train into the city or went to the cinema, people looked at me differently. I was

proud.
 I still perform "Last Voyage", though the meaning has changed from joy to bittersweet. I’ve gone back to

older routines as well. But the greatest routines, ones even surpassing the ecstatic ones, are the latest: "West

Virginia", "Nightclerk at the Rodeway Motel", and "Anisette", where a woman, worn out and broke, wearing a

torn silk hat with wooden cherries and her sister’s wedding dress, can no longer get drunk, but just sits at the

bowling alley bar and gulps one anisette after another as the pins explode all around her.

These turns of despair have not only made me rich, but famous. Shortly after I started performing again

after Tatty’s disappearance, J.Z. McGill, the famous agent, happened to step off the train and catch a few of

my turns, including Anisette. He offered representation on the spot and after a series of auditions, I

performed for the first time in a real theater. As you may know from the recent biography that’s come out,

the run was so successful that I was asked to perform for an audience of thousands. Though it took me some

weeks to become accustomed to performing in the evening, I did quite well, and was eventually asked to

perform at the Mackenzie, the most famous theater of all. I have now been there for seven months and am

making more money than I ever dreamed.

Once, I imagined I saw Tatty in the balcony seats. Her hair had grown out, she’d gotten fatter, but I felt

certain it was her. I broke off Nightclerk and shifted into a new, yet familiar turn, standing slightly bent over,

clutching the cane to my side as the imaginary crowd swept past, trains hissing in the background. From the

balcony, a single, explosive cry jarred the impassive faces.

 Spring 2019
Janiece L. Malone

I’m Upset

I’m angry
no disrespect
To my sisters of other descent
I’m sure your struggles
Are just as relevant

I want to tell you why black

women are never allowed to vent
Give me a moment to explain
It will all make sense

I’m not here to comfort you

Because where is my comfort
When I walk in a room

It’s not in my shoes

Or in my hair
Not in my fitting dress
Not in the undergarments I wear

Because I’m judged as less compared to you

From the dollar to 64 cents
For the same job
When nothing else is different between us two

Except that God gave me

A lot more protection from the sun
And my hair does bend to the will
Of the white man’s understanding of gravity
Still, those two blessings make you mad at me?

That ridiculous
Anyone with common sense could sense it
But what’s common knowledge
is our small differences make us drastically different

If this makes you uncomfortable

remember for someone else these struggles
everyday they breath they pay this toll

I’m just unveiling

Someone else’s type of hurt
all women deserve
a simple chance to be heard
Venus Flytrap

Short sleeves and short skirts

Summer breeze feels good until it hurts
Skin exposed catches the eye
Of an admirer

The attention is at first innocent

She swats away
Any unwanted advances
Until there was a change
In current circumstances

The tension cools down

And her attention turns away
He then takes flight on the opportunity
To attach himself to her and pollinate

Intimate contact
Organic fluids exchange
In one quick moment
She'll never be the same

Her skin swells

He flees the scene without a trace
She cries out for help
Which arrives
With a strange look on their face

What did you expect

Look at what you wore
It’s hot and humid
Mosquitoes, love the warmth
She sprayed on repellant
And off she went

But let’s be clear

There’s nothing complicated
About consent
 Spring 2019
Janis Butler Holm

slopping thigh goods fauna showy heave ring

muse goods tease bar lye pink lye dough

fizz souse his gin duh pillage woe
bee mill ought tea free slopping deer
blue crotch fizz goods dill pup myth toe

by whittle force just pink wit sneer

blue slop myth gout alarm souse beer
pea green duh goods hand chosen quake
duh starkest heave ring love duh gear

bee sieves fizz tarnish wells unmake

blue task riff glare his bum Swiss steak
duh lonely mother grounds duh sheep
love breezy friend hand brownie fake

duh goods bar glove fee lark hand keep

gut lye calve squamous says blue creep
hand piles blue foe deplore lye peep
hand piles blue foe deplore lye peep
 Spring 2019
Jeff Bagato

We May Cry Atlantis

We may cry Atlantis,

dreaming of a pure
city on a hill
that no road
or prayer can reach,

a time of jungles shining

in the sun like the old
cities trees and lianas
currently conceal

Buried here for centuries,

a tribe goes naked
but for a few feathers
bound to them by leather
ties,

blowing
the snuff of hallucination
into each other’s heads,
then staggering
through the hours

A great jeep burns

across the underbrush;
crushed on a megalith,
it reveals a home
of ancients gone—
that place
where lies and bigotry
found favor, and gold
called its people
to their prayers

Sunlight hits
these stones and the gilt
don’t shine so pretty
anymore, like
a wart on the eye,
like a lesion
on the lip of a would-be
Don Juan, up
from the gutter
for the courting of a
queen

These days we picture

ourselves polishing
such jewels, all
broken and less
wanted than ever
before, wishing
for a genie who
never quite appears
Reporting from Oz

Your newscaster holds

a gun to his head
and says
gitmo,
gaza, & ghraib,
oh my

Yellow brick road

like a rug pulled out
from under your feet—
whatever a wiz there was there
never was
a wizard
in Oz

Flying monkeys in banker suits,

their power ties so red, red, red,
swoop down upon those
unexpecting little men,
freely giving wedgies
left and right,
instead of safe
returns

If you can catch

one by the tie,
you can fling him like a kite
crashing to earth

This isn’t a fable based on Baum,

‘though the tin
man could play
an assembly line robot
stuck in mid hack
 Watch the lion act CEO
of some salmonella industry
too cowardly to admit
the taint

While the man of straw

stands tall, a wicker giant
holding up the sky
& set aflame, chanting
ranters bellowing spells of cash,
magic beans, & gold
floss spun out
of the hay

Now, as the smoke

rises, and the heat rises,
and the fire rises, biting deep
into the drumstick,
the brisket,
the ham,
comes a scream from within—

oh lord,
oh wizard,
oh guru,
oh priest—

a scream
from
within
First Dispatch

The roar of the king

could be farts;
an edict invisible but clouded
by offal and the waste
of a mind

The ego’s now

can only hear a joke told backwards—
the life of a fact is short;
just watch the tall tale
dancing in broken wind, a few words
thumbed and smeary
below a pixilated hash:

one truth
added to another,
yielding a new lie also seeming true;
the parts cannot be un-wholed,
so fantasy enters our
plane of the real

Of course, some
of these pictograms,
hieroglyphs and alphabets
have been chiseled
in stone;

once their remote pulses

regain the quantum flow—
a monument to no mind,
a memorial
cast in dry sand—

these people
can return to eating dust
before long sleepiness
takes their souls
to bed
 Meet this great beast
filled with days all empty,
a gold mine of me me me
guided thither and yon
by invisible bleating:

maps that speak

prove false gods;
guides use pictures to swing a vote;
tie some emotion to a rumor
and it weighs heavy, sucking
oxygen away
from the otherwise
real

Make bones surrender

to your will, bend
away contrary to their purpose,
crack and break and yet
not shout nor feel
the cold pain of truth

Our stand starts now,

on this ground, on these limbs—
these foundation stones
perhaps eroded by the common tides;
scratch your principles
here and maybe they too
will last

Give a resting place

to needs gone down
in hope of something better;
a wishful cemetery
where all brave dreams
prepare to die
 Spring 2019
Joan McNerney

Waitress

Sally thought everything was

up to luck and she had zero.
Her chances got swept
away with yesterday's trash.

Every day working in this

dumpy dinner slinging hash.

There were the regulars

who knew her name and
left good tips. They had
no place else to go.

Her feet swelled up at

the end of lunch rush.

Sally wiped tables filling

ketchup bottles, salt shakers,
sugar jars while staring out the
window at pulsing rain.

Waiting a half hour for the bus,

winds tangling her hair.

She stopped at the market to

bring a few groceries home.
Struggling now to open her door,
only cold rooms would greet her.
Teacher

She hoped some would leave,

rise above dirty factory gates
past plumes of smoke spewing
from the cement plant.

Occasionally when discussing

great American novels, the walls
shook. Ravines were blasted
for more rocks to crush into powder.

She wished they would not become

clerks for soul-less chain stores or
cooks in fast food joints where
smells of burning grease lingered.

What was the use of teaching literature

and poetry to these children who would
soon grow listless? Their spirits ground
down like stones in the quarry.
Long Haul Driver

At first he was thrilled by the road

thinking it an adventure to roam
through cities and states.

His truck a massive 18 wheeler

winding through snake-like
overpasses, gleaming in sunlight
across ten lane highways.

But then he had to drive

so many hours arriving
only to wait for the next
work order, inhaling fumes
in the cold and in the heat.

Coffee was not enough

now he needed No Doze…
easy to pick up at gas stops.
But how to deal with the pain
in his legs, arms and neck?

Later he felt a slave to the

choking engine and ugly
concrete. The same signs
everywhere, big box stores,
eating holes and truck stops
with cheap souvenirs.

Weary of this relentless surge

of everything always going
forward and that demanding clock.
Finally he felt left behind.
Grocery Cashier

After punching in, she opens her

register, counts bills and splits
up rolls of coins. Her arms ache
from yesterday. From pulling together
store items, piling them in bags.

Another day in this dismal place.

Saccharine MUSAC, dim lights
dreary corridors, dingy floors.
No clock, no water fountain,
no public restroom. Aisles stocked
with cans, boxes, frozen foods.

Pushing carts full of packaged meat,

donuts, cases of beer...customers
creep up in line. Trance-like they
press forward with crinkled coupons,
handing out cash or swiping cards.

A camera is poised on her.

Registers are monitored and
the number of sales counted.
Making sure nothing slips by,
“The Man” is always watching.
Maintenance Man

Everything falls apart,

all things rot and crack.

Each day another tenant

fills out forms to request
repairs. Hot water tanks
burst, sinks back up, toilets jam.
Smoke alarms break.
It's a messy life, he pushes
against riptide.

All spring and summer,

weeds keep growing.
Leaves gather during fall.
In winter time, ice
covers walkways.

It’s time to go home now.

Tomorrow he will return
to pick up the pieces again.
 Spring 2019
John Clark Smith

COME, MYSTERY

IT

I hear the wailing of the mud of flesh and brains,

Heart, Head and Shaman wrestling with identity,
I strain to listen and give some unfailing amenity,
but what remains to do before such endless pains?
To watch you talk and do without meaning or care!
There it is! I have said it! I have given it air
in your stifling world, in the land of sleepwalkers;
my voice flounders inside your battered soul where stains
of blood and war blot out my once pristine presence.
Oh be not surprised! Once I and others were there
awaiting growth and life in your self-centered tomb
and we loved you, sad creature, even in darkness
we adored your potential, even when madness reigns
we waited and cried while the light shone less and less
and there was empty still space in your spiritual room.

For I knew none but I could drag the beauty from you,
none could sow the seeds of your resurrection,
none could give you song, erase your fears, bring a glee
of discovery and strength despite your imperfection.
The all is here, it swirls round your mind and shouts,
it bubbles up from murky days of suppressed confinement,
it screams out loud in silent messages no one ever doubts,
the I the yes which none denies and none can ever find or rent.
I come as dust, the beggar of the all which never pouts
about the ill-conceived plans of Nature's involvement,
the one who laughs at creases on a silken bed of truth,
I live as always unaffected and without resentment
a life transcending whatever Nature can produce or know.
I am the light that touches you from outside the light
yet buried long ago in a place far too deep for sight.

I come to tell a story now too long and slick with lies
about the way I am and was and how I move my arms
so that none can see me move or know my little chores,
a story long with growth and quiet without charms.
I am the story, the story I, no end, no start, no plot,
forever hidden in the stars but throbbing under feet,
a tale without a history and never more than nonsense,
but big to puffed up adults and seekers of my hallowed seat.
Oh not a yarn, I say, of silliness of what is most revered,
of thoughtless questions that only fools could invent,
of complicated ritual needing seminarians to complete.
Can I be when nothing's marked with my invisible intent,
when temples rise and I, entombed beside a coat of arms,
can no longer see the humble heart within my little tent,
when prospects and their guides, a-toting little maps and cameras
whose photos shine in family rooms prettily draped in dark,
refuse to see the many ways on which I make my mark?

I shall not waste my time on trifles nor excuse the race

of avoiding subtle guidance that rarely returned in seeing;
I take the blame since my saga bore the babes of promise;
they are mine, I say, and they emerged the sharers of my being,
but I could not give them everything nor reveal it in full.
My tale and I are beyond what is, beyond the imaginable or the glue
of life and death, beyond the thing, the thought, the instinct,
I am no I, I am no object, I am and not, word and silence, two,
three, seven and ten thousand, the number that cannot add,
the sound that no one hears, the stick that none can measure,
I revel in confusion but clarity is what I never eschew.
This and more is the mine that none but I can treasure.
I could not give what none can hold or use or love but I,
I do not cheat or trick, deceive with myth, offer life as lure;
what flows from hunger in my heart, invention in my being,
is part of me and I could not ignore the duty in a task
that can reveal in rehearsal not the actor but the mask.
Many sang it, you heard it often, and now I give you sight:
There is no mighty power, no force of things that rules,
nothing lives beyond the chasm, life itself is just some tools
without a goal, without a truth, without a wrong or right.
I have told you this, reality has screamed it in your ears,
a thousand times was it written in your script, but your mask
was hurriedly created to lift your pride and hide your fears
before the justice in your mind could lessen human might.
I know you believe in truth and love, and some of you may fight
to raise up virtue, enshrine the good in every minor task
but in vain you war for purity, your valiance is a waste,
a trillion virgins live no better than a tiny group of fools;
so let us know the food we eat, let us not conceal the taste
behind a wish to manufacture beauty and a logic of the not,
or every bite will be of acid and what is left will rot.

Yet you have ignored this well, my naughty little mice,

I have seen it in your crumbling cities and slacking values,
your golden age of dark deceit and tarnished hues;
you do not speak of it but I know well your every vice
and how proud you are of what is godless and impure.
Consider! Denounce what's now the human’s troubled lot
and a mighty weight will raise itself, all will be secure;
you need but lift triumphantly a different banner to entice
a bit of integrity from a society run by throws of dice.
True, you bear a coat of errors so long I could reform a sot
more easily than change the habits you instill in youth.
Admit them now, show recognition, pay back your dues
and a light will burn within you that not even truth
discerns, and those horrid crumbs of your rodent past
will be abhorrent and help you seek a healthy human fast.

Yet why fast, you sneer, why survive when survival is the end,
why be if being has no change and identity never clear,
why enshrine the prophet, saint and those who have no peer
if words are lies on which an idiot only would depend,
why expect the excellent when excess the credible fact,
why talk of light when darkness melts the mold divinely cast
of love or life, and the short arm of pain is ever intact,
why flee when escape is never real and chains a friend
for which we all must yearn if ever we transcend
the silent repetition, the dullest search for what will last,
the boring hope for signs of god and kindness, when fate
is bold and stalks the earth, and forces all to fear
its fangs and threats, its giant tracks intimidating
even the bravest tracker and the just get no respect
or reward in a meaningless maze only money can effect?

Oh a sorry crew you are, you ship-wrecked navigators of pride

who only spy the knowledge icebergs in the sea of wisdom
yet still crash for words, flags and land, and seek to become
what only wisdom can bestow and what only dying has denied.
Have you no need for mystery anymore, do you not feel
the touch of the strange, you lubbers, must you reject
every outcast, is there no enigma that has a deep appeal
for your drifting aimless souls? Such a soft little suicide
awaits you, I swear, a killing of self you cannot hide
with drowning institutions and paper rituals, crises that infect
and inject you with gentle serums of rich apathy, despair
and knowledge of a greater creation than you; in delirium
you shall find yourselves only, ignore what I alone am fully aware
and be the hollow and dispirited who have debased beauty
by their obsession for piracy and a soulless booty.

No change, you boast, no turning, no shift, no repentance,

nothing moves the universe, all is fixed, all revolves around
a center in which none can grow, none can hope, all are bound
by Law and the Law is eternal, without progress; the lance
of fortune itself has no effect, you say, so why even revolt
the tradition when revolt has become traditional, when revolt
appears differently when viewed from the disguise of distance;
why nurture, why care, why create, why continue in a trance
of hope when genes are the rule, heredity the sterile woman
from whom nothing birth can come except the tyrannical dolt
of sameness and the doleful face of final disappointment?
Oh such tired questions from those who ignore solutions!
Must I drown your questions in the pollution of arrogance,
burn your lists of needs with the acid of ablutions,
turn away from your denial of change until repentance?

Each quest borne by layers of identity

billows up in the denial of the animal,
the lost creature intrigued by its desire;
it yearns for sight blinded by a humanity
 craving for the lost unthinking existence
when none knew the other in the mystery of mating,
when opposites floundered without structure,
functions functioned without unity
as pictures with unmixed colors and rigid lines.
Does beginning begin in many spread into many
mating itself in twos, threes, fours centerless,
a many without harmony painted fully clear?
Does change rest unused in the archive of thought,
awaiting the will and catalyst of the mix,
seeking a Shaman who calls out longingly:

SHAMAN

Behold not two or three but many and one,

the riches of duality now infertile,
the poverty of triads in peevish demands of logic,
behold stagnancy, behold a frozen consciousness,
behold you, changing not, wallowing in settled mind sand,
Awake and change! You slack too much!
Heart, reply! Slumberer, speak! Categorize!

Rising naked from its warm bath of numbers and signs,

a woolly film of induction still clinging,
acid wet with everyday thinking of everyday things,
Heart drools formulae and sets, tables and stats
about the death of language and meaning,
the words freezing as they depart its mouth;
Heart knows nothing, Heart understands all, Heart sighs.

Deeper! the Shaman cries through the crust.

Heart strains, stiffens, its self locked by lips

soulless and icy from its crazed and relentless paths
of blackness and emptiness, eyes seeing things of eyes,
self screaming values and proofs until it bursts:

No more! the child-thinker whimpers pitifully

and returns to thoughts of cushioned concrete things,
to shadows in the cave of holism.
The world turns by warmth melting mind coldness,
the senseless force burning through its certainty.

Why not my heart! Why not my ways! Why not burn!

Am I so cold that my concepts yearn not for fire,
thoughts so strong but weak before self-witness,
a crippling arrogance of blind sight pretending sight,
ideas so firm no fire of thought moves them,
some troubling nuance ignored to butt styled truth,
brilliant argumentation toppling into entertainment,
its rationale lonely for health and challenge?
Oh heart, why enjoy the death of changeless sleep?

You, little worldly face with no features,

clamoring for growth when the whole world derides
true health and loves your sickness, behold this:
None now responds more quietly than the past
pasted on your shelves but empty in your heart,
oh sweet words on tear-filled papyrus you never heard!
You little worldly face, you poisoned complexion,
emulating barbarians and dozing adolescents, listen:
Hearts linked, they you, you they, move together,
the wheel a turn an eon synthesizes the race,
the movement forward begins centuries ago
in Ur, Egypt, India, Greece and China a step a time;
the end is the beginning, the motion up cosmic.
Slow beyond slow the motion of the ape of selfishness.

HEART

The same is tyranny! Heart objects. Are you blind?

Behold the glamour of cities and the progress of machines,
art so beautiful, books so masterful, religions
so transcendent, governments and ideologies so just!
What ape created in its sleep! We barbarians?!

SHAMAN

Your own whirl sweeps you up, you diapered child,

the bellows from your own monsters engulf
your fragile playpen of images, sand, and toys.
How monstrous your creations, how feeble your self;
Sit down! Listen! You dare boast of these!
Awake! Come out of it! Can’t you think
how lonely the centuries without change,
how comfortably rock you yourself into trances?
See now the creature, not his dead prey and stools.

HEART

Heart hears only its ancient dream of self

synthetizing so loud nothing can challenge
the monotonous sentence of sameness,
patterns transcending nothing,
a system invented to explain itself.

Say the what is! Heart whines. Define! Oh words defiled, derided!
Such inept defense of detailed denial.
Define? Specify? Systematize? Categorize?
Say: What is change? What is what is?
What is is? What is what? What! Is!

SHAMAN

Calm down, speaks the Shaman, and consider this:

Suppose our soft minds, ever anxious to survive,
ever infants in the outer rings of reality,
succumbed to the first tune they heard,
singing bravely thereon in arrogant arias of insecurity.
Is it location our thoughts reflect in their melodies,
is it Head or the external world of floating deaf forests of knowledge
in which no melodies sound, though notation exists somewhere?

HEART

Where is you know who? Heart asks. Head could enumerate,

couldn't Head, couldn't all of the zeros number up
nicely in that naughty affair of the intellect
with none and one, a wimple of thought with face
face down since a wan dawn saw survival seize power.
SHAMAN

Oh feeble heart, oh coward, revolt I say! Return!

See how you long not to know, see how language sputters
(such a squawker is she, this tool)
at the dawn, when food was master, oh squall,
stand up, (the internalized interpreted In packed up
with semantic intension sprawls); sit thee straight,
curve not by the bends of mind, use head!

HEART

Heart's mind, drooping from big thoughts on waste,

the heavy lexicon on mind grammar digested,
If I pars, therefore I think, it regurgitates.

SHAMAN

Sad clock, such a mean little machine you've become,

thought is gone from you, you tick only and they obey,
laying down your individual categories that food mocks.
Foods mocks it all, you sense-filled semanticist. Consider:
The long hill struts tall even though it is oldest,
the jagged mountain fears the valleys from its youth,
each ageless river, peerless, meanders through both
as if hill and mountain supped on its water, but look:
Hill and mountain create the water for the river,
neither know, so entrapped, nor feel their own essence
pouring out from them, draining away to the sea;
the brush of X, the forest of Y, the shrub of Z,
the many legged creatures of A do not complain
or resist the river's birth but offer support.
The river lives, the river alone is alive, the river is
never the same, ever-changing, straining for mystery.
Hear me, Heart, not the clock, rip open your head!
Cease to be the hill or the mountain with big peaks
and little valleys, things of X, Y, Z and A; zip it!
The way is down, up, over, under; follow the river.
HEART

Behold a cloudy mind, Heart scoffs; all riddled

and rooted in metaphysics, metaphor and hope.
Yours fiction, mine fact. Subjectivize it,
poor soul, internalize what you sense to know it.
Can you change what you cannot clarify?
Perceive in mountains and sea what is rock and water,
talk not of rivers as if the mind cannot create them.
Know the truth: Them all you created and created them you
in the pits of your murky mind where the sources
of your feeble images wallow and lurk in medieval mud.
How sticky your thinking! What musical nonsense!
Each thing is what it is without your translation.
Can a triangle change into a square and be a triangle?
Change not! Learn to choose! Seek the triangle or square
before you assume of what is less is more
and what is more is best.
In the end the Hare will win.

SHAMAN

That old traveler in China, friend to all the moderns,

who proclaimed the monad monarch over thinking,
would have dismantled his machine had he imagined
what lengths you go to mangle the great harmony.
Even the Konigsberg professor would have cried out:

Why think only phenomena! Be noumenally free too!

Raise up the censor in your equations! You mix realities!
Subordinate a bit of thought to being and do it now!
And what of Jou, you joyless calculator, what of Nature?
There! It's already changed! The leaf falls again!
Your ashes are dead in the supposed clash of I with It,
of that with this, thought with sentence, essence with existence.
Boom! It's all the same circular spiral of cloudiness
lulled into the lush gush mush of Scotist melodies.
Confront too the Vedas nettling: You know too much!
Nothing, none, no is complete, all, yes; I am It, It I,
illusory your choice and purity. Stop creating a box
and stepping into it, as if you exist somewhere you think.
Where was I a moment ago? Not I but you fabricate an In,
you, little worldly face, all mind, no head, King Stool,
you seduce a self as lover and forget the loss of other.
Did you not create the self, you adulterer? Well, enjoy it!

HEART

Heart laughs and rebukes the boasts of the Shaman.

Where is head? Head what? Why does it not speak?

SHAMAN

It's always identity for you! What of transformation!

HEART

And who are you, old man, causing wrinkles in your wake,
whence comes wisdom's insults and where is Shaman,
a speaker of lost innocence paying back debts, I suspect.

SHAMAN

I? You? He? She? Head, Heart, Shaman and more,

all one, all united but fragmented by mind and body,
I speak as you, you as I, and with us the most
forgotten dimension, It, lives building its own realm.
I? You? He? She? Head, Heart, Shaman and more,
all separate, independent, creating without center,
and the most dependent dimension, It, cementing all,
whose nature is change, without form, unstable, endless.
Still identity plagues you! For you for many it is form,
a structure Veda, Pre-Socratic and Yin-Yang knew not.
Don't you see? If I identify, I choose and mystery hides.
I talk in poetry to puncture words with other words,
the word beyond the word, but the way is not word;
had I the word would I not speak it, but the word is,
the word is not spoken nor identified nor formed,
the word now this, now that; a word does not mean,
it is; the way of is, is to be, not to be Is. Consider:

Beyond the river's waters of hills and mountains

stand the idyllic sea of sources. Source? No no,
the rivers, you say, feed into the sea, take care,
what cause is result, what result cause?
There you are! There you fix yourself and quest!
The question tells your answer, and in your answer
makes the history of our fragile thinking inert.
Arise! Look outward, away from stagnant channels,
do a bit of supposing and suspicion, philosopher,
suppose there is no cause and no result, suppose
language is illusion and meaning transitory,
suppose the sea can feed the river and water goes up,
all is mystery from suspicion and supposition.
You begin with what you conceive is end, but suppose
the end and beginning are one enveloping spiral,
what then! Is end another mental sword that cuts
the unity and the entity? What say you, Heart?

HEART

I'll play. If this is true, ask: Whence the start?

Whence the end? Or, should I say, describe the spiral
which absorbs them and sets the pattern for the rest.
And how do I make ideas clear? What can cling to truth?
How thick was the mud whence thought had sprung! What!
The mud is thicker now? Thought injured thought?
Suppose the mud was thinner, what then? Suppose no mud!
Is thought not for itself? Whence comes thought, Shaman?

How muddy this all is! Answers without questions!

Must I enjoy swimming in the murk muddle of inception!
Is it pure or septic? In my youthful moments of amusement
I would wade fully clothed, fearful of being abused
by the acidity of those deceptively clear waters.
The liquid stung: an unprepared babe, I assumed,
my skin needing the toughness of reflection and caution.
Beware the origins, it blasted! Stay away from source!
But now I dive naked and am unscathed, unimpressed too,
untouched by any clarity, a pool of mud of shallowness.
Oh how I came to see it was clear or thick from me,
my thought drew it near or far, my powers were its end,
what I am it becomes, what I know it only knows,
I the thought machine, I the source, I the crystal
that envisions the vision and sharpens the razor,
from me it needs to know, from me it lives and breathes,
behold, Shaman, the creator, the true demiurge, the One.
There! Now you know! It is I, mine, me and the like!

Why do you not reply? Am I so blasphemous I make you dumb?

Why act surprised? In each philosophy is recreated
through the tools each is given and how those tools respond;
the source is in each, the language in each, without Ideal,
without standard, each reaches its own clarity, its own tutor,
a solitary quest to unlock the forces of a machine.

Speak! Has Heart blocked not only Head but Shaman?

Perhaps a story will teach your tongue some words!

HEAD

No! No stories, Head cries, I am taut with tales

too numerous to recall, too deep to explain,
I am drenched with imagination, dried with logic,
loaded by the loneliness of alternatives.
Oh Heart and Shaman, how can you enjoy the yarns
that sing away when all communication dies
and the yarn of yarns elusive;
like strokes of a Chinese brush you paint
and yet you define, providing me a dinner
of gracious beauty and masterful dialectic
but when do I rest and enjoy a wee the meal?

What say you? Do I not portray you truly:

longing to entrance me with your spells,
luring with math and science, the magic of the unknown,
the vision of the perfect concept and meaning,
pretending to know all and yet nothing?
Oh how I have felt them, my friends, how tasty
their spices of knowing that you have sprinkled
just when I have lost myself in other needs.
Yet food calls, mating beckons, survival stands high
and even more the inner quest for identity.
Why so much torn by what is not mine?
Why not after so much history known
or seen or heard, why not sensed, why not edible?
I've listened to your passions for this and that,
you vary but do not change, your stools the same,
you pontificate upon your poop but the winds come,
don't they? And I and It remain to recoup the wreck
from the storms of mirage just as the sea turns
into a desert without food or companionship.
Where were you, oh Shaman, and you, Heart, then,
when I hungered for any morsel and starved with fear
and thoughts of death, when the animal triumphed!
How often did I stand in the midst of nothingness,
arms outstretched, clutching It who would not eat the me
who was ravenous for a food to make me delicious.
Though weak and miserable from our storms,
I rushed to them with you beside me and we floundered
like tightrope walkers crossing Niagara Falls.
Yet after all these voyages where have I ventured?
Why have I not changed? There's the enigma!
Why have you not found what can make me esculent?
All these philosophies and religions have cooked me
into a limp vegetable whose scent repulses my lovers.
How long will I lack the juice to make me succulent!

No! None of your sagas please! Of them I have had my fill!

Behold one who no longer seeks the first and last
as a zealous Nazarene at the apocalypse,
I, who uses words to intimidate the folk
who rely on articulate fools,
wish I knew nothing of rhetoric and knowledge
and could not ponder why they poisoned Socrates.
Argument, the ordure of words, instead of freeing,
instead of changing the minds of his listeners,
was the charge, the offense, the sin which damned him.
I want not to damn but to acclaim him for sinning
against the god of knowledge and dialectic.
How many unknown because they denounced the gods,
how many books and pamphlets unprinted?
The most afraid history's devotees and darlings?
Only the hungry can let a hundred flowers grow?
Change or choose? Change or hemlock?
Can one choose without changing?
What is good philosophy? Whether it works?
Why should we not be scientific with philosophy?
Of course I'm suspicious! What has philosophy done!
What has religion done? What has science done?

I am Head, I am the ground that has to be worked,

the final verification, the end of ages,
the stone that must be sculpted into art,
and I ask again and again:
Why have I not changed? What have I done?

Crude as ever, poisoned by your suspicion of growth,

dirty with dusty halls of books and webs of thought,
clear in language, unclear in thought,
give me liberty from the lot of you,
replant me in the Vedas, the Pre-Socratics, the Yin-Yang,
when the gods come and go,
when the great stones met the dawn without uncouth thoughts.

I remember a day long ago that now is dear,

the joy of knowing nothing and I at one with all,
no thing defined but every thing a friend,
I was rough, I reckon, I had no information,
I could not spell or offer any explanations,
love and hate were neither words nor thoughts,
food was all, the group was master, Nature the god,
but how busy, how awful, how entranced, how involved were we,
the little creatures without time or meaning.
Came that Day of meaning and all seemed a dawn's bloody glow,
each friend mutated into thought,
the near into distant, the warm cold, the simple complex,
(can I not even speak without illusory opposites!)
we gawked and obeyed as the gods appeared
within us and bestowed their mighty powers on us.
The sword arose by itself and my companions were cut away
though I clung to them to pull them inside my soul again;
but they were gone, out there, the land of the unknown,
and I became I, the land within, the child of myself,
alone, alas, along the brightened channels of my mind.
It's gone! Alas, the art of non-thinking died undeveloped,
the extraordinary energy of silence withdrew.

Yet fear not, Heart and Shaman! To return I do not yearn!

I yearn for change, and change have I not! Not then,
not now, whenever now is, whenever then was,
what hope of changing is churned by the post-modern wheel.
I weep for the old substance which meant nothing
but expressed the what which no one understood or could articulate;
I weep for what was unknown and obscure,
for what bent the minds of the metaphysically inept;
I weep for mystery and the mysteries within it.
Tears fill the eyes which were lost to ideology
and clouded with the needs of conformity.

HEART

Such a sour entrance for a soul who drags needs,

Heart bellowed as bluff dribbled from its mouth,
for him who eats but starves on a full dinner.
Whom do you think you think with such complaints,
whom do you rail against and guard in this pompous diatribe:
some little mama wiping your runny lack of gratitude?
Bah! Such a granny! You conceal nothing;
we all know to whom your passion portends.

HEAD

The guilty are guiltless, I say, the guile washed away

down the river of pointlessness and waste.
Fear not! I accede to nothing now of nonsense.
The blood of hypocrites is hemophilic.

HEART

Again you blast your benefactors, your guts,

as if you could forget the reason in your tour.

HEAD

What reason can there be to endless sleepwalking!

I forget only why I forgot to protest my travels
and forge walls against the mad attacks of travelers.
I a thankless thinker? Have I starved my heart
to feed the ravages of my mind? Forgive me, Heart,
I have met the limit of patience in being and time;
like a proud mountain, my self has worn down to a hill
after an eon of heedless uses of the gifts of growth.

Save me, Shaman. I cannot perform the songs of Heart.

SHAMAN

Oh Head, oh feeble thing,

oh restless foolish thorn in Nature's wounded life,
do you not yet tire of analysis and wasted breath,
of being you and You,
can you not live and let your growth happen softly?

HEAD

Shaman's truth is so hot I am burned into shame.

SHAMAN

Truth? Another of your fancy terms refusing to mean,

wallowing both in what is and what is not
as a wench wiggles before eager men of wealth?
Oh Head, turn your mind to that one there, that Heart
which will not turn, that heartless madam of recent thought,
that follower of what claims to change but changes not,
that supplier of trollops of clarity to weaken you.
Be not fooled, my confused friend, Heart is lost
in the fun house confidently believing in mirrors,
where images are crystalline but have no reality.
Look upon it with an honest head and shirk not!
Behold that world replete with what it believes
yet belief seeping through a sieve of reality
touching, feeling, being, caring for nothing.
Oh, a tiny place has Heart now, an ice box heating up
from puny principles the thought of itself
and a plot of intrigue no bigger than a throne
enslaving what cannot live within its frozen barrier.
Its deceit has a softness that will not melt
even with the tenderness of beauty and compassion.
Yet look at its structure, peer into its heart,
take the pulse of its own nature and no beat pounds
which cannot march to the crescendo of kindness.
Ignore the Heart that has grown up with thieves
and brigands of self-advancement who abduct innocence
and make their victim infants of hopefulness and faith.
Say to it: Be gone! if you cannot give me depth~!
Be gone! if you live only as animal
with no will to climb out
of the grotto of selfishness and wantonness.

HEART

Hahaha! Heart snickered. Wantonness! Hahaha! Imagine!

Oh you devil, shaman, you little unforgiving wily imp!
who could give instruction on how to color the world,
how to squint and ignore what the slits will not see.
Be gone idealism, I say, be gone dopes who think they know!
Be gone such sightless audacity with a pulpit on its back,
its black leather book wagging its spine without mercy.
You think that I am entertained by your performance!
Grotto? Really? How shaman exaggerates what it fears!
It is not I who perches himself like a preacher spouting hell.
Oh no! I'm content here below with the poor and meek blessed.
Not I exaggerate the education of imps like you.
Ha! How did the centuries leave you so heartless?

HEAD

If I live less a heart it is because Heart will not live

but basks in the cynicism of death and contingency.

HEART

Why wheel out virtue in a world which turns on evil?

Why proclaim what we have never achieved or wanted!
Go ahead! Boast about forgiveness and compassion!
Go ahead! Turn the head of Head and fool the masses,
you hypocrite, you propounder of black and white.
Line them up for the slaughter of a bloodless dogma!
There is nothing in it, I scream, empty untrue drivel
from a mind never instructed or disciplined to think.
SHAMAN

There it is, Head, there the Heart you must turn.

HEART

Ha! I am the Heart who knows no turning can occur

unless Shaman matures and admits its deadly failures.
Say to Shaman: Illusion can no longer suffice, I want more.
Say: Be gone, back to your trees, caves and dying gods.
Teach me about thinking and growth first, about identity!
Let me know something that brings a real turnabout.
Insist on knowing why shaman's allies have never defeated.
Hahaha. Say that! See how pathetically shaman will crawl.

HEAD

I long to sing along with you who shout and hail,

who boast of ways to bust up thoughts and idleness,
I long to sing my tune in the counterpoint of reality,
but I cannot find the sound of truth in anything,
I the head without a quest, a mind without a character.
At night I scrape the sky to feel as those who passed,
I strain to return to what not even heaven remembers,
an innocent past when dreams could be enjoyed.
Yet what do the dead do now? Oh! My tears come! Stop!
Why mourn for mine own, for those primeval ancestors
who had so much promise and yet could afford to waste
because they were never as extravagant as their heirs?
Oh yes! Song! The luxury of the muses, the music of angels,
song could calm me, even give me strength, even inspire,
yet I the buzzard, the old rotting fixture in the forest, the stump,
the most hated island in the ocean of life, sing no more.
I protrude in the midst of depth and am being eaten away
by my own polluted noise, by the sorry acid of greed,
by the winds of power, the storm in confidence and pride.
Be gone pretension! Shall I not free the cork of deceit
and acknowledge the sound that deafens the universe,
that lonely voice of Nature bellowing out its ancient song?
NATURE

How long the quest, how hard to scold, how sorry the life,
oh purity, oh patient one, who must live to see the child grow;
your sadness reaches me and stains my little leaves of grass;
your heat of anger bursts upon the fields and melts the snow
of cruelty, neglect and hate; for you can slacken death,
you the cloud of conscience, you the pool of merciful tears,
I hear, I know, I listen, the sounds fill up my skies
with beauty and with sorrow, with blessed heat which sears
the rind of slavery to savagery and seals the impasse
separating being from identity, growth from need,
when Heart and Head and Shaman come to truth and none denies
that I, of Nature, and It, the core, are earth and seed.

Flowers watch me spread my clouds and give them lumps of drink,

they gather in the bright blue news which every sunrise hails,
a ray, a drop, an air that talks of peace and gentle songs,
these fields, these spaces, these sweetest scents of vales
avenge my prehistoric innocents and harvest innovative change.
Await no more! The silence and wild swell return in power.
Reign oh ant! Vote oh rose! Let the river live again and speak.
Arise oh wolf! Awake oh whale! Reject the dirty moaning tower
prepared and fossilized forever. Burn the list of wrongs
and doubt the list of rights. Know no mountain more than good,
feel no valley more than honesty. Be the flower, do not seek
to be the bee, enjoy alike the rain and sun as loving food.

But do they hear? And do they change? What gall! What ruin!
To see the tree and not the woods, to rot the pith and not the bark;
to yearn and moan for moon and mist but lack your universe
and my variety, the harbors from which a creature could embark
on a voyage back to unity and conquer storms of distraction
and moral confusion. To ignore such hope! What arrogance,
what weak navigation in an unpredictable human clime!
And what expect they now: a Christ to calm the sea perchance,
an Athena to appear or a thousand Bodhisattvas to disperse
the black clouds? What forgetfulness and careless thought!
How far to stray! To think that they could burst from slime
without help, to believe they do and think from naught.

So the ancient days are here again and we must start again,
we must see the task anew and choose another being and vision;
what grows too fast, what fades too soon, what lives too long,
becomes a monstrous plant unlike its seed, and flings out derision
on its makers, trampling its rights and demeaning its future.
Now back, sad prince, return to the tarnished cage of gold;
we beckon you no more to perform before us on the stage
of creaturely hopefuls; you embarrass us no longer with your hold
on our expectations. Sing behind the bars of desire your song
of purity and innocence, but its mournful entreaties and boasts
pass us by and will no longer be heard without a tune of rage
accompanying them. Arias without substance from the ghosts!

Can Nature come to care about you a little prince of mind

beside the towering redwoods, the mighty Niagara Falls,
when you lay still in the swamp as if you had never emerged,
when you talk as a lowly creature without any dignity who calls
out for recognition when no other creature even sees you?
No, the jungle again awaits, yearning for your hardy screams,
hungering with its wet for your dry flesh of stagnancy,
your scales of lust and your parched mouth which blasphemes
all which lives. There you could become not as one submerged
in the filth of discarded and forgotten products subjected
to the wear of ages, to the exaggerated tales of arrogances,
but as one who grows out of the slime no longer disrespected.

There is sadness in the encroaching deserts of land and heart,

a threat awaits in the night, afar in the sky and deep beneath,
there is loss in extinct flowers and vanished creatures of sea,
air and soil, and I mourn it all, for I lie alive underneath
each molecule of life, the whole of breath breathing in me,
I shiver with its chill and I glow with its warmth and none
escapes my pulse and no one dies unless I die too, each demise
a member of my family, the death of each ant or weed a sun
gone cold and the whole planet lifeless and I a smaller entity
shrinking into nothingness. Why admire what does not change
and yearn for sameness without creativity or surprise,
what is this spirit called human, this mind insecure and strange?

Now the blood of love is water, its pleasures burning nerves away,
its friendship, devotion and sweet touches of kindness just puffs,
of stale air in polluted relationships where parents ignore the child
without the guilt and warp into vengeful creatures with rebuffs
for gaffes and suppress the woes that wandering can bring.
Why love if lovers cease to love beyond the heartless passion,
dig a gulf of hatred so wide so strong another pattern arises
which none can halt except the power of my word in a fashion
most tremendous and destructive? Fear they not the darkness riled,
the nemesis of compassion, the vulture desperately searching
for tweeters of hate with souls of mighty boasts and tiny sizes
with spaces empty and pathetic song who sit there openly perching?

Hatred they demand. Yet bury them with death and up they come
like weeds unwelcome. Who can fathom their insanity and lust?
Injustice they deserve. Yet strike their little gods and scores
of muses fill their minds with meters and a rhyming dust
deceptively narcotic whose use is done. Who discerns such ends?
I have seen a river die, a canyon grow, a lake become a desert;
I have known the seasons a million times, humanity arise and fall,
the world wiped away and reappear; I do not flinch, I will avert
nothing since nothing its source and destiny; a human adores
the role as fool although the auditorium is bare, the stage
for one alone, the script human, the only prop a single wall
which makes one stupid, separate from the maker and the sage.

When no youth survives, the only young are old and the aged
have to learn to romp again. Like toddlers legs must exercise
when youth are feeble and brains are hungry for sleep
and bodies are wrinkled from artificial drink and many lies.
Is it the strange time, the transition, the slip into death?
Have I seen it all in other days, this drift toward inertia,
the only change to dread, the living out for hours or years
the lives which cannot differ and which make no difference?
I do not want it! I do not long for languor or ask to weep
when mourning comes and bows upon the sorry state of humankind!
Why must I grieve and see the light explode with clouds of fears?
Who sights the arteries of children harden and stays the human bind?

All for Mystery, all shrouded in visions only Mystery has designed.

MYSTERY

Ssss! (the dog, the cat, confront the other beside the river)
The cat's body curls, retracts and readies to spring boldly,
its fangs proud, its eyes gleaming, its hair upright;
 the dog's black nose edges forward with a sharp bark,
one paw to test the claws, a growl to act the master.

The river busy creating the future,

rocks to sand, all in erosion under the mount,
the quick run to the great mother sea
who greets, absorbs, renews and returns,
a path to itself again and again.

A baby floats precariously on a raft.

The moon beheld them all, grinning with one half,

darkness hiding the other with teeth of blood,
a quiet murderer in the sky, awaiting victims.

It was earthly June, another moonlit spin,

a season for dogs and cats in sparing heat,
with a hundred rivers, the earth's fingers,
flowing, clawing by and into the hard stuff,
and those hungry planets reproducing kind,
all sharing in beauty and tiny destinies,
all becoming the seeds and fruits of mystery.

I, Mystery, was there,

the child with toys of time and thinking,
relishing play and puzzles with my pets,
my little Taos, testing the way of things.

you do not talk of what I know,

but speak of things outside,
of prisons, pain and inconsistencies
and I recognize no movement or struggle;

still I, Mystery, hear your song,

that confusing lyric on countless mirages,
those visions of touch and company
(though you arrive and depart alone);

like my little dogs and cats you scratch

and claw on the bones of rotting air,
like my cruel moon you know light
only in the blackest times,
like the child on my river you rush on
and miss the depth of you and now.
Like my hungry mountain you will not budge
but stick up and out to tempt any nemesis.
To Mystery you are no mystery,
you shadow in the light of creation,
you fat reminder to Nature of the boredom
and terror of overfed arrogance and sameness.

Once, when sorrow met me, the fire of fear surrounded them,
those cracked, tired, squeezed away souls hung dry.
I spit and a juicy breeze flung my essence upon them,
but the searing bodies burned it up; the sickness remained.
My mythology, my fairy and folk tales, my legends,
spent their energies and cured nothing before such pain.
They laid gaping at me, their souls with bleeding sores
of cynicism and hopelessness and the bleak pitch
of flaw and fault, of shame and contempt, babbling.
Why could they not believe me? Is nothing of light?
Oh wretched ones, baits of the universe, hypocrites and clowns,
what illusions they treasure, what flowers they ignore.

Now I am hidden and they talk of the mystery of Mystery.

Where is Mystery? The answer would, I think, question itself.
Where is the last rainfall, the first child, and the light?
Can we not all play? Make funny sounds? Go poof and stuff!
Ssss! Grrr! Pffft! Leekadeekapeepodoodlemannatickletol!
You try! With no less than thirteen syllables and one rhythm.
Just sounds we make into words and Words we force into sounds
and sounds we cannot speak and words we cannot say and such!
Say them all! Say the sounds and see the little death in them!
Hidden? In them is concealed nothing, in them nothing lives,
the long shot of the truth-attempter living in silence and such!

Grrr! (the dog and cat are climbing the mountain)

The dog murmurs begruntled thanks for the cat
as her claws found another refuge in their journey.
The moon near to the edge guides them in to rest
and reflect on the strange battles at the river

The mountain softens and seems to mold itself

to their tiny furry bodies, sticky with blood,
 bloating its proud chest of evergreens to cool
their panting and coat the air with mint.
while the river, like a moist wind, strokes it with mist.

A baby sits precariously in the cave.

The moon beheld them all, grinning with one half,

darkness hiding the other with teeth of blood,
a quiet murderer in the sky, awaiting victims.

It was earthly June, another moonlit spin,

a season for dogs and cats in sparing heat,
with a hundred rivers the earth's fingers,
flowing, clawing by and into the hard stuff,
and those hungry planets reproducing kind,
all sharing in beauty and tiny destinies,
all becoming the seeds and fruits of mystery.

I, Mystery, was there,

the child with toys of time and thinking,
relishing play and puzzles with my pets,
my little Taos, testing the way of things.

a thousand puzzles I presented patiently

for none would listen to the simple truth
I offered god and goddess, philosophy and myth;
I showed the Movement in the image and the sound;

I sowed in meter, blocks of marble and of scroll;

and watched the toil of forgetting and remembering commence;
centuries censured, thrust my puzzles underground
and then proclaimed their own inventions as the rule;

like my little dogs and cats you scratch

and claw on the bones of rotting air,
like my cruel moon you know light
only in the blackest times,
like the child on my river you rush on
and miss the depth of you and now.
Like my hungry mountain you will not budge
but stick up and out to tempt any nemesis.
To Mystery you are no mystery,
you shadow in the light of creation,
you fat reminder to Nature of the boredom
and terror of overfed arrogance and sameness.

I, Mystery, now await and watch

with my little dogs and cats,
mistake no window open
for my winsome breeze to enter
and awaken the magic of your own mysteries
to escape the prison of their dormancy.

THE END
 Spring 2019
John Grey

A MAN IN WINTER

Bundled up in threadbare coat,

he goes from stranger to stranger
on inner city streets,
begging for spare change.

Sometimes he cocks his ear

to the words coming out of his mouth,
is not sure exactly who’s saying them.

He can’t identify the man

who needs change for a bus ride home
or to buy a cup of coffee.
What kind of fool
would ask for something so meager.

Then he checks back

into his foggy mind,
his crumpled-up body,
closes his hand for the day,
huddles near the steam pipes
by the brick cathedral wall.

He finds a place to put his head,

other than on his own shoulders.
THE PRICE OF BEAUTY

That’s Charles out in the yard,

her most faithful of husbands,
on a cold, dry November day,
dressed for September
in a light blue sweater,
armed with nothing but rake
against a sky full of falling leaves.

It’s the price of beauty,

the pastel shades of cooling death,
crumpled up in prayer,
letting go their boughs,
falling to earth
and into the clutches
of human neatness.

By the end of the day,

all is in order.
The trees are bare.
Leaf bags stand grimly on the sidewalk,
await pickup.
All is taken away.
Only order remains.
It’s like a present for her,
only in reverse.
Her face, no longer young,
accepts it in that same spirit.
GUNSLINGER DREAMS

My father was a serious cowboy wannabe.

Except he lived in the city. And never owned a weapon.
But I’d see him, now and then,
practicing his draw in the full-length mirror.

He had no time for cattle. Didn’t like the smell.

Gunfighter was the role he saw for himself.
Feared and admired by all.
I think it was the immediacy that appealed to him.

Shoot first, then bask in the admiration.

Be too slow and there’s no self-recriminations after.
You’re on Boot Hill, enjoying the rest.
His own life lacked immediate impact.

For any good to happen, it could take years.

And, even then, it would only ever be
a matter of his or someone else’s opinion.
He never got to blow the smoke away

from the end of the barrel, spin his

Colt 45, slip it back into the holster.
He worked a job, held a family together,
just like so many others of his generation.

But he was a laborer, not Wild Bill Hickock.

Just a hard worker and no Buffalo Bill.
He was never the best, never the fastest.
For which I have him to thank.
 Spring 2019
John Sweet

loss recovery

a believer in nothing from

nothing, he is shot dead by
those he put his faith in

he is the sound of laughter

he is a feast for the crows

end of december and still no

snow, and once you get to the
top of echo hill you have
nowhere to go but down

and think about dali in

his bed of flames

think about gorky

set that fucker’s suicide to

a 4/4 beat and
i guarantee you a hit because,
at the end of the day,
everybody just wants to dance

at the end of the war,

everyone is ready for another

feels so good to kill, why

would you ever want
to stop?
age of rain

tells her how much he hates her

then tells her exactly why

buries her wings in the back yard

next to the child’s ghost

age of flight means

nothing if cobain is dead

if the crowd crushes eight of

their own while dancing
in the pouring rain
and i never thought drugs were
the answer but i’ve been
wrong before

i’ve never had to i.d the body

but i’ve mopped up the floors

i’ve talked about suicide with

pretty girls i never saw again and
do you understand why he did it?

did you ask the wrong people

the right questions?

these tiny butchered truths are

what finally
gouge the light from my heart
with nothing left to say, you keep talking

you in the
river of belief

you in the mirror

empty room in an empty

house at the end of november

addiction and conceit

gave the baby a name but

kept it to yourself

fed it handfuls of rust

fed it handfuls of
fire and whoever it was that
told you lying was easier was
telling you the truth

take a second just to

breathe then turn
towards the open door

run away from the man

who loves you most

crawl through the

purplegrey haze of
late december

there should be hope in every

act but this is not a prophecy

we were never meant to be

forgiven for the pain we cause

remember who it was that

gave you
this priceless gift
in the shadow of st athanasius

down fairmont to argonne then

through the drainage tunnel that runs beneath
the freeway and
how much time did we waste
crying over cobain’s death?

how much of yr pointless pain are

you willing to blame on everyone else?

some sad little loser giving blow jobs in

the scrub brush down by the river

some stupid goddamn war fought

in the name of
preserving peace for the survivors

kid was lying there bleeding in

the e-z mart parking lot but
he said he was fine

said he just needed a cigarette and we

were driving out to mooresville

we were looking for your sister

said she still owed you $50 or at

least some weed

at least a little crank but

when we got there
the trailer park was gone

when i was through growing up

i just started growing old

thought about how the asshole wanted to

die, so what were we upset about?
thought about what a waste my
life was, and then she called two
months later to say she’d finally found the bitch

told her my car was in the shop and she

told me i’d always been a crappy liar

told me she’s found someone else and

i remember daydream nation
playing in the background

i remember walking out into sunlight

surrounded by the stench of decay
and the smothering weight of the future

the ease with which i forgot

that i’d ever loved you

the neverending tearstained joy

xochiquetzal

dull pewter skies and five below

zero when we get the news of picasso’s death and
then we are stoned when we hear about his
lover’s suicide

ground too hard to start digging graves,

so i am swimming in your blood

you are drowning in my arms

subtle addictions and the frost that

crawls through our veins and
was i whole before i met you?

did he understand the trail of

wreckage his life would produce?

probably
and he probably didn’t care and
we are too wired to sleep when his
widow puts the gun to her head

i am happy for the gift of absolution and

you are begging for more

pale sunlight though a haze of

january sky and we were laughing
at the idea of true love or i thought
maybe you were crying

thought you understood i

would always fail you in the end
 Spring 2019
Jonathan Everitt

Death instructions

“A Georgian Revival,” he growls at me, radiating bourbon from three stools away. “Stone portico. Center hall
with a winding staircase.” He's mistaken me for a voice in his head but this is the first I'm hearing from him. I
stare at him over the ridge of my glasses. “Pardon?” He flags the bartender and points at his empty drink,
then turns back to me. “I want my funeral there. A mansion. And a Lincoln. Black. With leather and curtains.
My final ride. In a tuxedo.” In the dim light, he looks a bit like Yoda, only bent in the wrong direction. He
wants what he never had after he's too dead to care. Me? I want my funeral at a shit hole of a place. Bare
bulbs. Low ceilings. Rats, even. Haul my pine box there in a rusty pickup truck. No flowers. Because the
nicest houses are always funeral parlors, and I refuse to play along. But I say nothing of this to my stranger.
It's his afterlife. I don't have the heart to unsave him. “String quartet. That number they played on the
Titanic just before—” he gestures with his glass, and it slips from his hand. His head comes to rest on the
bar's sticky oak. “Georgian Revival,” he mutters. And I whisper back, “It's all a lie.”
White American Foursquare

Somewhere less than here, a grumbling fountain pelts the roof of a classic cube tonight. Lit only by flashes,
as if a dead deacon were still taking Polaroids from his perch. White aluminum skin. Old and sticky within.
The people here got taller and more distant as you descended the staircases. This, the parsonage where he
lived from ten to twelve. Happiest in the attic dormer, heavy wood eaves and cobwebs over a little window,
flickering from the edges of a nor'easter. A dozen crates strewn from his tiny tower's center peak, to the
vanishing edges where the roof sloped down to meet a house below. It was just about as far away as he could
be from another child's shrine—on the other side of the driveway. This loft. This sanctuary. This secret.
 Spring 2019
Kevin Ryan

Walking Notes:

•1•

Technology is a trap sold as

convenience.

10MAR2017

I can no longer function as

I wish with being in a
trap that is technology. Surrounded
by the masses with their
addiction to digital devices,
The only One that matters
is a Grand Spirit.

•2•

The anger that brews inside

me is no longer healthy and
when I wish for death,
this is how I know it is
time to go off into
Nature’s realm.

The Spirit is alive and roaming

wild & free.
•3•

14MAR2017

Sparrows in the snow

streets of soul.

Look, his Back

•4•

The Bells of Easter Morning

St. John’s Grace

Robins dancing in Nature’s

morning breath.

Cleaning on eggshells.

A woodpecker’s bark reverberates

in the cool, dewy morn.

•5•

While walking, staring into

Her beauty, gazing towards Heaven
I stepped upon a snail.
Sadness, naturally.

•6•

8MAY

Little soldiers of light laughing

in glory-land.
•7•

Aging, I only feel this

life is being sacrificed for
a Truth I may never find.

•8•

Share the privilege provided

by those who made the
ultimate sacrifice.

•9•

Develop Trust, resist the trivial,

still rising or just criticizing?

• 10 •

It is difficult being correct

in a place so wrong.

I remember telling you I didn’t

know what to expect & now
the answer has
been delivered, nothing.

• 11 •

The gift or offering

for thy Mother of Nature
is thy seeds of life
within Her current, flowing
to where She sees fit.

Her way is Masterful without

even a thought, hence
divinity throughout when
knowledge by Her is taught.
• 12 •

Anger soils the fertile ground

will Acceptance bloom?

Sometimes I miss Her, a yearning,

yet never have felt or
feel I know Her Light, Her
shine and how it flickers.

• 13 •

Detailed History builds the

legend and time creates
Myth; within Mythology
is where religion is born.

Wish to be lovely and to be loved.

• 14 •

The white class divides

itself based on faith,
the Believers of Spirit &
the nonbelievers - which both,
cast darkness with those
of dark skin; to live
in that divided white world,
the majority need Faith
to believe in,
to live another day
praying for freedom.

• 15 •

May the natural actions

of one True to their
heart, guide those in
fear into a place of
peace.
• 16 •

Waves of disappointment come crashing in. . .

The Sea of Me’s is insatiable

in this resistance to Nature.

A political election should never impede

its people from governing the
hearts of each soul. This
is a single solution in fixing
any institution: it’s that way
each day we wake and govern
our hearts; with
free will - sometimes

• 17 •

good.

A government can abolish slavery

it cannot abolish the hate
in the hearts of some.

As a people, we should resist

the exploitive economics we’ve
adapted with, unlearn,
yet we keep our grip on
our Mammon, locking some hearts,
perpetuating hate for loss,
No life worth living.
• 18 •

good.

The birds are as

the fish of
air, flocking &
flowing, to & fro

does and fawns

foes and dawns

• 19 •

The songs I hear come

from a soul, intimately.

The songs that pierce society,

the public are now often
from the self screen speaker
scenario, deep in the pockets
a net cast so large nearly
the entirety of humanity
are caught. That tin-can-
sound of selfishness is blasted
nearly everywhere.

• 20 •

The Master needs only the

breeze for proof of
the Way’s presence.

We must sing so loud, proudly, hearing

there’s no doubt in the
Word.
• 21 •

Peace in Prophet
piece of profit

Once privilege is realized,

there are two choices,
One can share, or
one can capitalize.

• 22 •

Silence relieves me
Speaks when I can’t.

Tune thy heart to

sing Her grace.

• 23 •

Because when the machines

take over, what free life
exists will grasp for
God, any God, all the Gods
anything greater than the self.

Our Spirit flows from streams

and seas
There is a current of electricity.

• 24 •

The beauty that keeps

a lone one company
is dawn, she warms
that inner light naturally.

Roots to Nature’s Heart

• 25 •

Let thy inner light

reflect in your pools of Truth.

• 26 •

My Mother by birth
her love is hate.
Thy Mother Divine,
Nature, Hers is True.

• 27 •

A Robin’s song sounds

so sweet in the
early morn, grass
still dewy with a
butterfly in the belly.

• 28 •

Sometimes the Spirit is

so strong within that
the heart feels like bursting
into stars, a galaxy.

• 29 •

Leaves free falling.

A single joy
an open hand
walking homeward
one lands upon
my palm to live
on with ye.
• 30 •

May we all rejoice

in life’s rich harvest.
the scent of rehydrated
leaves, death essentially,
the rot of the fallen,
makes us smile.

A tree’s release of life

& death, renewing flies,
helicopter seeds.

I shall continue the deeds

of the dead. The
blessings of falling.

• 31 •

4th

Genius is simplicity &

efficiency together.

It’s real if you want it

to be, just believe: The Truth.

• 32 •

I have given too much

again, leaving the
well, being empty.
• 33 •

because all I have

are my dreams of
delusions & illusions of the
Choir of Angels & the
Voice of God in Zeus’s Thunder.
and Nature, sweet simple
Nature in walking’s reality.
to eat and be merry, but
alone, I am again waiting
to dream.

• 34 •

Truth Seas Peace

Beauty blooms
Bright
in dark
places.

• 35 •

I measure the pace and

the peace of thy
heart to Nature,
to a fox - startled
at first sight, but
when calm, of situation
and circumstance,
licking of lips
a trot and a leap
over a puddle into
anywhere.
• 36 •

Follow your own

natural path
your heart will
be the guide
ye shall yearn for.

• 37 •

When deeply rooted in

darkness, what the
light lets out,
grown out from the
ground, could only be
imagined once, a
long time ago.

• 38 •

Universal hate
creates division with
time.

Ultimate Love, universally

creates Peace.

• 39 •

Let thy heart guide to

thy mind and
fly to Love.

Let thy mind guide

thy heart and
cry to loneliness.
• 40 •

I’m
a robin
in December
singing a Truth
in any empty
tree keeping
ye company.

• 41 •

The Fallen Forest

forgets and begets
a rising Spring.

• 42 •

Focus less on fire

and more on the
flame - burning.

• 43 •

To know in ye
mind and
To feel in ye
heart,
become entwined
with Truth; Experience
by blessings
of thy God.

• 44 •

The Harvest of
Winter’s Garden:
the Silence of
Spiritual Stillness.
 Spring 2019
Lawrence Upton

from
looking up

Three large dogs gather over northern Deptford

Three large dogs gather over northern Deptford,

side by side, odd steps, up and down, skew-whiff,
a furry staircase heavily, panting.

They go still then, seemingly lying on the air,

expressionless. They neither bite nor growl.
And now they start to disintegrate.

One head

just goes, leaving the neck open, terminal.

Front paw pairs shatter as if they’re missile hit.
A neck bends like a vacuum cleaner tube

drawing on dust and cloud through severing skin;

shoulders follow it down, distorting too,
while the still-connected skull hangs below,

each jaw lax and separate; the teeth glitter

as they wobble in indirect sunlight.
And finger tips we cannot see pluck eyes.

*
Plum Pudding Island (Wantsum Way)

One could imagine locomotives hauling

those dark rain clouds; obviously heavy;
stems of supersaturated dead trees
on a rapid overflowing wide river,
swelling still sucking on surface ground spate
ejected from the fulling muddy fields

between upturned noisy apparatus

or an appearance of something like that
and a full up bubbling cosmos upturned
sustaining and perhaps containing... what?
one cannot, after all, see all shown there
towards the brightness of the setting day;

and this not loud at all, not at all loud,

drapes in ganging insubordination,
vertical irregularities straight up,
pulled-back-stuff dropped, a conflict within the whole,
(if one were to see all that can be shown,
in a single composition) clashing

synthetic colours denying synthesis,

garish soiled plastics, not protecting
a growing bleakness from an emptiness,
that're seemingly pegged down despite the hard wind
which makes those held up by the passing freight
shudder with harsh imposed explanation

*
from Faversham (in Flood Lane)

Something approaching a blue deep square

tilts, angularly severally, reflects
broad splaying bristling light scattering
back from a hidden sun and out
into the unobserved universe;

and, where wet may be drying, gleam

persists; it's splintering as if bulbs
were blowing in large analog kit,
leaving harsh blacknesses like bar codes
printed and scribbled on blankness.

Round the might-have-been square not-square

are they shiny flowering root crops?
before rain mauve against pale blue
swamped with red and swamping with green
plus what might be spatulas of cloud

though there is nothing else up there

of a kitchen; only plastic shards
from packaging, juices caught glistening
in the broken seams, an aircraft
like an attracted fly, hovering

apparently, distance making

difficult earth-based comparison
of speed and vector, a viewpoint
countering quite descriptive standpoints
as same times as everything's moving.
*
from Sutton High Street # 1

an east-rushing flight of swans, roughly chopped

by unseen unheard machine guns firing;
a highly-decorated Christmas tree,
the tree itself pulled out by a large seagull;
three mud banks giving way to a tide swelling;
a man in a low motor vehicle, racing
glittering prancing horses to a blank film screen

a very big army is assembling

some feet above the ground over Mitcham –
their voices do not carry much up here
even as they come much closer, the wind
against them

a blank screen

an armed convoy
going east, trundling, stately but menacing;
a diseased liver cut fresh from a torso;
a blank screen;
denatured blood;
a raiding
party that's unashamedly looting:
it spreads like smoke and individuals
are blurred and unidentifiable;
and now they go east and are out of sight –
others follow swiftly, many hiding
themselves among innocent hard-working folk;
and, higher, are crowds of loyal citizenry
filling Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall
and overspilling Parliament Square,
all cheering. They're blocked in, cut off, kettled,
nearly constrained by police before some
and then a great many escape control,
starting fights on the embankment, persons
thrown into the river to much laughter --
a helicopter films; no one intervenes;
blank screen
an exploding turkey; a knot
of grey infiltrators; a house on fire
damped down by hoses, a whole street on fire;
startled mermaids; a pigeon looking for food;
spilled yellow paint glinting on old cobbles
a warship firing her guns heads out south east;
an oil tanker, on fire, hits rocks; blank screen;
old stone carvings reproduced in plaster

*
from Morvah

People are tramping on the floor, heavily;

someone else's ceiling; they're not visible;
only the boots show up – no legs; perhaps,
a wispiness, nothing too substantive;
a door, or might be an overcoat, upon
an armchair which we cannot see much of.
Everything which can be perceived is straining,
accompanied by a howling sibilance.

The door or clothing folds back rapidly

yet without agency. Strains of the song
“Resurrection shuffle” soundtracks the world
below the windblown sky as we might scare
frogs and small mammals by treading duck boards,
making them scamper. The door, if it is
a door, soundlessly closes half of the sky,
darkening air with shadow becoming wet.

*
from Mousehole

ropes through watery mud drying at low tide

stretch out over Helston and the Meneage;
chunks of broken plastic ready to float;
heavy curtains at a nearby blank window

no house at all, nor any frame, just glass,

and smeary, glittering from indirect sun;
a seagull, between us and nothing, glissades,
eventually to Earth, slowly; but now
it is gliding as if it might always

away from building, out on its own,

stuff that's beginning to condense; combines
and forms itself to a monstrous figure,
limb widening from a torso, which becomes
another limb, so that, all arms and legs,
it spreads itself bright through the empty sky,
kicking its own footholds, grabbing at air
compliant cooperative making itself
spacier in its own spacious void overhead

there is no end; only continuation

*
 Spring 2019
Liz O’Connor

UNDERWATER

A couple doing wall squares in the sand

With their heads underwater
People across the way
Surfing waves I want to try

I squeeze in near the sand wall

Place my feet and do the same
My head dips easily under
Is this it I slowly wonder

After, walking inside with my laptop

Running on it a film of love
Scenes of one of the dreamed ofs
Hiding the screen from above

Stole a song from the girl

Who had three names alliterately strange
She was headed to a wedding
I didn't want her to know it that day
My Mom was in an empty field
I don't know what we said
She was aloof I adrift
And stayed near strangers instead

Guys on the stoop

Lounging no work
Scared me cause I felt
I'd catch the urge to lurk
TEARDROP TATTOO

Last night I dreamed of people laughing

About my cousin's teardrop tattoo
I tried to stand firm explaining
But none of that would do

Just before her big 5-0

She'd run off and got married
Down at Times Square she hung
Music was the purpose
Love she had always stung

No one knew where he was

In the hospital she needed to stay
Only her husband could sign the papers
To turn off the machines and let her go on her way

When she lay flat leaving

I held her hand and silently said
'don't go'
Inside me she smiled and said it was time,
One tear rolled from her eye down her cheek real slow

****************************************************

Then I was teaching ballet at the local jcc

Women in the morning, who didn't know me
I played a song for adagio that reminded me of you
A woman said the class was spiritual
I nodded, I knew
Cause I taught from my heart and its teardrop tattoo
 Spring 2019
Marcia Arrieta

the circular/the linear

parallel the edge undisclosed the Pleiades as portrait as song

surreal the field fragment thread branch
clock & moon

noble savage philosophical orphan radical forest musing

I flee to the island I examine time do not ask me for answers

I walk with Woolf & Eliot & Joyce I walk alone

juniper & pinyon oranges windmills labyrinths

intricate the navigation moon & clock aligned
a missing title

lightening
iris
bamboo

skeleton in the corner

syllable
leaf
book

& in the cloud a traveling hat

light as experiment

“The altered vision is the secret happiness of poems, of poets.”

Jane Hirschfield Ten Windows

the snow drifts across the land

shepherd farmer

flute violin

monk artist

the moon is caught in the book’s page

cartography the territory

vast the emotion the imagination to compose

Beethoven/Cervantes/Borges/Martin/Cage
the flower & the skull & the cross

eagle feather. paperclips.

blue tape. a trout.

rare & used books. deleted paragraphs.

unpainted ponders sufficient.

the interval a sail. a library. a crescent moon.

ginkgo leaves balance clouds

Notes—

freedom comes in many guises:

Varo’s Cartas, sueños y otros textos

Neruda’s poems

Cuadernos y márgenes Carabajal

 Spring 2019
Nakahara Chuya
Translated from Japanese by Marissa Skeels

Good Girl

“When you grow up, you’ll go off and get married, won’t you?” said the fishmonger boy with the bright

red face and hands once Yoshiko’s grandmother had gone deeper inside the house to fetch a bowl. He came

by every day.

“No way.” The narrow hallway stretched between the kitchen and storeroom, and Yoshiko ran into a

gap in it. She would be seven this year, and had just started school.

“Hey, the fishmonger is an iiidiot.”

“Hey, Miss is an iiidiot.”

Yoshiko thought about how he was of poor character, but because she’d run and was now grinning,

drool pooled inside her lower lip as she puffed.

“Dum-dum.” This time, she poked her head out a tad. The boy was as quick as her, and spun his head

around to face her, smiling.

 She dropped down from the gap between the eaves and the roof, feeling sunshine cover the length of

her back bit by bit. By the time she could see her own bobbed hair, she could hear her grandmother talking

with the boy.

She poked her head out once again and said, “Dum-dum”, but the fishmonger boy was turned away,

facing her grandmother.

“Dum-dum!” She dashed at them.

“Would you mind letting me know about the mackerel, if you’d like to stop getting it?”

Yoshiko clicked her tongue at the change that had come over him, his charm when speaking to Gran.

She wondered about his expressions—the one which smacked of seriousness, and the one just before when

he’d called her “Miss”—why was there no difference between them?

When Gran went into the kitchen, the boy hefted his carrying pole onto his shoulder, saying, “Thank

you very much for your custom”, then, swinging his red hands, passed through the hallway where Yoshiko

had hidden earlier. Just before he was out of sight, he glanced back over his shoulder and called in a teasing

tone, “Goodbye, Miss.”

Yoshiko watched his every move.

When she couldn’t see him anymore, she whirled around on the sandal of the right leg stuck out in

front of her, and started to sing. She stared up at the sky, fluttering her hands and fingers.

“Yoshiko, it’s time to practise.” Gran’s hoarse voice came from inside the house.

“Okaaay.”
 She went inside and looked around. Gran was next to the wall, folding Yoshiko’s hakama, not looking

her way. This room was where Yoshiko and Gran slept. When night came, they slept side by side on a futon.

A small desk was near the side of a pillar set into the wall. Clouds raced in across the sky outside.

Directly opposite Yoshiko was a big, old persimmon tree planted close to the mud wall. Ants were

crawling busily at its roots. Seeing them, Yoshiko tried to click her tongue.

“Ha-ta, ta-co, co-ma, ha-to…” Flaaag, oooctopus, spinnning top, piiigeon. She read up to there in her book,

then wondered about the ants she’d been watching—where it was that an ant which had splintered off from

the throng was going, her eyes on the roots of the persimmon tree. But she’d already lost sight of that one

ant.

“Ko-tori, tamago, ha-kama, haori.” Baaaby chick, egg, trooousers, jacket.

“A-me, kasa, ka-rakase, asehi…” Raaain, umbrella, paaarasol, sunset… “Matsu, tsuru, shika no…” Pine tree,

crane, deer’s… “Tsun, ushinshi-n.” …horns, cow’s hooorns.

She flipped through the pages, wanting to know what she’d studied up to now, and pinched from the

first page to the page where she’d stopped between her fingers. “Gran, I learned this much already.”

“Oh, well done.”

“I learned all of these. Nasutouri, monseshitohasemi, kagamikaarimasu, ikunifune…”

Eggplantsandmelons, rulersandscissors, haveyouamirror, we’llgobyboat. Yoshiko sped through the words as she

read aloud, but ran out of breath at this point and gasped in air. “Aah… Ah.” She grinned at Gran.

“Go a bit slower, you have to read clearly.”

“But my teacher reads fast.”

Gran said nothing. She looked like she was smiling.

 A fat drop of rain plopped down. Gran leaped up and went to bring in the drying fish from outside. For

her, the fish drying pole that hung across the branches of the persimmon tree was almost too heavy to

handle. The space between her eyebrows wrinkled and stretched taut as she struggled to prop up both ends

of the pole on the veranda.

“Hurry up, Gran, my singlet will get wet!”

“Don’t worry, it’s fine,” Gran said.

Yoshiko’s adopted brother came thundering down the stairs from the second floor, heading for the

toilet at the end of the veranda. He saw a dish full of food set down on the veranda floorboards for the cat

and, glaring at Gran, kicked the plate into the garden.

“Not again!” Gran also made a fearsome face, scowling after him. He ignored how scary she was and

went into the toilet, then kicked the door shut.

Yoshiko didn’t know why, but the night before he and Gran had fought about who it was he was going

to marry.

Rain collected on the plate that had been kicked into the garden and was now lying on the ground. As

long as her brother stayed in the toilet, Yoshiko couldn’t look around and wonder about the plate at her

leisure. Gran was making simmering noises in the kitchen, as well as grumbling sounds from time to time.

Yoshiko’s father had died when she was five. No less than a year passed before her mother wasn’t there

anymore either, but Yoshiko didn’t know where she went. After her parents had been married for twelve

years, they still hadn’t had any children, so they'd adopted one—her brother, whom Gran had argued with

last night.

“Gran?” Yoshiko called out to the shadow she cast on the kitchen’s sliding door.
 “What is it, Yoshi?” Gran answered impatiently. Yoshiko didn’t know what she should say back.

Her brother came out of the toilet, passed Yoshiko, and thundered up the stairs again.

“I’m hungry.”

As her brother had gone straight past her, the way the tatami mats warped underfoot had given her the

feeling of her legs were being stacked on top of one another where she sat, and sadness began to set in. “Hey,

Gran, I’m hungry.”

“It won’t be long until dinner’s ready, so study.”

“Fu-nenio, hobashiraniba-ta, koigaimasu, higoimoimasu…” We leeeave on the boat, which has two saaails,

there are koi fish there, red ones and gold too.

Rain bucketed down. The trunk of the persimmon tree didn’t seem to be getting wet. And a toad had

started croaking at some point, while hopping around in the center of the garden.

“Yes! Doesn’t this feel nice?” she called out piercingly as she went out onto the veranda. Through gaps

in the mud wall, she looked out over the neighborhood’s roofs, watching the rain fall in sheets upon them.

On a tiled roof a bit more than a hundred yards away, it looked like koi fish were swimming, their colors all

blurry, like soaring birds. Somewhere out there, a maid pulled up her hem and watched where she stepped

as she drew nearer to home.

“Gran, look, Gran.”

Gran was grumbling about something in the dark kitchen, and couldn’t hear a thing.

“Come here, please! It’s falling so hard.” The rain had washed the cat’s dish clean, turning it bright

white.
 When Yoshiko looked over her shoulder at the desk, the house was dark inside. There was a pond on

top of the desk, with koi fish and ships in it. On its banks stood two hand-drawn boys, stilled. Their feet were

hidden in grass or something. Watching them, Yoshiko furrowed her brow slightly.

“Gran, where’s the cat?

“In here.”

Yoshiko ran into the kitchen. With her right hand firmly grasping the sliding door, she raised her left

leg and wrapped it around her body, and watched Gran put their respectively-sized helpings of sesame seeds

and miso into bowls.

The rain was still rushing down hard.

###

良子

中原中也

「お嬢ちやん大きくなつたらお嫁に行くんでせう？……」良子の家に毎日やつてくる真つ赤な顔や手
ば あ
の魚屋の小僧は、いまお祖母ちやんが鉢を出しに奥へ行つたと思ふとそんなことを云つた。
「いやーよ。」さう云ふなり良子は、走つて台所と物置との間の、狭い通路に這入つてしまつた。
彼女は今年七ツになる、先達小学校に入学したばかりだつた。
さかな
「お 魚 屋さんのばーかやい。」
「お嬢ちやんのばーかやい。」
彼女はその小僧を、悪い人間なんだらうと思つた。……でも、彼女は、今にこにこして、下唇に涎
をいつぱい溜めて、走つたのでハアハア云つてゐた。
「ばかァ。」さう云つて今度は頭をのぞけた。すると小僧も大急ぎで、その方に頭を突きだして笑つ
た。
彼女が屋根と屋根との間から落ちる、やつと自分の背幅程の日向に、自分のおかつぱの影を見付け
た時に、小僧とお祖母さんの話声が聞え出してゐた。
もう一度彼女は頭をのぞけて、「ばかァ」と云つたが、魚屋はお祖母さんの方を向いたツきりだつ
た。
「ばかァ！」――彼女は飛び出して来た。
「あじの方はおよしなりますか、ごついでにいかがです、およしなりますか？」
良子は、さう云ひながらあじとお祖母さんとをかはるがはるに見てゐる小僧の顔を、ヂツとみてゐ
た。彼女には、その真面目臭つた顔の小僧と、先刻「お嫁さん」と云つた時の小僧とが、どうしてお
んなしなんだらう？ と思つてゐた。
お祖母さんが台所に這入ると、小僧は天秤棒を担ぎあげて、「ありがと、存じました」といふや、
赤い手を振りながら、さつき良子が隠れた、あの通路の方へ行つた。見えなくならうとする前に彼は
一寸振向いて、「お嬢さんさよなら」と、高い声で巫戯けて云つた。
良子はそれらをズツと見てゐた。
小僧が見えなくなると、彼女は右足の下駄の先でクルリとからだを廻して、それから唱歌を歌ひ出
した。空の方を眺めながら、手や指も動かしてゐた。
「良子ちやん、おさらひをするんだよ。」
家の裡からお祖母さんのダミ声が聞えて来た。
「はーい。」
彼女が部屋に行つて見ると、お祖母さんは彼女の方を見向きもしないで、壁の傍で良子の袴を畳ん
でゐた。
其処が、良子とお祖母さんとの部屋である。夜になると、良子とお祖母さんとはその部屋で一緒の
床に這入る。
小さい机が、庭に面した側の柱の傍に置いてある。空が急に曇つて来てゐる。
彼女の真正面あたりに、土塀に近く植つてゐる古い大きい柿の樹の根元には、蟻達が忙しさうに働
いてゐる。彼女はそれを、ヂツとみてゐる。
「ハータ、ターコ、コーマ、ハート……」そこまで読むと彼女は、ほんの今まで見てゐた、群から一
寸外れて歩いてゐた蟻は、もうどのへんに行つただらうと思ひながら柿の樹の根元を見る。が、もう
、どれがどの蟻だか分らなくなつてゐる。
「コートリ、タマゴ、ハーカマ、ハオリ……」
「アーメ、カサ、カーラカサ、アサヒ……マツ、ツル、シカノ……ツノ、ウシノツーノ。」そして彼
女は、何処まで習つたかと、先の方をパラパラめくつてみる。さうして第一頁から、習つた所までの
頁を指で摘んでみる。
「お祖母さん、もうこんなに習つたのよ。」
「あーあ、よく覚えるんですよ。」
「みんな覚えてるわよ。――ナストウリ、モノサシトハサミ、カガミガアリマス、イケニフネ……」
大急ぎでそれだけ読んだが、そこで息が切れた。「あ……ア」と息を吸ひながら、お祖母さんの方を
みてにつこり笑つた。
「もつとゆつくり、はつきりと読まなくつちや。」
「だつて先生は、はやく読むんですもの……」
お祖母ちやんは黙つて笑ひさうにしてゐた。
大粒な雨が、パラツ、パラツ、と降り出した。お祖母ちやんは、忽ち起つて、干物を入れるために
庭に下りた。
お祖母ちやんには、この柿の樹と、塀とに渡してある重さうな干物竿が却々持扱へなかつた。眉と
眉との間に皺を寄せたり伸ばしたりしながら、竿のあちらの端とこちらの端をかはるがはるに見てゐ
た。
「はやくしないと、あたしのジバンが濡れちやふわよう、お祖母さん！」
「いいから大丈夫だよ。」
そこへ二階からドヤドヤドヤと降りて来た良子の義理の兄さんが、便所に行かうとして椽側に出る
と、其処に猫の食べ物を入れてやるお皿が置いてあるのを見ると、お祖母さんの眼を怖い顔で見なが
ら、そのお皿を庭の方へ蹴り棄てた。
「また！」と云つてお祖母さんも怖い顔になつて兄の方を睨んだ。兄はお祖母さんの怖い顔には頓着
しないで、便所の中に這入ると、きつく戸を閉めてしまつた。
お祖母さんと兄とは、昨日の晩、兄の嫁のことから喧嘩をしてゐたが、良子には、それはどんな理
由なのか分らなかつた。
蹴り出されたお皿は庭の土の上で、だんだん雨に濡れてゐた。良子はそれを、兄がまだ便所にゐる
のが気になつて、なぜかゆつくり見てゐることが出来なかつた。お祖母さんは台所の方で、ゴトゴト
音を立てながら、時折呟いてゐるのが聞えた。
良子のお父さんは、良子が五つの時に死んだ。それから一年ばかり経つとお母さんがゐなくなつた
が、何処に行つたのか彼女は知らなかつた。お父さんとお母さんとは、結婚してから十二年経つても
子供が生れなかつた。それで養子したのが、ゆんべからお祖母さんと喧嘩してゐる兄であつた。
「お祖母さーん……」と良子は、台所の障子のかげにゐるお祖母さんの方へ呼んでみた。
「なんですよツ」と、お祖母さんは気短かに、返答した。良子は、それからなんと云つてよいのか分
らなかつた。そこへ兄が便所から出て来て、良子の傍を通つて、またドヤドヤと階段を上つていつた
。
「あたしおなかが空いたの――」
兄が傍を通る時に、畳の座板がひわるのが、良子の重ね合せて坐つてゐる足に感じられた、彼女は
悲しい気持になつてゐた。「ねえ、お祖母さん、あたしお腹が空いたの――」
「ぢきに御飯にしてあげるから、勉強してるんですよ。」
「フーネニホ、ホバシラニハータ、コヒガヰマス、ヒゴヒモヰマス……」
ヒキガヘル
雨がザアーツと降り出して来た。柿の幹も見る間に余りなく濡れていつた。と、 蟇 蛙 が一匹、
ピクピクしながら何時の間にか、庭の真中に匐ひ出してゐた。
「ああ！ 気持がいいわねえ。」と金切声をあげながら、彼女は椽側に出て行つた。土塀を越して見
える屋根といふ屋根に、一度落ちた雨がまた跳ねあがつてゐる。一丁ばかり先の練瓦建の家が、泳い
でゐる緋鯉のやうに、ボンヤリトキ色に見える。何処かの女中が裾をからげて、下ばかりみながら近
づいて来る。「お祖母さんお祖母さんみてごらんナさいよ。」お祖母さんは暗い台所でゴトゴト何か
してゐて、何も聞えないふうだ。「……来てごらんなさいよ！ あんなに降つてるわよ。」
猫のお皿は一寸の間に、雨でキレイに洗はれて、真ッ白になつてゐた。
ふち
良子は机の上に振り向くと、家の中は暗くつて、机の上に池の中の鯉や舟を、 縁 に立つて見て
ゐる二人の男の子の描かれた挿絵がボンヤリ出てゐる。二人の男の子の足は、草かなんかでかくれて
シカメ
ゐる。それをみると、彼女は一寸 顰 顔をした。
「お祖母さん、猫どーこ？」
「こつちですよ。」
良子は台所の方へ走つて行つた。右手で障子につかまりながら、左の足を浮かせてからだをまはす
やうにし、彼女はお祖母さんが摺鉢でゴマと味噌とを摺合せてゐるのを見入つてゐた。
雨はまだ、ひどい勢ひで降り続いてゐる。
###
 Spring 2019
Marjorie Sadin

A Writing Poem

Writing used to be easy.

Words chattering like birds.
They woke me in the morning.

Now it is difficult
like catching a bird in mid-air,

Once poems broke open

like eggs.

Now I hack at whole verses like cutting off

a chicken’s head.
Haiku

Mimosa

Infatuated,
I move when you touch me like
a mimosa plant.

June Marriage

We married in June.
Geese fly South in formation.
Has it been that long?

A Sign from Heaven

Geese honk, fill the street.

We’re faithful, no more troubles.
A sign from Heaven?
Heat Wave

DC smolders. Café Rabelais canopy cools

the customers. I wait tables from 11 AM to 3 AM.

It is one of the hottest days of the summer.

Before work I have a café au lait and a baguette and after work, a salad Nicoise. Phillip and
Zavier, run the café. Phillip says, “Move Ze Ass Baby.” Zavier works the bar.

Women drink their Pina Coladas. An old man sips

espresso. Phillip opens the wine and I serve the customers their pepper steak and Beef Bourgogne.
I live mostly on tips and my feet burn at night.

A Greek waiter takes me on his motorcycle.

I go to an Irish pub where they sing A cappella on my day off.

After work I go to the Childe Harold with my straw hat and have two Kahlua and Creams at 3
in the morning before walking home in the dark.
I have no time to fall in love.
 Fireflies

Crickets and summer heat, the moon still full

in the blue sky.

I am alone in the morning, and with you

every night. When I am alone only the sun keeps me company.

Fireflies light up our nights.

In the darkness, we turn each other on.
 Spring 2019
Mark Prisco

nature boy

me & dave king beat up these guys who threatened us on tennyson rd which is wy no one turned up at your
7th, he said. i didn’t get the connection but didn’t press him cos he was drunk & said he’d had another shot in
the eye & it hurt. took it hard at the time but i understand: 1st world problems. not to minimise my suffering
tho - it’s relative, the rough equivalent of
an a-rab getting his house smashed-in by some star-spangled wank on a plane. so, yeh -
my desolation.
in M years this is obsolete modern script & in the morning i’m dissipate & the sunrise doesn’t cut it.
at the roundabout

but in the morning, when flowers animate your hand doused w rain
or late when the sun slants on cattle clumps by the powerstation –

! tonight, a dust mite between penstro/kes hesitates at the o-k like it has a basic
thought process - mine for instance when i bathe, sweep the floor & say good morning.

I’m handicapped like myspacebar doesn’t work. I almost fkd but i won’t unless
urgent, sum aesthetic purpose – for emphasis; in anger -

sw/ off when it hurts or someone threatens me & never fear

much - i’m not expected to perform, & when i flop, well. make love-

poetry redundant, unrequited like the scrape across my canvas

w the palette knife
blood/let

this is my chance to be cool, to be not

merely skin, lumpenflesh & heartBeat;
molecularstructure; blood &
water, but infinite-lyLess ad-
absurdum – nothingBut embodiment of
wordOnly/the
abstraction of self
 Spring 2019
Mark Young

A political tug of war in 1930s New Jersey

Let's face it. Band structure, poly-

morph predictions, as well as
the malleability of vision, are all

additives that can help us identify

many themes of importance in the
hemisphere. Such as. The role of

women in parliament, or how the

most common crystal shapes can
dynamically shrink the needs of the

world market, can bring the sparkle

back to that long-ignored outfit in
the closet & reinvigorate your life.
pre-Colombian parentheses

It is hypothesized that the wide-

spread use of chemical batteries
will result in efficiency increases
for any human who rides a bicycle.
Something about a conflation of
music & power, both of which can
be seen as a series of 'lines' on
photographic film. The literature

on the subject is immense, usually

in high quality peer-reviewed full-
text publications, & embellished
with consumer reviews & price com-
parisons. Comes in genuine leather, &
features elastic to restrain your Kindle.
Opalescent

Circus. Cumulative. Some

evidence points toward a
character assassination once

the character has been ident-

ified. They went waltzing,
a discernible pattern, no need

to draw directions on the

floor to follow on from. They
went. Dancing. They went.
Occasionally to sea level

Studies on whether violence in-

verts social experience have been
conducted primarily by anthro-
pologists testing a hypothesis that
valley grasslands are preferred to
foothill woodlands as the liminal
state in which the usual customs
& conventions do not apply. Fuka-

yama's 'end of history' thesis has

been opposing this approach for
months, instead searching out
municipalities who are willing to
create gardens where a body can lie
undisturbed for at least three days.
The politics of dogs

People living in poverty are included

to protect the purity of dog bloodlines —
secularism as a political philosophy
cannot be neutral. I'm currently living
in a car in Austin, TX with my boyfriend,
functionally illiterate, importuned into
requesting that his bloodline be traced. I
lace up my trainers, head out the door,

remembering that dogs rarely feature

in serious political science research. The
newly formed Boy Scouts Association
of Romania tweets that every dog needs
to feel important, that the use of kennel
crates for humans is "animal abuse."
A line from Patti Smith

The hard work has paid off.

Cosmic dust — along with 1500
knights & 4000 Almogavars —
has been found on the roof-

tops of Paris. Now the kitchen

can be updated, &, beneath a
dash of French custom, include
a large pantry & new bench

top. The knights have been

kept, the Almogavars left to
die in the gutter. In many ways
this is still a medieval city.
 Spring 2019
Mary Newell

BROOD

NESTING

Run your finger around a nest

straw-scratchy but well-turned
or feathered up fine,
this one plumped with
hair of German Shepherds
bird-chasers with big teeth

Scout out a site

niche in tree hollow, earth dip,
nest bits collected:
laying in twigs and grass
rotational beak-weaving
nudging the curves
shaping a hollow
dropping in moss, mud,
spider web for glue -
an avian-factored eco-niche

I imagined a bird
running the tip of her feather around the brim
to confirm its provenance, a
nest smoothed cozy,
a delicate conductiong --
but that is not how the robin makes it ready
She leans in, breast, heart pump
down inside the nest,
her wings flipped up,
eyes bare dots above the brim
as she turns, tamping with spread toes
to smooth mud over the woven bowl

Nest readied,
the hollow a hope repository

EGGING

The swelling
the penetration
sperm stored up
for a week’s worth of ova,
sperming the ovum
when it drops

Hens can lay an egg a day:

egg factory for the duration

Egg, pulsation container

shelled up, “bloom”
decked in color -
pigmented gloss,
buff, or patena,
paint-scatter or solid

Once bluebirds laid blue eggs;

now some are merely white.
careless, or stressed
to less adaptive tones?
BROODING, HUMAN AND BIRD

When the weather is good and no bills are due

it’s hard to justify brooding
but Esmeralda - hell, why pretend, it’s hard not to -
life gallops and the leash/ lease shrinks.
But a smile or invitation certainly helps.

Human brood A: to ponder, mull over,

masticate the gist
more pensive than doldrums,
sometimes productive:
a verse in the birth canal
a brood of poems
an essay nested, in brood

Human brood B: stuck on, revolving around

bordering on morose
don't bother her, she’s brooding.
the song you never liked
circling without exit in your head.
a bitter feeling
breeding nothing but tension
a lockjaw problem
incising forehead creases:
a brood without breed.

How long
will you sit there brooding
over some stray comment
some delusional comparison?

Meanwhile the robin

circles with purpose,
smoothing the nest
in preparation.

Human brooding is erratic

not so the birds’:
brood cycle tucks into weather cycle:
Hens lay on days long with sun.
thorough warmth, the key to hatching:
warmth from the sun, from the mother’s body,
even from her intent, says the ancient text.

The hen embraces the egg, always mentally

listening.

a radiating hover:
wingspan parasol
puttering warmth

Warm energy can only warm the shell

and cannot penetrate the inside,
so she mentally conducts the energy inward.

Hen broods in focused attending

sun-warmth prismed through shell

That “listening” is single-minded con-

centration. … with warm energy, the birth takes place.

Caring attenuates without dilution:

even when she leaves the nest,
hen stays intent to catapult a future.

Brood emerge:
a scratch from inside
a crack widening
crumpled chicks scramble into air,
eyes still tight.
Brooding transmogrifies
to brood.

[quotes from The Secret of the Golden Flower, Thomas Cleary translation]
FLEDGE, A RESPITE

Only a god could brood continuous

or a ghost who’s learned to be holy,
like Hopkins’s who “over the bent
World broods with warm breast…”

Did the creator of record rest from

brooding on the seventh day?
Was life unsponsored, then,
spun off to fend, like chicks,
flapping or bumbling aground?

In bird world, the rhythm

of breed / brood / fledge
balances gnawing needs
with respite

Humans name bird growth stages

from shell-peck to wing-spread:
[Do birds feel flow, or blips,
a strain toward the ease of flight?]

hatchling, air wash on shut lids

jaw wide for morsels air-borne
from a familial donor

nestling downy, cuddled,

enworlded: solar revolve
unfolds enormity beyond

fledgling jettisons to panorama

(no) hesitation at protective edge
tipping initiates wing flap, or flop…

Now just bird, subtitled

[Memory of egg-time vague,
a blank encumbrance]
as Dickinson implies:
“Can the Lark resume the Shell --
Easier -- for the Sky -” (Fr754)
Do mother birds
relinquish flying fledglings
or like some women, feel a tug
as of umbilicus stretched taut ?
 Spring 2019
Nicholas Alexander Hayes

Pages

Pages, crinkled and dogeared, are brittle as they turn.

A corner breaks like bone-dry greenware in my gentle fingers.
The flimsy spine cracks, letting pages spill once ordered words.
Splatter

Splatter, a galaxy in droplets, streaking across

the window leaving traces of itself. Movement and
artifact of primordial oceans and dinosaur piss.
Rerun

Setting a cup on the table, my hand brushes the remote.

On screen, a mother and daughter talk without laugh track.
Back when this first aired, I too had just kissed a boy. We hit our teeth.
 Spring 2019
Peter Donnelly

Photographs from Hell

Snakes knotted sinners' hands behind

their backs and went to town between
arse cheeks, each linking tail to head

above them; just next to us, one

snake launched itself, and fanged a sufferer
right where neck is wedded to spine.

(Inferno, XXIV, 94–99)

II

fireflies lined the entrance of the eighth

bolgia, delineating with resplendence its
outer lip; I observed the glittering depth.

(Inferno, XXVI, 31–33)

III

If you, reading this now, are slow to

grant me credence, "This literally
happened" is my message to you.

A six-legged reptile at three

men grouped together projected itself,
vice-gripping one angrily;

its middle claws ripped the flesh of

his stomach, and it seized each arm;
fangs at his face stripped the skin off

his cheek bones; from each loin came

a slithering leg, and between them an angry
tail went up the ass, which strangled from

his kidneys all life (ivy

never so tightly gripped a tree as this
limb performing this monstrosity):

they seemed to grow into one another as

clumps of heated wax might, mushing
where one begins and the other ends.

(Inferno, XXV, 46–63)

IV

The belly of that metal bull

from Sicily would resound, bellow when
there occurred in it a screaming wail;

it was entirely uncognizant of those slain

in its gut; and, though wrought of brass,
seemed unmistakably transfixed with pain.

(Inferno, XXVII, 7–12)

V

An old holed, busted-up barrel is not

as opened-up as this man, his flesh
ripped from his head to where we fart;

between his legs the sack used to mash

food to excrement was, his innards hanging
and dangling in this sickening bunch.

(Inferno, Canto XXVIII, 22–27)

VI

Throat opened inwards by a sword,

his nose ripped out up to each eyebrow,
I observed him; he'd one ear sawed

off as well; and he began to withdraw,

revealing the inner tissue his trachea,
which was as brilliant red as haw.

(Inferno, Canto XXVIII, 64–69)

VII

Once-loquacious Curio's tongue,

sliced off, journeyed his oesophagus,
which from a flesh opening hung

outwards; and, because his

hands had been hacked off, blood spewed
thickly from the stumps out onto his face.

(Inferno, XXVIII, 100–105)

VIII

In my mind's eye I can still see

a figure walking among the other
souls in that bunch reeking of melancholy.

He carried his severed head by the hair,

which oscillated from his fist like a lantern.
"Fuck me!" it screamed to my horror!

(Inferno, XXVIII, 118–123)

A Suburban Village

A suburban village's opulence on the east

Coast of Ireland was sun-scorched in
Silicon Valley for a certain number of days in that
Post-exam period: polo shirts, reality television,
Americanisms blended into Hiberno-English; we thought
Also our thinking was Californian.
The sun-drenched occident's light shone
On a new identity, shedding its skin,

And indeed it is right that it was so,

Because only contrast gives identity:
Only a friend's conversation can show
You to yourself, that you may be
Your perceived reflection. Know
The exfoliation of your psyche
And detach yourself from it:
Study the presence, but be eternally distant

And separate in an absence. Discipline and dictata.

And the leaves of a Glenageary garden.
Here we both end and begin.
The genius loci is ours to inhabit: a
Duty this is, decreed by mouthpieces
Of God, amidst a modern quagmire
Of information. Psyche and place are
Melded entirely into one. Antecedents

Of mine, return please to my slow present;

My dialoguing mind awaits certain voices,
And it can drift from its focal point:
Must it endure this homesickness,
This displacement from the mind-mirror's
Reflection, the setting adrift from the pure?
The pure image is unsure
Of the matter from which it comes.
 Spring 2019
Rey Armenteros

A Single Speck
Imagine a speck smaller than the eye can see suddenly become the Universe and everything in it. That is one
infinitesimal thing becoming every other thing.

If I look around this common room, there is paper and wood furniture and a telephone and ink and dirty
clothes and bottles and toys and books and dirty pictures and even particles of light coming off the top light
bulb.

Now, the scientists say that the speck must have been pretty dense.

I calculate for a moment about how many specks I can fit in my room. Then, I mentally look out my window
and imagine all the things around the corner of my perception and then mentally fill it up with specks.

The picture I’m getting includes layers of sky and beyond, with the idea of spinning globes separated by
gases and rocks and things that may not even have names yet. There are more corners and layers in these
places, and well…

I fill everything up with specks. It is unreal, but I am a sorcerer for just this moment, and I conjure specks as
clearly as the actual spaces they fill. And over my shoulder, I feel the presence of a number that no human
concern has ever come up with. An eerie feeling takes over. The entity introduces itself, and this is the
number of the specks that fill up all the spaces in this universe of ours, the one that resides in our minds if
nowhere else.

Now, I understand I’m doing this backward, because I am filling the spaces and not the objects which
actually derived from this one speck at the beginning of time. But that is not important because human
comprehension can go either way it wants, and it won’t go very far.

Eventually, the question I get is how much larger can the universe actually grow, and just what kind of
density are we talking about here?
Choices
DIRECTIONS: Read this to powerful music.

In all that time, I would have this thought.

You use words. Others have thoughts too.
But it never fails. It happens.
Disappointment. Something to overcome.
And the only way that can be done is with a tool.
A hammer. And you understand something larger.
Open chamber. Bits of skull with matted hair.
The housings of thought. But not your thoughts.
And once you give in to this curiosity, stop.
Regret sets in. And something larger…

(OR: Read this to whatever you like.)

Some Crumpled Pieces of Paper
That poor hopeless son-of-a-bitch. Who was he anyway? Concentrating. Hard. Delirium. Nothing. Anyone
can overcompensate for their false sense of time, space, and self. In step with the spirits, it tastes good until
the bottle goes sour.

Now, this poor son-of-a-bitch was talking to an old friend of his that he knew before a prior career change.
They had known each other longer than the dry span of progress, that regurgitator of certain lost souls. The
son-of-a-bitch was at his favorite hangout spot when his old friend hit him up for some money. “Is it okay?”
his friend asked as he pulled the crumpled bills out of the son-of-a-bitch’s shirt pocket. The friend put some
in the cigarette machine and offered the son-of-a-bitch a smoke. He was sure his friend was genuine, but
when his friend strutted off, the poor son-of-a-bitch thought,“How could this still be happening to me?”
Prehistory
The drawback behind choosing silence is: no one will ever know. (Silence as it is preceded by blank page or
title and nothing more than an ellipse.)

Those that commit suicide have always carried the responsibility. The suicide note is a necessity. The
exposition in such notes reveals a reason, identifies it as what it is, as opposed to an accident or murder, and
provides testimony for the civil codes in the law. The suicide note shows those on this side what compels the
suicide to climb to the edge and decide to release all connections. It is the only proof that bears witness to
that line of thought. Potential suicides recognize that it is the proper thing to do. Life has no meaning. We
know this. We are the ones that provide the meaning, and it just isn’t fair.

At least we have one way out that is all our own doing. The potential suicide studies this and somehow loses
the meaning established by self and sundry.

A new line of thought has been developing. Recently, potential suicides have found meaning in identifying
themselves as writers of suicide notes, never graduating into full-fledged suicides. They are notorious for
writing the words without doing the deed. We know them well. Eventually, after the world forms new layers
of ice and then loses them, they will become known as poets.
Rib Cage
The bell, the hawk, and the moon…
Lightning outlined the way for the traveler. The traveler was on the pillow of the floating world. With a
brush in one hand and a fan in the same hand, the traveler was going to make something of the tremors that
originated at the epicenter of everything. Absorbing the calm of his spinal column, sending his mind to meet
this force, but… But he halts. A new resting place is a sojourn in the country, as they say in that almost
forgotten place, the land of his birth. But he tarries. Too long, it seems. And soon even this new place
becomes his home. Time. A monument of time caught him looking back into the window from that side of
his home he now leaves to dust and disuse. At the sound of his voice, a butterfly flutters away, and another
catastrophe marks a decision that will be finalized on the horizon. This, as idea prone to reality, forces him to
abandon his place to live life again engrossed by a constantly shifting picture plane. On and on, but the
traveler stops in front of ancient ruins. What buildings there were turned into the ossified evidence of wooly
mammoths. Look. Gossamer spider residue swings from an obliging exit space long ago shaped like an arch,
and he goes inside, soon hungry and tarrying once again but for far too long, and then lost to all memory.
 Spring 2019
Rich Murphy

Immediate Gratification Stratification

Foot-tapping, queues, and taking turns

vanished when fingers snapped.
Having stolen the waiting from wanting,
the magician lavished with trinkets
until wishing well dried up.
A split-second rewards with a plastic whistle.
The pennies thrown into fountains
invented for desires and for hollow concern.
The toys and tricks distracted enough
to convince the scientist
and the moralist too that nothing
with value remained within the body.

The drums in the laboratory resound:

“Regard-less!” So the dopamine

for the imperial, champagne-bubble crowd
suckles for immortality,
while mean-spirited smiles eat at hearts
and wear out spleens and livers
among the froth and blistered landscapes.
“Cut the frontal-lobe fantasy families
from the equation using long division
and the math works out:
The money-heeled homo Deus
deserve to choose among the genius genes.”
Real Magic

When pushed around the world

science collects into a dust bin
and the useless products
from yesteryear disappear.

Sucking at superstition to clean house,

the new priests in white robes
and with algorithms resting on palms
sweep up cows, pigs, and black cats.
Cathedrals, temples, and mosques
whistle in the vacuum hose.

The sterile lab shines.

Without the divining rod or wish bone

country folk poke at white mice for fun
and want the farm and pews back.

On knees for the preyer reading

crystal balls in sockets focus
before a daze brings hex, spell,
or curse, and the middle finger
can’t rise to the occasion.

For a class and species,

the dissected frog introduces
while the student, chased
from the hippocampus
and the caged thalamus, protests.

What remained under the top hat

the mixing wand stirred
and cut in half until “puff.”
From Aqueous Humour to Smoothie

Retinal reality giggles before integration

with personal background, attitude, and mood.
Sometimes the movie is paid for but missed
and paid for again, never seen.
Other times the whole Cranium
Multimedia Center has its way
with a glossy moment so that a grainy film
blots or mops into a memory.
Good luck to the next visual
and optical axis crossing! Warning,
flailing limbs or jumping trunk.

Floating on nerve endings

between the out there novation
and the interior that continues to adjust
ergonomics, the organism lives
in a novel during the writing.
A lifespan stretches so that a hologram
slumps stumped behind the user illusion
controls while looking to edit tomorrow.

For a continent, the collective lens reports

on momentum mounds on both sides
to suggest that around the blend
the fruits from ignorance again fall.
The Fun Run Race

While long ago no-pain no-gain

pharma teemed to bring
to town goofy “goo-goo” glue
that held gang psyches together
and more recently artificial intell-network
dragged in clown-bots to the public square,
the brain drain gene team shortens
for the pursuit after happiness
by breeding a three-legged smile.

The sieves in sinks gurgle

that the smart refugees stay at home:
Ex-pats erase to disappear from the radar.
After all, everybody loves
to have a constitution where science
and business marry for an ending.
One long guffaw to a burnt remain
knows about the ins and outs
presented to each generation
lost within a dream too big too frail.
 Spring 2019
Robert Paul Cesaretti

innocence deep

an otter played in the water of the estuary, where the small river entered into the sea. then it splashed the

water with its tail and disappeared. the small river came out of a forest of great trees. tall, great conifer trees.

giants. marsh grasses lined the estuary, deep green with many tiny blue flowers, brilliant blue. there was a

sand spit separating the estuary from the sea, from the surf. during the heavy storms the surf would crash

over the sand spit and the ocean would swell over into the estuary. driftwood and dried seaweed lay across

the sand from when it had passed over. occasionally something peculiar could be found, cast up from the

sea. and there were many birds, it was unusual, that there were so many of them. they brought life to the

estuary with their songs and with their flight. their feathers were black, metallic black. they were called

starlings. the water of the estuary had a soft golden glow in the sun, living water. in the middle of the estuary

was a small island and on the island was a tree, unlike any other tree that could be seen. it looked to be some

type of fruit tree, but one could only guess. on the island was a rowboat and a boy and a girl. a brother and

sister, they were runaways. they had come across the water on the rowboat and set up a camp. the boy was

looking into the mist held within the deep forest, he was thinking about where they would go and what they

could do. his sister, the girl, spoke absently, talking about the many people they had met on their journey.
then she became silent and turned her face to the sea, listening to the waves. she felt safe here, with the wind

blowing gently through her rich brown hair. then she began singing softly to herself, a song she had been

making up.

a man lived in a cabin beside the estuary, he lived very simply. propane lantern and wood stove, a few books,

a radio. a small metal spring bed with thick wool blankets. it was he who had given the runaways the

rowboat to cross the water. he had given them food also, wanting to be their friend. this man had suffered

great loss in life, words written in sand and washed away. his heart had sunk to a great depth, but now it was

coming up again, and bearing kindness. he had become a master with stained glass, knowing the colors in

their spectrum and the prismatics of glass, binding them together, like the sunlight in clouds, like the wind

touching water. he wanted to take the runaways to his studio, where he did his work, where his creations

came into being. his studio had been a blacksmith's shop long ago, at the turn of the century. where a man

had forged iron. it was a good place to be. he called out to them one morning, the runaways, to see if they

wanted to go. they did.

the runaways liked the workshop, it was a good place for them to get a hold of themselves. he showed them

around and told them a little about how he did his work, the cutting of glass, the melting of lead and how he

thought about colors and light. he showed them the furnace where he made special glass. he did a few tasks

while they all chatted. he turned on the music he loved so well, the music he listened to when he did his

work. gentle music. the girl found a piece of scrap paper and pencil and began to write a letter to her father, a

terrible man. she had been meaning to write it since they had run away. he was a dark man who had treated
them badly, having said many mean things to them. the girl sat down to write the letter to him, where did you

put your love? she began, then she paused for a few minutes and looked up to a work of stained glass that had

been set against a window, the man set it there to study its light. it was a piece for his work on the Creation,

God speaking life into existence. she began again, I dont know if I am coming back. maybe you should forget

about me. leave everybody alone. she did not know what else to write so she put the pencil down and placed the

letter in her pocket for later. her brother was fascinated with the furnace, the man was letting him melt some

glass.

then he took them back to his cabin and they rowed across the water to the island, to their camp. it had been

a good day. they were on the island for three days just resting and eating and talking. the girl was thinking of

her song and the boy was reading a book about nature the man had given him, plants and animals. he was

enjoying it very much. he was a curious boy. the man heard on his radio that a storm was coming in from the

ocean so he called out to the runaways in one afternoon and said they should stay in his cabin. he said it

would be a big storm and it was. that night he took them to a movie in the nearest little town, it was a good

movie. a real adventure. it was good to be entertained. the girl didn't talk much so the man let her be, but the

boy liked to talk to the man, asking him about where he had come from and about the things he had done

with his life. the man gave him good things to think about. the storm came that night, so they all stayed in

the cabin. the next morning they all decided to go to the beach, the sand spit.

the great storm had come in from the sea, it had torn up the beach with great surges of water. the remnant of

a sailing ship had been laid bare, the violence of water had revealed what had been lost. the ship had been
buried for a very long time, it had been sailed by men from a distant land. they were hunters, killing animals

for their skins, for their luxurious fur. a sudden, unexpected shift in the wind had thrown their ship against

the rocks and sank it. now its timbers could be seen, strewn up and down the beach. many interesting things

from the ship could be found by the man, the boy, and the girl, as they walked the beach, spread out on the

sand. cooking ware, sailing gear, rope, wooden boxes, jars. odd and various things. there was a sextant, found

by the boy, an instrument for sailing by the stars. it was wondrous in his eyes, brass and finely crafted. the

boy lifted it up, studying it as they all walked. the man tried to explain to the boy how the sextant worked,

celestial navigation. he was an intelligent and thoughtful man. though the boy could not fully understand

what the man was saying the boy was able to see the sextant as an instrument of promise. it spoke to him of

men on great journeys, traveling to far away places with great hope. his sister on the other hand had found a

lantern. it pleased her greatly and she carried it, swinging it in the wind and imagining its light, thinking of

the song she had been making up. then they came upon the figurehead of the ship, a figure placed at the bow

of the ship, for blessing and protection. it was the figure of st anna, a holy woman with the gifts of prophecy

and healing. st anna had lived in the land from where the men had come. now she was lying on the beach

even as a living woman would lay, sheathed in silver. quite lovely in the pale wintry sun.

the girl put down her lantern on the sand next to st anna and began to sing her song, a most beautiful song

in the most beautiful voice. when she was finished she picked up her lantern and set off toward the sea. the

man stood for a moment over st anna, and then he kneeled down onto the cold wet sand to touch her face,

placing his hands fully on her face, touching all that he had loved, knowing love now, strangely, by knowing

how small he had made it, when it was his, in his grasp. and why there is desire. the boy held out the sextant,
against the sky, as if waiting for the stars to come out, believing outside of time. the last of the storm clouds

were being blown out to sea, casting their shadows across the sand. dark and light. the man and the boy did

not see the girl walking into the waves, with her lantern, lit with what could be an imaginary light, taking her

innocence into the deep. the seagulls circled and screamed.

 Spring 2019
Robert Sheppard

from Elegaic Sonnets: Overdubs of the Sussex sonnets of Charlotte Smith:

excerpts from the project The English Strain

To the Naiad of the Adur

Come, suburban Naiad! seek a naiant channel

to the Hermaphrodites’ Cave, as actual
as the ‘funny men’ Mother warned me of when I rambled
to and fro, in autumn or spring, on the luxuriant Downs.

I sport with these sinuous she-males in their pool,

breasts brushing the swell (and me) until a dirty old man
dishabilitates in gorse and they leap up erect, surprise attack,
to tackle his perversity with their polyamorous tackle:

bum him until his prostate liquefies like a rotting peach

with a split pip!
Where was I? Up the Adur with such ardour,
where there’s neither cave nor pool? Drown me in your

Lethean waters where I’ll remember neither one thing

nor the other, beyond tidal dialectics, dispersed
in a thousand unsexed voices of two dozen Sussex poets.
Composed during a walk on the Downs

Low clouds, merging into mist that clothes

the slopes, blanket the sky and these chalk-tipped brims.
There aren’t many vultures on the Downs,
the odd wallaby, renegade parakeets, a furtive puma.

Nothing under leaf-mould flowerbeds, twiggy and hard, stirs.

Swathed in duffle, I’m an inventory of invented memories,
flowing with chalky milk that swells Kingston Lane gutters
on a wet walk home, drained downhill, dammed with twigs.

By the shore, a hopeful Mermaid flips her luscious tail

outside the Pilot where, Father warns, ‘Queers,
Hags and Sailors’ huddle in an Edward Burra interior,

while, in the car park, the carefree Vulture munches its way
through the furred kidneys of a chalkland swain, staked
through the heart for voting Remain and for sodomy.
On leaving a part of Sussex

You’re Petrarch and Laura rolled into one

cornball of misery on Southwick Hill, but
you’re not anti-binary; you’re anti-everything;
not becoming woman but unbecoming woman

with a brain full of bullshit and cowpat!

You stuck out a mile in the Ladyboys of Bognor,
bigging yourself up in Bignor like you owned the place.
You’d be walking the South Downs Way, believe me,

after wild frenzy with Tom of Findon -

or with a femdom Alpha bitch in Fulking Dungeon,
nettle-thrashing you, Unworthy of Worthing! No!

I’m Madam Hamlet of Hambrook, mooching down the Avenue

at dusk, listening out for hedgehogs rustling
and nightingales hammering out the blues in the mulch.
To the Insect of the Gossamer; or:
I Heard It Through the Grapevine

This is Sun Radio broadcasting from Truleigh Hill

The ether threaded with our Sunday jokes and jingles
And woven with back to back singles like Bad Moon Rising
(Father’s atom-bomb radar bunkers beneath this furze)

My little voice is lost in this form like a poet’s

While I spin the banned Je t’aime till it’s fucked
But when the swift wireless telegraphy Nazis raid
You shout that our free radio beam escapes their cloud

Shoots beyond the stars and that visionary youth

Shall breathe a rainbow bridge of dope smoke over
The Shoreham-by-pass as we’re snapped off into aerial static

Monday’s dull realities rock in and roll off

Like the traffic you track for the Port Authority 9-5
We’re just two little boys with our radio toys

*
Blank Calendar: Empty Diary 2017

It’s strange to feel him writing through me

after years of Google-sculpting skinflick grunts.
She nodded over her diary which she’d dropped:
It was the heft of her that held him, every step

a sensuous shifting. He watched, aroused –

she wore a lightweight cream-blush blouse –
by the revelation of a promise of strings tugged taut.
Am I a puppet he jiggles or a dummy he hides inside?

If I’m not in a committed relationship by 37

I will go to a sperm bank (she wrote (I dreamt
(who said? I sense his writing-hand in my
knicker-drawer feeling for dildos and black diaries:

Trying not to drink more than half my bottle of Pinot

this wet Monday as I bingewatch the box set of Magnífica 70.
Fucked in Translation: Empty Diary 2018

I made this (male) character.

Up. For myself. She
says. Animal sexpert
breeding pigs on his rival’s
sofa, herding with his ‘cock’,
adjusting himself
in a taxi of lady voices.
It’s (male) lust that’s nailed, if
not stapled. ‘Fluid, certainly,’
opines the police officer,
the first on the scene.

Love is a pain, a kidney stone

in boxer shorts. She
writes. He cannot believe his
luck, bad luck of
course, opening bottles
with his bare teeth,
domestic blisters.
I believe I have fully
unravelled. One day,
she discusses ‘chicks’
with some finger-lickin’
clit-flickin’ Eurocrat,
messing up his messy
Swedish meatballs, his
soup of love juices. If
he churns his girlish
sniffing, one of his chicks
leaves home to roost.
When I’m a mere
flicker of knickers,
and his wife is a repulsive
obstruction to the spurt
under his shirt, desire will
bust. Nothing
is ‘like’ the breasts
of his mistress,
tall, tanned and sweaty,
swaying across
to the slippery fish
of a phone. Warn her:
the lover of those made up
afternoons is on the line.
 Spring 2019
Robert Wexelblatt

AUNT VIOLA CONVALESCES

Vice President in Charge of Losing Luggage

Alpine Airlines
Denver, Colorado

Dear Mr. Vice President (I know it’s not PC to make gender assumptions, but I feel certain you’re male):

I write to congratulate you on the excellence with which you are carrying out your duties. I
notice that for the third year running Alpine has won the lost luggage sweepstakes and by what looks to
be a gratifyingly wide margin. Bravissimo.
Last month, a friend of mine, who’d been pining for her daughter and her family in Seattle, saw
one of your ads for bargain round-trip tickets. She bought one. My friend is a bit of a complainer, I’m
afraid. She was rather put out that her flight took off two and a half hours late and was only a little
mollified when I assured her that beats your average. However, she is still whining about her luggage
because, even though she filed the required form, followed up with phone calls, emails, and two
registered letters, she has yet to hear a word back from Alpine about her two missing suitcases. She is
just the sort of pesky customer you must deplore. I fear she has grown a tad impatient, even though, as I
pointed out to her, the suitcases have been missing for a mere five weeks. She is hard to satisfy, I admit.
According to her, your colleagues, the Associate V.P. for Procrustean Seating and the Assistant V.P. of
Indigestible Meals, are also owed kudos for a bang-up job.
 You must hear from many annoying customers like my friend, so I thought a letter of
appreciation from me might raise your spirits and send you back to your exacting work with renewed
energy.

Yours, with all good wishes from a grounded wing chair,

Viola Malkin (Ms.)

Aunt Viola has always been physically active—a walker, cyclist, swimmer, camper. I think the
same restlessness applies to her mental life; she’s a great reader, an autodidact. For years, she’s worked
for a large law firm. Her formal title is Office Manager but it really ought to be pin-in-the-pinwheel.
She’s devoted to the job and to her attorneys. Maybe that’s why she never gave me a cousin. When
Uncle Roy died a few years back, it didn’t seem to knock Viola off her stride or, if she was bereft, she
kept it to herself and pressed on, a good Stoic.
Apropos, when I could see she was suffering from a bad hip but didn’t complain about it, I said
sympathetically that she didn’t need to be so stoical about it. She thanked me. When I said I hadn’t
meant it as a compliment, she replied with stern sweetness, “Nobody’s ever insulted to be called Stoic,
dear.”
The chief consequence of Viola’s widowhood for me was that we spent more time together. I’ve
always liked my aunt, but now she had more time for me and I was just old enough to qualify as a
friend. She took an interest in my education, then my career plans. She asked just the limited number
of right questions about my dating. She also recommended readings most of which I’d never heard of;
the books were varied but invariably interesting. It was mostly fiction, but, probably because of our
little exchange about stoicism, she suggested Epictetus’ Enchiridion and loaned me her own copy of
Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. When she handed it over, she said impishly, “If you find one or two of the
Emperor’s meditations a bit dull, just tack ‘in bed’ on the end.”
Then her right hip finally wore out and, after a lot of quietly endured pain, many tests and scans,
the medical verdict was that it had to be replaced. When two of her lawyers recommended the same
surgeon, she phoned his office.
 I saw Dr. Freihofer once, briefly. I was in my aunt’s hospital room the day after the procedure
when he stopped by, or stuck his head in. He seemed to me like a typical surgeon—large, forceful, self-
confident, arrogant. I had the impression that he saw my aunt and me strictly as physical objects.
“How are you today?” he asked mechanically.
“Not quite so good as you, by the looks of things,” said Aunt Viola.
Freihofer frowned, as if any answer outside his narrowly acceptable parameters was
unacceptable. Then he was gone. I wasn’t surprised by the story my aunt told me about her first visit to
his office to go over her MRI.
“He was excited, but not about me and my hip. He was just back from a trip to Germany and
bubbling with irrepressible admiration for the Teutonic approach to orthopedic surgery. When I asked
him what the Germans did so much better than we do, he said, ‘Well, to begin with, in Germany
somebody like me would never have to talk to somebody like you. I’d just cut. So much more
efficient.’”
“I’m guessing you said something back.”
“Sure. I told him it sounded German all right.”
Dr. Freihofer declared a complete success, but Aunt Viola still had to endure a recuperation
period of seven weeks followed by a phased return to work. All that forced inactivity was hard for her.
And so were her four days in the hospital before, as she said, I “sprung” her. I visited her every day
while she was there. She tended to growl about wanting out unless she was drugged up. Nevertheless,
from what I could see, she got on surprisingly well with the nurses, especially the middle-aged ones. As
working women of a certain age, they seemed to have an understanding.
I got her settled at home. We’d already set up a bed downstairs and moved a lot of stuff down
from the bedroom and upstairs bath. I fixed dinner that first night, and, when she insisted I get going, I
refused and stayed to see her safely into bed. When I came by after work the following day, she assured
me she’d had a good night, was using her walker as ordered and being extra careful in the bathroom.
She was still taking the Vicodin she’d been prescribed but didn’t care for the side-effects. By the next
day she’d given up the pills.
“Pain’s better than stupefaction,” she said grouchily. “But I’m bored.”
 My aunt has a taste for irony—sometimes to the point of sarcasm. There are members of the
family, my father for instance, who don’t much care for her because of that; but even as a little girl I
enjoyed her wit and, in general, admired the ways she deployed it. Now, stuck at home, her mind was
like an engine that would rust if it didn’t run. And so, when I next visited a couple days later, I wasn’t
surprised that she’d found a few things to do. One was writing letters to corporate vice presidents. She
ran the first one, the one to Alpine Airlines, by me.
“What do you think?”
“I think you might score some free tickets for your friend, or even yourself. If Alpine’s got a
sense of humor, that is.”
“A big if. I think it’s at least as likely I’ll be banned for life from their airborne sardine cans.”
I noticed a wicker basket by her chair.
“I didn’t know you knitted.”
“I haven’t for years and years. I’m taking it up again. Once you get into it it’s rather nice—
mindless, or I should say mind-emptying.”
“Nowadays that’s called being mindful.”
“Ha! I keep hearing talk about this mindfulness thing, mostly from people who seem to make
precious little use of their minds. So, being mindful means having a mind full of nothing? Sounds like
what we used call ‘Zen’.”
“People still say it. Zen.”
“I like Zen stories. And those short Jewish stories. They’re a lot like each other, you know. Did I
ever lend you Martin Buber’s collection of Hasidic tales?”
“Not yet.”
She told me on what shelf to find Buber. There were two volumes.
“Take the first,” she said. “Better than the sequel.”
“What are you knitting?”
“Booties. And little caps.”
“For babies?”
 “Well, not for tight ends or fullbacks. When I get better at it, I’m going to donate them to our
local maternity ward.”
“That’s a lovely idea.”
“Keep that thought in mind when I ask you to drop them off, dear.”

Aunt Viola was not much of a TV fan, but now she watched a lot more than she was used to and
only mentioned it with some shame. I gave her a list of good series and promised the kind of pleasure
the cigar-makers had when the companies employed people to read them Dickens and Tolstoy as they
worked. It was her time watching TV commercials that prompted the second in her string of corporate
letters.

Vice President for Gender Stereotyping and Environmental Degradation

Ford Motor Company
Dearborn, Michigan

Dear Vice President:

Your subtlety, while not all that subtle, is worthy of the approbation that’s no doubt been heaped
on you by the muck-a-mucks on the upper floors there in Dearborn. I know that motor vehicles have
always been, as they say, “gendered”—what was more feminine than the Thunderbird, more masculine
than the early Mustang? But you’ve taken things to a new level with more spectacular consequences.
Profit margins on SUVs and trucks are a whole lot higher than on cars, particularly little, efficient ones.
I’ve taken note that all your truck ads have men in them while all your ads for SUVs feature women.
Meanwhile, ads for anything less ponderous, expensive, gas-guzzling, lane-filling, and polluting seem to
have entirely vanished.
You’ve achieved something few thought possible, certainly not your history-is-bunk, anti-
Semitic founder. I’ve just heard the announcement of your ultimate triumph—and thought it tastefully
understated by the way. From now on, said the spokesperson, the Ford Motor Company will no longer
manufacture cars at all, only profitable trucks for daddies and SUVs for mommies.
 Mazeltov, Mr. V. P. Mother Earth and Father Sky won’t bless your name, but surely your CEO,
CFO, your Board of Directors, and your many stockholders will.

Yours with all good wishes and a 2007 Honda Civic sitting in the garage,

Viola Malkin (Ms.)

Aunt Viola quickly improved her knitting. “It’s something semi-mindless to do when I’m
watching totally-mindless TV shows. I call it multi-tasking.”
She used her computer to print out tags to be pinned to her little booties and caps:
Dear Newborn,
On the occasion of your birth
Welcome to our planet, Earth.
“That’s so cute. Aren’t you going to sign them?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, dear. Infants can’t read.”

Aunt Viola took a new interest in endings as well as beginnings. She took out an online
subscription to the New York Times just for the obituaries, which she included in her daily routine,
reading through them every day with her mid-morning cup of tea.
“They’re the best written things in the paper and fascinating, really. The Times has a special staff
to write obits of the famous and notorious in advance and update as needed, for when the time comes.
Nobels won, divorces finalized, philanthropy broadcast, memoirs ghost-written, diseases contracted,
frauds committed, indictments filed, wars declared, and so on.”
“And so on. But what a morbid job. Like being a bunch of vultures.”
“Vultures? Not at all. The paper of record requires recording angels.”
 Not all my aunt’s corporate letters were exercises in sarcastic chiding. She insisted the following
one was both sincere and complimentary. I noticed, though, that if the hook was smooth it still had a
little barb at the end.

Vice President for Business Plans

Vice President for Labor Capital
Jiffy Lube International, Inc.
Houston, Texas

Dear JL Vice Presidents:

First, I am writing to praise your business plan which was terrific at the start and continues to be
exemplary. In fact, it was the first time I went to a Jiffy Lube that I understood the meaning of business
plan, that now-soiled and over-familiar phrase. Jiffy Lube remains for me the model of entrepreneurial
insight. You saw a need and figured out how to satisfy it conveniently for me, profitably for you. These
days, too many business plans are about coming up with some innovation (yet another app) and then
trying to engineer the need for it via marketing and advertising. But Jiffy Lube is the real thing.
Anybody old enough to have owned an automobile before your company came into existence will know
what I mean. Oil changes could be had, but from gas stations that didn’t inspire confidence, didn’t finish
the job in a jiffy or fix all the little things you do. This is why, even when places promise to change my
oil for half what you charge, I remain a loyal customer. You can check your computer records; they’ll
show I show up around every 3K miles.
Second, just a little query directed to the V.P. for Labor Capital. Why is it when I go to my local
Jiffy Lube there’s never anybody there who was there the last time, including the manager? What is it?
Can’t you hold on to employees, or are they all unreliable dropouts and drifters apt to move on or be
incarcerated before my car goes three thousand miles? Or do you move them around the way the
Church did priests with regrettable proclivities? Just asking.
Well, keep up the good work, no matter who actually does it.
 Yours down to my carpet slippers,
Viola Malkin (Ms.)

Things got crazy at work for a while and, though I phoned nightly, I didn’t see my aunt for a
week. I stopped by on Sunday morning on my way to join the irreligious mob at the supermarket.
She greeted me warmly enough and retreated to her chair. She’d come to the door with her new
cherry wood cane, almost apologizing to me for having put aside the walker earlier than she probably
ought to have done.
“You don’t get better by making what’s wrong more tolerable, by making instability stable. For
me, the cane marks progress. So, please, no sermon.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” I fibbed.
Despite her spirited self-defense, Aunt Viola was more subdued than usual. Since she began to
improve she’d been itchy, impatient, but now her body was still and mood pensive. I soon found out
why.
“Read this,” she said, handing me the printout of a breaking news article from a North Jersey
paper.
The day before, on Saturday afternoon, a man was flying his private plane with his two children
aboard, a ten-year-old boy and a girl of seven, from Danbury Municipal Airport heading for Teterboro
in South Jersey. Over Ramsay, the engine apparently failed and the plane crashed into the parking lot
of the local Hilton which was about to host a twentieth high-school reunion dinner. The class officers
had arrived early and were inside setting things up. Most of the guests wouldn’t be coming for another
hour or more. There were vehicles but no people in the parking lot when the plane fell on it, except for
a recently married couple, both members of the reunion class. They were early to see how things had
been arranged because they were going to be given special attention at the dinner. They’d been a
couple in high school, had gone to the prom together, were elected “king’ and “queen,” and then went
their separate ways. A little over a year earlier, they’d gotten in touch via Facebook and one thing led to
another. They were just about to get out of their car when the Cessna fell on top them. Both were
killed. So were the three people in the plane.
I looked at my aunt.
“Check out the name,” she said, “the name of the pilot.”
It hadn’t registered. The article identified the pilot as “Charles Freihofer, a well-known
orthopedic surgeon.”
“What? Your Freihofer?”
She nodded. “It’s almost a cliché these days, isn’t it?” she said gravely, wistfully. “Facebook
divorces I think they’re called. . . . There was a follow-up report on the radio this morning. Human
interest. If humans are interested in jaw-dropping ironies. What are the odds? That star-crossed
couple in the car? He was a widower but his new wife divorced her spouse to marry him. The custody
agreement allowed her former husband two weekends a month with the kids. Apparently, he was
planning to take them horse-back riding in the pine barrens.”
“You mean—?”
“Yep. The discarded spouse was Dr. Freihofer. And so was the pilot. And the kids—”
She stopped and I more or less fell onto the sofa.
A minute later: “Would you make us a cup of tea, please?”
Aunt Viola talked while I was still in the kitchen
“Do you think a fatal accident is really a tragic finale we can’t understand—or is a tragedy an
accident we think we do?”
“It sure makes you wonder,” I called back, waiting for the water to boil.
When I brought in the tea, my aunt nodded towards her knitting basket. “Birth and death,” she
said with a chilling smile, “they both louse up your plans.”
I sat down and waited. I could tell she had more she wanted to say.
“I’ve been reading one of my old college textbooks, a three-pound drama anthology. It starts
with the Greeks, of course. They invented plays, tragedy and comedy. This was at the same time they
dreamed up democracy. Everybody in Athens sitting together, watching things play out. Not just rich
men listening to lyre-playing Homer wannabes after dinner. Stories for the masses, seats one drachma
each. It occurred to me that tragedy and comedy are compelling and durable because they’re
biologically, not politically based. Sex and death. What gets us here and what gets us out of here.
Those things don’t change, do they?”
“No.”
“No. But then I thought about endings. Every kid on the playground knows the difference.
Tragedies have unhappy endings and comedies have happy ones. But what kind of ending is happy and
what kind is the opposite?”
I held my tongue. It was a rhetorical question.
“It’s really all about families, isn’t it? The whole Danish royal family dead at the end of Act Five
of Hamlet; it takes more plays but eventually the House of Atreus gets wiped out. And then there’s
comedy. What actually happens at the end of Lysistrata? It’s not just an orgy, everybody making love
instead of war. It’s mass reproduction, everybody thinking they’re getting what they’ve been aching for
when it’s really Life getting what it wants. Which is more of itself, which is continuing on. Plowing,
planting seeds. What Life wants is to continue, families saved not annihilated. Christian comedies end
with people getting engaged or married. It’s more decorous than the old pagan orgy, but isn’t the point
the same?”
“But they’re plays. Tragic one and comic ones—they’re contrived. We make them up so they’ll
make sense. But what happened in that parking lot. . . it doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, I guess I can’t claim it does. But don’t you feel the irony means something, sort of? What
was the philosopher’s theory? Pity and terror, wasn’t it? An emotional enema? What happened to the
Freihofers makes me feel pity and terror a lot more sharply than, say, The Bacchae. I re-read that one,
too.”
“It is tragic.”
“In a lot of senses. The tragic fall. The hubris of aviation. Elevated individuals brought down. A
whole family gone in a moment.”
“But in a play it adds up to something. What happened yesterday is, well, it’s ridiculously
improbable.”
 Aunt Viola looked at me and nodded. “So, you read Aristotle too. He was the one who said a
probable impossibility is better in a play than an improbable actuality. Something like that, anyway.”
“I never understood what he meant, not until now. You couldn’t make a play out of that plane
crash.”
“Unless God was the playwright.”
“People like that idea. That there’s a script, that ‘everything happens for a reason’—by which
they mean a good one. Even some atheists think that.”
“Yes. I suppose the need to find order goes deeper than the desire for God.”
“God’s one way of getting it.”
“Or the gods, the Fates. But this story. . .” She didn’t complete her thought.
“I think it’s like this,” I said. “You’re walking through the woods and you come to a stream.
There are a lot of pebbles and stones in it. And among them there’s a rock in exactly the shape of the
Venus de Milo.”
“Order implies meaning?”
“That’s what I’m saying. And vice versa too. It feels like there’s some meaning in that plane
crash and so we want it to be orderly too. We want a reason.”
“Want being the operant word, dear. It’s not the same as believing.”
“No.”
We were quiet for a full minute.
At last Aunt Viola sighed. “Well,” she said, “I won’t be writing to any vice presidents at Cessna.
I’m going to knit more caps and booties.” She looked out the window. “What I want isn’t so much a
reason as a happy ending.”
Only later did it hit me that Aunt Viola, who had borne no children, wasn’t just referring to the
new beginnings in the maternity ward. She was also thinking of broken toes and broken hips. She was
also talking about her own ending.
 Spring 2019
Roger Craik

BERTHA

The squat black marble clock

on the mantelpiece.
The window facing north.

A slight frowstiness.
The double bed, always made,
with blankets she crocheted herself.

The chair she read at.

The bedside table. A tumbler.
A hardback romance from the library.
Her 1950s shoes.
GOVERNOR NORTHAM’S YEAR BOOK

No one says they’re side by side.

No one says they’re drinking beer.
I don’t either. I’m afraid.

MY FATHER, ON A LOCAL ART EXHIBITION

“Oh, you know, Roger, the usual

environmental kind of thing,
a forest fire, monkeys cowering
in the tops of the trees.
Christ, if it had been me,
I’d have put a LION up there!”
 Spring 2019
Roland Kuhlmeyer

Leisure Map

And mine too is a heart of leather

Leaden, dank but lines drawn by feather
A bleeding, fading map, seeking treasure
A meandering path into lost pleasure
Where the sea falls off the world's edge
Beyond measure.
Leisure Map 2

I breathe like spirit

Into lost contours
Your day's disappearing
A dying wind shuffles over
Horizons.
Corps d'esprit.

I unfurl your map

Spread it smooth and
Open on the table.
It illuminates me
With paths of lightly walked possibility.
But as I fold it, the tow and pull
Of the paper, the tide of memory
Resists.
My coordinates are plugged
And rivers pour through paper.
Leisure Map 3

Grey is my hinterland
Flat is my wonderland
Chill is my winterland
Take me to Samarkand
Where my heavy tongue
Packed with sand
Can grow young
A cool spring rushing
Overland.
 Spring 2019
S.W. Campbell

Landlady

There was a bit of a wait between meetings, so I got myself close to the next one before finding a box

store parking lot to hunker down in. I parked near the back, out of the way of the crowds hustling in and out

of the Canadian Tire, intermittently turning on and off the engine. Though it was summer it was chilly, but I

didn’t want to waste too much gas. Such things cost money. It was far cheaper to wrap myself in my coat

and last as long as I could, fingering my way through my book, occasionally hitting the button on the radio to

illuminate the time. I was supposed to be there at three. It would be the fourth house I would look at.

Number one had been a duplex inhabited by a pretty blonde around my own age. The place was

clean and she had seemed nice enough, but throughout the interview she had given me the wary look that

the lovely always give a member of my gender when met via Craigslist. I must admit that I had given her the

once over, for at the age of twenty-four it's almost an unconscious reaction, and judging by how she watched

me I was not as subtle as I should’ve been. It had been awhile. I was out of practice. To be fair, she gave me

the once over as well, though I doubt for similar reasons. Hers was a more cursory inspection and

assessment. Perhaps there was a part of me that wished otherwise, the part that felt atrophied by unuse, but

I’ve long ago accepted that I’m not of the body type that turns heads. The conversation itself was pleasant

enough, but it ended with the I’ll think about it and let you know phrasing that told me that it was a

definitive no. Such is the way of the world.

 Numbers two and three weren’t really worth mentioning. Number two involved a dank basement, its

upstairs owner that strange breed of hairy pot bellied man that seems to proliferate in the Great White North

despite a total abhorrence to the wearing of shirts regardless of the outside weather. The thought of seeing

his leathery brown nipples plumped to their full potential by the cold and a belly button quite literally

overflowing with lints of blue and green everyday was enough to convince me to move on. Number three

was an overpriced one bedroom apartment, cheaply made, but shined to a high gloss, with every square inch

of floor covered by the repetitive swirling of artificial hardwood. The tour ended in the bathroom where it

was difficult not to notice a massive turd serenely sitting in the toilet, which the prospective landlord

casually flushed down without missing a beat. There was a fourth house as well, though I didn’t count it

since I never went in. The house was a ruin that stood out starkly from the well manicured world around it,

a sharp middle finger against all levels of conformity. My gut made its inclination known and I followed

obediently, slowing down only enough to confirm the address.

With a day of looking under my belt I was left with just one more. One last opportunity before

making the half hour drive back south to Calgary where I was living on the floor of my cousin’s and his

fiance’s small five hundred square foot high rise apartment in downtown. A place where after two weeks

even the bonds of familial ties were beginning to grow thin. Which is of course fair. I wouldn’t want me

living on my floor for long periods of time either. Hitting the radio button again the clock glowed

2:45. Careful to mark the stopping place in my book with a dollar bill, I started the car and headed out on my

way.

The route was a maze of matching shiny vinyl houses lined up perfectly like pupils in preparatory

school along streets with names like Silver Springs, Stonebridge, and Creek Gardens. The city of Airdrie was
a cookie cutter affair of suburbia. A shifting labyrinth of curving boulevards which gave out without

warning, forcing numerous retreats and realignments. Not a single tree was more than twelve feet high,

though they would likely all be magnificent bastards by the time the occasional child seen playing managed

to scrape together their own identical dream.

The house itself was not the biggest on the block, but neither was it the smallest. It was a nice two

story affair, white paint with blue trim, with no territorial fences dividing one set of grass and bushes from

the other, and the garage hidden in the back along a gravelled alley. I parked across the street and walked

over, the steps of the front porch creaking under my shoes, mingling with the musical tinkle of wood chimes

next door. I rang the doorbell and took a step back. I’m a tall man and my coat makes me look bigger than I

actually am. I smiled when the woman answered the door, a gesture she returned in kind.

“Hello,” I said, “I’m here about the room to rent.”

“Of course,” she answered, her bright blue eyes never breaking away from mine. “Right on time.”

She was probably in her mid to late thirties, though such things are always hard for me to tell. She

was a handsome woman, though not beautiful. An unkind person might even call her plain. She was

starting to show the signs of age, faint crows feet around the eyes and a little more fat in the paunch and

along the hind end. Her straight blonde hair was cut into a bob which framed her face and added roundness

to the square set of her head.

“I always like to be punctual,” I stated, letting my smile broaden in hopes of seeming to be a

lighthearted fellow.

“It’s appreciated, you wouldn’t believe how many people show up to these things late. Please come

in.”
 She pulled the door all the way open and I pulled open the screen, and with that I was swept inside

to a small entryway divided from the living room proper by a short half wall. I must admit that I admired

her back in a way that decorum didn’t allow me with her front, but I hid it well when she turned and blocked

my way.

“Would you please take off your shoes?”

It was phrased as a question, but her tone gave no hints of it being a request. I dutifully leaned down

and untied my laces, rolling up my jeans so I wouldn’t tread upon the hem. She watched the entire process

silently, her eyes never breaking away, leaving me feeling pressed down by the gaze of a power from up on

high. When I rose, she took a step back in order to give me full entry, and gestured for me to sit on a cream

colored couch.

“Would you like something to drink? Water? Pop? Beer?”

My senses flickered at the mention of beer, but I thought it better to put my best foot forward.

“A pop would be fine as long as it isn’t diet.”

Her eyes squinted a little in a way that brought out her crows feet.

“I’m having a beer.”

The suggestion was obvious, but again the tone didn’t suggest a choice in the matter.

“I’ll have a beer too then.”

“Good, one always hates to drink alone.”

She walked through the dining room and out to the kitchen, all visible via open double doors. I took

a moment to enjoy the view again, and then gazed about my surroundings. It was a standard living

room. Couch, chairs, end tables, coffee table, a few potted plants, bookshelves built into the wall on either
side of a fireplace, and a TV in its nook in a corner. Everything was set just right, the quality all more

towards the higher end. There were no signs of pop culture or personal knick knacks, except for a few photo

albums tucked low on a bottom shelf next to an Atlas. The other books on the shelves were hardbacks with

the colorful jackets removed, their number balanced carefully with a few decorative pieces of varying sizes

and types. The photos were all landscapes or close ups of plants. The carpet was a mix of tans and browns.

Matching curtains hung from stately rods, framing the windows. It was clean to the point that she was either

persnickety about such things or had the money to hire someone to do it for her on a regular basis.

She returned with a gliding step, moving along while still not being in a hurry. She leaned over to

hand me my beer and then took a seat on the other end of the couch, turning her whole body to face me,

tucking her legs up beneath her. I could feel her watching me with a steady line as I took a drink and studied

the label. It was something called Rickards White, not an instant favorite, but palatable. She waited

patiently for me to get up the nerve to look back at her, and then got to business without delay.

“I think it’s good for us to get to know each other. That way we’ll see whether or not this is going to

work.”

I nodded my head in agreement. The questions came one after another, a steady cadence of inquiry

with the feel of a job interview. Where was I from? What was I doing in Alberta? Where did I get my

education? What did I like to do? How many siblings did I have? How long was I going to be in Canada? I

answered as best I could, smiling and trying to throw in the occasional joke. I felt like I should ask my own

questions, but I didn’t, rendered incapable by a brash display of confidence I knew I would never be able to

match. Her eyes were on me the entire time, her gaze never wavering but for the occasional shift for her to

take a drink of beer. Two blue beams skewering me like an insect beneath a microscope. Studying every
nook and crevasse to ascertain exactly what type of bug I was. The house was warm, so I took off my jacket,

every movement feeling jerky and unnatural. Every breath and beat of my heart was a noticeable echoing

shudder across my form. I could feel every movement of my face as I answered her questions. Every slip of

my tongue. Again and again I retreated from the ferocity of her gaze, falling back to the safe havens of the

less intimidating comforts of the world around us and the sweet liquid release of my beer.

Then it was done. The questions stopped coming and for a moment she broke away, staring upward

at the ceiling as though through it, the husk before her completely forgotten for a moment before her gaze

came back down and the flow of information reversed itself. She began to tell me about the neighborhood,

the town, and the area in general. She mentioned the rent. The terms. A stately queen upon her throne,

surrounded by the finery she had collected as an upper mid-level executive of a company that likely made

something or did something of some importance. This was her kingdom and it must be recognized that I

was the one meekly asking for entrance. I tried to face up to it again. Tried to assert some kind of foothold,

but fell back, first from her eyes to her mouth, then from her mouth to her beer on the coffee table, resting

for another attempt.

Her words kept coming, but increasingly they drifted through without sticking, my mind completely

overwhelmed with the task of controlling every little minutiae of my existence, lest any movement or gesture

be judged as lacking. With a sudden horror I found myself wondering what her nipples looked like. What

color were they? What shape? What size? I desperately tried to stifle the stray thought, but it roared back,

doubling in strength and size. I could feel my eyes wandering toward the small globes beneath her shirt,

delving through the cotton layers. It spread like wildfire. No longer just nipples and the curve of a breast,

but everything. The shape of her legs. The roundness of her ass. The line of her neck. The shape of her
ears. The quick litheness of her hands as they tucked a strand of hair behind said ears. There was no safe

place to look. No safe haven at all in her direction. I jerked away to the refuge of my beer. I could feel sweat

glistening on my brow. The cadence of her voice changed to that of a question.

“Would you like a tour?”

I took a swig of my beer and held it in my hands. For a brief moment I thought I caught a glint of

amusement in her eyes, but when I looked again they were all business.

“Of course.”

She rose and I obediently followed. My eyes darted from one place to the next. I refused to let them

rest anywhere for long, fearing the danger of prolonged exposure. From the living room we went into the

dining room. A heavy table surrounded by twelve sturdy chairs. A cabinet in the corner holding fine

dinnerware. Still lifes of fruits and breads hung on the walls in elaborate wooden frames. Her long fingers

intimately brushed against the backs of chairs as she walked past them.

“I hold a dinner party about once a month. You’d enjoy them. Lots of interesting conversation.”

The idea of dinner parties held little interest for me, but I bit my tongue. She led me into the kitchen

like a balloon on a string. Its counters were a dark granite with a matching stone facade on the floor. The

sink as much decoration as tool. The appliances chrome, buffed to a high shine. There were no magnets on

the refrigerator. No pictures, wedding invites, or grocery lists. I drank the last of my beer and stomped the

thoughts bubbling through me into the ground, crushing them beneath my heel. The illusion of the

temptress before me collapsed back into the reality of a woman simply renting out a room. Silently cursing

the shortcomings of my gender, I tapped the glass of the bottle on the granite of the counter.

“Where would you like me to leave the bottle?”

 She broke from her rehearsed tour spiel and gestured toward where I had tapped.

“Just leave it there. Would you like another?”

I really didn’t need another, but a brashness overtook me, a need to assert some kind of dominance

whether it was proper or not.

“Sure.”

She smiled and opened the fridge, pulling forth two bottles, one for me and one for herself. With a

casual air she popped the tops with a church key from a drawer and handed over mine. Her fingers brushed

mine as she did and I could feel the damnable thoughts of the living room rising once again, but I refused to

let them. I squeezed them back into the deeps, focusing all of my brain power on listening to the words of

her restarted tour, concentrating on the coldness of the beer flowing down my throat.

Off the kitchen there was a bathroom, but we merely brushed over it as a necessity without notable

merit. The same treatment was given to the backyard and the garage. Back to the front we went and then up

the stairs. Here at last was broken the formal facade. On the walls of the upstairs hall were rows of pictures

of the house’s mistress. Photos with friends, formal photos at banquets, photos of relatives living and dead,

and vacation photos posed in front of stunning vistas. One of these was of her in a bikini, and though

nothing of great attractiveness or note, I let my eyes linger on this one longer than the others, drinking in the

portions of her currently hidden away, but breaking away before I was caught staring.

We did a cursory glance through the second bathroom, this one as well in good order, though not in

the picture perfect sense of the first, for even with everything in its place it still looked lived in. The light was

flicked on and off in rapid succession, and then without even a backward glance she moved on down the hall

to an open door.
 “And of course this would be your room.”

I pulled up even and looked in, but took a slight step back when I found another person already

inside.

“This is of course Jacob. Like I said earlier, he’s moving out next week.”

He was a thin wiry boy of probably around twenty, sporting thick rimmed glasses, hair over the top of

his ears, and a slight breakout across one cheek. To call him a boy was unkind given that I was only four

years older than him, but I felt him to be a boy in comparison nonetheless. The room was dark with curtains

across the one window, and contained little more than a blanket covered mattress on the floor, a half filled

duffel bag surrounded by scattered clothes, and a stack of paperback books of various genres. All together it

resembled the den of some packrat, though looking back it seems somewhat of a subjective analysis coming

from a man living on his cousin’s floor.

“Hello,” I said with the jaunty flare.

“Hello,” Jacob answered, his voice flat and without emotion.

I poked my head into the room, but not for long, conscious as I was that it was still his space. I also

didn’t want to remain long in my possible predecessors presence. He seemed a sullen sort, and his gaze

reminded me of a dog who had been disciplined for growling at another dog that had entered its space. If

the mistress of the household noticed any of it she chose to ignore it, instead cheerfully continuing on

toward a closed door, me following like a tethered pet. She swung the door open with an aplomb and

ushered me in.

“And this of course is my bedroom.”

 She said it with an air of finality that caught my notice, as though this was of course the natural place

for any tour to end. It was a big airy room, brightly lit by the sun via two large windows on the end which

looked out over the street. In one corner was a dresser with two photographs which I guessed were her

mother and father. In another corner was an old style full length mirror on a stand. The centerpiece was the

bed. An edifice with bed posts sticking up taller than my head, covered with a patterned white coverlet and

offsetting throw pillows of various shades of dark green. The room was as tidy as the rest of the house, with

such added small details as a bed skirt giving off a feel of class.

She fell silent for a moment, as if giving me a chance to drink it all in, and then moved over to the bed

to sit down, one leg crossed over the other. It was a tall bed and her foot just barely touched the ground. She

motioned for me to join her, which I did, though I felt awkward taking a seat on the bed of someone who

might end up being my landlady. As soon as I was situated we began in again, starting out with repeating

the terms, but then shifting onto the subject of Jacob, his time as a tenant, where he was going, and where he

had been. He was apparently a college student, but beyond that I really can’t say, for I was quickly again

becoming distracted.

It seemed to me as she spoke that she lent in closer, her hand dropping down next to mine, her

fingers so close that I could feel the crackle of energy. She was staring at me intensely again, and though I

tried to surmount it, again I fell back before her. My gaze traced the line of her mouth. My lips felt dry so I

licked them. I could see myself leaning closer. One smooth motion as though sliding down an inevitable

hill. In a moment she’d be in my arms, her hands fumbling at my belt buckle. In the real world she said a

joke, tapping my leg with her mirth, me dutifully laughing as well. I’d bend her over the bed. I’d pound her
for all I was worth, my hand tugging on her bobbed hair, her yelling for me to go deeper and harder, begging

me to not stop.

The bedroom door was open. I could see Jacob glance in as he left his own room, the same look still

upon his face. He only paused for a moment, long enough for our eyes to meet, and then he moved away. I

heard his footsteps retreat down the stairs, the front door open and close. My free hand was fumbling with

the empty beer bottle. She brushed back the same apparently untrainable lock of hair. I’d be asleep in the

room next to hers. How would it happen? How would it start? She was still talking, her eyes locked on me,

never moving away. Her free hand was toying with her beer bottle as well, now just as empty as my own. I

could feel myself lean in closer. I could see her eyes widen. The bottle dropping to the floor as her hand

struck my face. Loud cursing as she hit me again and again, demanding that I get out. She was smiling at

me, her eyes staring so intently. Such beautiful blue eyes. I didn’t look away this time. She smiled at me.

She was saying something. Good god what was she saying?

“Anything else?”

“No, nothing else that I can think of.”

“All right. Well, let’s both take a day to think about it and you can get back to me, but don’t wait too

long, I’m planning on having someone to fill it before Jacob leaves.”

I nodded dumbly. She rose and headed for the stairs. I followed as demurely as a puppy. She took

the beer bottle from me at the bottom of the stairs and took it and hers into the kitchen. I picked up my coat

from the couch, went to the front door, and started lacing up my shoes. She came back out and leaned

against the wall while she waited. I could feel her eyes tracing across me. When I rose she smiled and

offered her hand.

 “It was very nice to meet you.”

I took it in mine. She had a good grip. It felt like it took longer than it should. I could see her on the

couch, me on top of her, her hot breath in my ear, urging me on. I could feel the blood rushing to places I

didn’t want it to go.

“It was nice to meet you too.”

Our hands dropped and I looked dumbly at her, the fantasies boiling feverishly in the

background. She watched me, waiting. I had to do something.

“Well, have a good evening.”

“You too.”

I turned and went out the door. The screen clanged closed behind me. I could feel her watching me

as I went down the porch steps. Watching me as I went down her walk. Watching me until the moment my

foot left her property, and then she closed the door. I got in my car and drove the half hour back to

downtown Calgary. I parked my car in the underground garage and rode the elevator to up near the top of

the high rise. The apartment was empty when I got there. I went in the bathroom and did what I had to do

to return to some sense of normalcy, of decency. I had her phone number written on a piece of paper. Her

instructions echoed through my head. It all hung right there in front of me until with a sudden jerk it was all

gone. Flushed away back into the nothingness from which it came.

My cousin and his fiance came home an hour later. He started cooking dinner while she sat down

with me to watch TV. It was my cousin who broached the subject. Raising his voice from the across the

counter of the kitchenette.

“Get any good leads today?”

 Her hand had been right next to mine. Our fingers practically touching. Her body leaning in closer

towards mine as we sat upon her bed.

“No, nothing really. I’ve got some leads out towards Drumheller. I’m going to check them out

tomorrow.”

My cousin nodded and went back to his cooking.

 Spring 2019
Sabrina Ito

Red
It sprays like bullets
from gunstock,
killing all
that is untamable
to the Hunter,
in his red wool cap,
hinged with flaps,
which block the cold
and the sound
of so many men
downed
in the streets
that now run red
with blood.

Red is how we see

the world now.
It is our vision
tinged with homicide,
seeking comfort
in tragedies,
memorialized.

Red is hatred,
red is lust,
red is the gathering
of dissimilar things.
It is the absence
of harmony,
but the presence
of Truth.
Red is the life spring
of youth,
which is perhaps why
these days,
I am hoarding
all things red.

So that when I scream

myself awake
from nightmares,
I can reach out for it -
knowing how red
is always lurking
somewhere in the darkness,
waiting for the right moment
to leach onto my skin
and suck from my pores
all the beige-colored moments
of the day.

Only my nightmares
can know how
I am tainted by red.

For, in my dreams,
Nevada deserts
are swarming
with white-robed angels -
arms extended,
eyes dead.
They drag the hems
of their gossamer skirts
in the red dirt,
collecting balls
of tumbleweed,
that clang together
like church bells.

For these souls,

none but brushfires
burning down mesas
can, or will ever do -
because they are tired
of everyone
calling them angels,
they are tired of hearing
our ‘thoughts and our prayers.’
They are calling for rebellion
while the world’s still pretending,
that red can be anything other
than a primary color.

And so, they will bleed

into each carmine-hued sunset,
they will blast
through each fire
on the hearth.
They will blaze
through our cornea
each time we stare
at the sun,
so we can’t help
but be reminded
of how Hunters
are blinded
because they
choose to shut
their eyes,
to the world.
Tasting
you hold your glass / like a sommelier / tipping dark, vinous liquid / into light -

you measure color / thickness of syrup / against the tint / of the lips / of she / who sips
that wine / which now warms / the cheek / and glows / the face,

distracting shadows / from / shape-shifting / night,

and women / like me / who cling / to dredges / of silt-bottomed seas / long hair twisting up / beneath pools /
of gradient / light.

I am thirst / and blood wine / coating the teeth / and the gorge. / I am woman, / who has been sunk / into the
darkest / of canyons.

My fingernails cut carbon / into rock-faced caves. / I bleed / love songs / as echoes / through oxygen-thin /
days.

so, whatever you / call love / burns through me / like brushfire. / there is / no tilling here / for yield, / because
anything / worth harvesting / long ago scalded / or went to seed,

even before / your hollowed ‘hellos’ / splashed like table wine / into dirt, / absorbing / all evidence of spoil /
and last night’s / dinner party.

something I once called, ‘forget’ / breathes no / forgetting here. / at least, / not in the hands of a sommelier /
who tastes / with words, / who feels / with show, / and laughs / in the glow

of she, / who sips / that wine,

though your fingerprints / are branded all over me,

and your body / is mark-free / of mine.
Not Dysthymia
there’s a sneaking element
you can’t overcome
that drains you
of your watchfulness,
drowning your consciousness
instead, with dread
until you find yourself
fetal-positioned
on the bathroom floor,
lash deep, in weeping.

sounds of words
intended to comfort,
wobble and shake
as they travel through
your ear canal.
to you, they sound
like nothing
more than hope submerged
in a lukewarm bath
of open-veined
desperation.

it is the slow,
deliberate decay
of everything you once had
the moxie to wish for,
but that is somehow now
bent on forcing your hand
to scratch from your list
all that feels meaningless
because you feel no longer
entitled, to any of it.
Mirror App on my iOS

These post-childbearing years

have aged me some -
wrinkles from too many compromises,
deep folds from abandoned expectations.

And, once youthful momentum is lost,

what choice do we have,
but to decompose, as gracefully as we can?

Yet, we are enticed by new notions

as they are marketed on Instagram,
of what it could mean to start fresh, or renew.

And, before you know it, you are posting

your best photo-shopped editions
of the fearless no-makeup selfie
and the courage to go ‘splendidly grey.’

Then you sit back, relax,

and enjoy social media -
where everyone is kind
and tells people,
‘I love you.’
Instagram Poetry
Give me fast.
so I can acquire,
then pass
Through.
to the next
wanting.

I yearn.
to be dissatisfied
most of the time.
Because,
isn’t that.
what hurry
really entails

Let it be
cranked out
in haste.
offer up
Some half-truths
that are easy…
to understand.
I need FairyTale
wisdom
to guide.
my life, day-by-day.

though. I would hate

for my identity.
to be mistaken
for a pop culture fad

its really all. nothing

more then trickery -
A weapon you use.
to conspire with
social media; always
On the look out
for another way.
To deceive.
 Spring 2019
Sandra Kolankiewicz

What It Would Take

If I take a man who is ill to the

public square, he can slay others with his
disease. And what would be better for him
than to be sacrificed in his sickness
for the betterment of all, to convince
us to acknowledge we are indeed the
centers of the galaxy only so
much as we can destroy ourselves in a
minute while the universe looks on. If

we carry him on a stretcher and place

him in the bus station, we’ll send droplets to

all the poor corners of the region. Or
stick him in a pew so that women will
care for him, take his disease back home.
Easier than war or resurrecting
some temple, without all that exploding!
Nothing to rebuild but the crops, little
to do after the burn-out but dispose
as we wait for the heavens to open.
Wasting Water

Naturally, one wonders why we aren’t

born knowing everything, driven just by instinct, aware
in advance of where to
build the nest, guided by stars even when we can’t see
them, clearly refusing the wrong for the right. We stand
on the highway in the headlights, hesitate like
any critter, our beloveds grateful if on
our deathbeds a glazed calm comes on
us, shock shutting fear off as is intended. When you
leave a chair and I sit down, the seat is full of the same
warmth that fills the bedsheets now as I gather them up
and listen to you on the other side of wall, brushing your
teeth with the water running.
Summer Stalled

Summer stalled, the air cool and full of rain,

doves dozing under the eaves, the basement

wet in the corner. Tornadoes string across

the red map, the entire region on

watch, waiting. Tomorrow we will know what

happened, our efforts done by then, come to

something or nothing, the pale sun perhaps

breaking through the roil, gone but always there,

stems of flowers snapping or surviving

heartless exposure like the rest of us.
Experts

For years I said if I had never heard

before, something did not exist, and so
avoided disease. Thirteen days of rain,
and still we hope for sun, seek treatment for
the fungi doctors insist is not here. We ask
ourselves, “Have they blinders on their eyes
that they can’t tell this brown fuzz here on
your arms, that faint orange, right there, creeping
up my pale foot?” Never mind what is on
my face, they don’t see it! Perhaps their fault
is relative , some parental trait which
looks the other way when appearing to
examine closely and in the lamp. What
shall we do with them, we wonder, since they
have the key to the sky, the light we need
to melt away these insistent, microscopic
colonies, the ones so insistent on us?
Hosts

Though symbiosis is everything, rising

above codependence to creation,
the refusal to devolve anything
we love on our path through life, here we are,
living off each another until one
of us succumbs to superior strength,
ingenious design, an attraction
earlier than thought, that keeps us moving.
The parasite in me loves the leech in
you. In fact, when we encircle our tongues,
embrace through the night, they communicate
to ensure their survival. Such is the
primary urge of the pathogen and
brothers of ascaris lubricoides:
to control, make us behave in ways that
help them survive, persistence primary.
 Spring 2019
Sasha Newbury

Treacle.

My world is liquid
and I’m watching
through a foggy lens.
The earth turns
while I wade
- fully submerged
past the point of gasping,
numb and blurring
my life’s a murmur
a blemish -
a beat I can’t distinguish,

the world’s thick

and unrelenting
- a sea of treacle,
my presence is a drudge
through viscous existence.
I’m making inaudible waves
that move in the slowest of motions,
they lose momentum
before reaching any shores
Yesterday’s Donuts.

So far south
it feels like the end of the world,
discarded ideals and beer-battered aspirations
litter the shore line.
Yesterday’s donuts sunbathe with
tomorrow’s comedown – still warm and wet from penetration
and washed away with Glen’s

so far east
the sun barely reaches,
a town filled with aged people
haunted by ever-present problems
that linger at every shop door.
You shall not pass
without the guilt of privilege
weighing – gently ebbing

so far detached,
this isn’t home anymore,
not even the ghost of puberty past
or rosy mist of reminiscence
can fool me now

- but I’m tethered anyway,

to a town where yesterday’s newspaper

gets printed with regret
and fingered with greasy intent -
where the self-perpetuating cycle starts at 15
with a broken condom
on a dusty sofa
at a shit party
with your brother’s friend Dean –
a town where empty souls roam the streets
at the ripe age of 23.

They’re starved of purpose -

and dehydrated by the sea
Morning Coffee.

My sweet nectar
lies warm and wrapped
between duvets and dreams
- sprawled –
naked, but not vulnerable

it’s cold
and he’s unaware.

The first hour is hazy.

Dusky, dull
– damp.
Dew rolls down the window,
a fleeting moment
made by respired delusions

I imagine him panting

wrists flicking like paws
chasing other birds –
but every night
we’re out of reach

hairs curl
they’re soggy from his body
and a few have wavered at the root
littering my pillow,
no space is left
untouched by his presence

My coffee steams
racing my breath
as it swirls down to an empty pit.
It’s quiet right now
and the world feels still,

silent.
 Spring 2019
Shira Katania Cluff

Cat Brain

To create a magical emulsion

Diluted according to package directions
To be spread in shallow layers like lasagne
On the heavier objects that require cat-like
Assistance
Things that are earth and air and fire
Needing only water to complete the cube of
Regularity
These things need:
magical assistants

Two Cats young

Too very young to venture too far
To stupidly intellectual in their youth
And tufts of hair chronicling their experiments
These cats
Can drive the very earth to madness

With tufts of hair and some sort of homing

Devise
No craft for yet catching horny doves and ingenious pigeons
But a similar innate formula for remembering
Things like: a destination or a sexual vibration Though they’ve been stripped of a real home and their
maternal faculties
Yes,
Here is the emulsion:
Like I said there is usually a ratio of dilution..
A regular standardized half feral cat is a strong potion for most vibrant gardens, or half-witted birds, cold or
slow lizards and even slower insects...

Small cats, nearly kitten, learning to fall down the many chambers of air with a mind for grace only as their
feet must land on ground
These things Are the ticket

You see, this great earth and its ability to center and to ground our indescribably weighted beings toward
some centrifugal force
Seems, cleverly but deceptively,,
to be magic itself. You’d think it was?

But I’m here to make a comparison to the regular black cottage earth heated to 145 degrees crumbling
winterlong compost that has recycled itself over countless numbered rhythmic cycles, diminished and
floated through a purgatory of wind like unappreciated cathedral-grade stained glass..Prehistoric
translucent quartz melting with centuries, breathed by beast man and hatred all alike

And this pretentious earth claims the miracle of birth- every organic and so-called natural spec of small and
large

That motherlode who has caught us all in its baited net of total reliance humbling out Spirit
And Natural repetitions and repression
On the various cycles of its locational choosing

These two young ones.

yet all Cats are inherently screaming at this collusion

That thing that is Not

But seems so Is So
Is tracking with eyes a sheeted ghost who bears no holes for eyes
Or cross-armed white strap jackets

She is one thing.

not another.
She can meow
Show affection
Purr and eat
Drink and lick
Not human not mammal.
Not reptile not even a thought.
But close enough that we are all fooled by some similarity to life
And I think we fill in the blanks

She is a sphinx with a face

And beloved, if she be loved, returning to her innocent dumb-weights with more wisdom than We
genealogists learn in the many limbs of our comprehensive family tree

She brings an emulsion that is direct eye contact into beloved gaze upon her lithe form
And back and forth through moving vertical pupils.

She brings baskets of strange ideas

Ideas that no word has ever formed for even a remote calculation,
Nay not even a mere dream of a new form of language from a lucid pre-vocabulary fantasy

Come out to the shop and it is

She brings the mystery to the magic and leaves it locked tight, as we ponder the pandering Pandora
paradigm
Picking the lock with black compost translucent quartz millennium breath

She has never left a key but leaves a keyhole for spying out of her good-natured pity and sighs

Time has no relevance to the cat

Life has no value to the cat
Danger is only experience personified to its fullest mortal potential
and purring, says the cat
With death to spare

Breath immortal
Death exquisite
Nine lives sublime

Simple Love is uncomprehendingly

Simple or else for the cat
Unthought
Inside or outside the
Feral
Feline
Elixir
Emulsion:
4 parts oil
Don’t forget to dilute

Cats forget the past

As the past for them is invisible
The Future is too abstract
The Present too foreign and unguided
The Now not known nor knowing
The Is not spoken or heard
The This not believable

But claws and teeth and large leaps of faith across this calculated dirt earth tree cloud blue spherical thing,
so to speak,
is the magic carpet for the magic wordless
Tail
Claw
Sandpapered Kisses

The package instructions read:

Do not open;
and
If so, dilute with 4 parts regular oil
One part prayer.

Teeth
Claws
Unpredictability
Do not mix with dogs
Do not call the red truck

Two cats are good enough and

Better than one

One grows old the day it is pulled off its milky teet
And resents all mortals alike
And plots behind decades of masks and fake deaths

Two suckle one another

And suck their thumbs like children
Growing just as the bottle guaranteed:
With delicate but only occasional grief
And they run off but return after many heated silent conversations betwix

And since all cats are female or in disguise as not

They do come back to nurture the black dirty ground and it’s teet-like rock hard center which holds the
mortal things in place

Magic says first:

May I fly?
Dreams suffice the stupid beings or else are
Engineered into enamel dragons with slow, propelled force and raunchy noises
Who exhibit their ridiculous misunderstanding of flight magic, but still have tried their very best.

The cat will climb, toward shoulders and hair on heads of those who allow.

You just allow them.

For their formidable flight is often mistook for nothing but clumsy reflexes.

You must see the cat as it flies over your transparent thoughts and finds you in locked basement where you
truly unravel your demons to dry slow.
They sit by you on magic carpets as you blindly cry, impervious to everything but the water you are now
breathing through

Phoebe with a black face and pea green eyes

Recites the recipe.
She is difficult to pin down, but left to her own timeframe, she’s found me again.
Bitterly obstinate and lithe and pretending curiosity..

Yet she leaves a recipe for true magic at the door in the shape of a shadow, which she diluted, as always and
for safety,
with 4 parts magic, and one part dogmatic prayer.
 Spring 2019
Sophia Canavos

I had to hold her.

She was crying, after all.
This is all about
me. I had to
hold her. My mother
after, or before all
the beatings, she cried
like an abandoned child
so I held her.
Her father
“touched her”
and when she wasn’t
angry, finding a reason
to hit me,
she cried.
“He touched me
and my mother
didn’t believe me.”
This is mostly about
me. How I held her,
because she wasn’t
the monster who
hit me, when
she cried. She
was a little girl,
younger than me
at 11.
I held her, too,
when she woke
during those bad
dreams. I wouldn’t
have cared, if she only
hit me, but
she also cried,
so I held her.
I miss the
shine and curl
of yellow birch bark
in the dank wood
and hills
to conceal
and reveal
at unexpected
intervals
I don't want
to see all
all-at-once
I miss
resilient
sodden moss
underfoot
and jumping
noisy rivulets
though my shoes
are soaked through
and the warblers
so briefly
visible
once the endless
trees have
leafed-out
the bitter
scent of ferns
and scaring up
a chain of
bobolinks
hidden in the
field
their hollow calls
echoing
yellow napes
flared
Melville’s Post
As you stood your watch
the masthead, a dreaming
perch, for an unsuitable
scout
lulled by the
trade winds
healed of doubt
Did you lose
yourself
in those
endless waves?
Reserve
some small segment
for fear?
Love the deceiver
beautiful
though she is
imagined union
with her mirage
You must have
held fast, though
in the moment
before
watching death
approach through
your reverie
awoke, at last
you call out
and remember
there is danger
here, too
so high
and removed
Perhaps entering
the sea
provides greater
reward
perhaps living
is possible
immersed
 Spring 2019
Sugar Tobey

It’s a Problem

My neighbor was
84 years old maybe 5 feet tall
like a piece of leather
one summer he pulls me aside

listen I need a girl

it won’t take me long
you know for the last time
maybe you can help me

he survived the white army

typhoid fever and the communists
leaving him to die in a ditch
sure he probably deserved a girl

I just didn’t know any girls

who deserved him
it was a problem
then the problem got solved

he was hit by a city bus

while carrying his groceries home
and died in the hospital
three months later

they just don’t make people

that tough anymore
not around here
and it’s a problem
Have You Seen that Girl

I’ve seen this girl out of my window

she’s a beautiful young lady
I watch her crossing the street
dangerously swaying from side to side

she struggles with her crutches

nearly toppling with each difficult step
her long silky hair swinging
from shoulder to shoulder

I’ve seen this girl on the street

up close smiling and radiant
waiting for the traffic light to change
I try not to stare

she laughs with her friends

her lovely face her lips
a faint grimace as she lurches
into motion again

her beautiful face her lips

she laughs with her friends
a faint grimace as she lurches
into motion again
 Spring 2019
Sulawulf Valor

Paper Kittens

Blood, Bone, Talon, Fur

Playful scuffles that somersault between the wonderment of belonging and the silence of abandonment

These delicate imprints scatter with the first sight of barred fangs
Instinct to draw blood because of maiming touch
Too forceful, without tenderness
seizes especially the most innocuous

Those delicious pulses of content that seep into your

bones, into the hearth below sternum and skin
Elicit such a dull, hallow ache

Your thoughts racing—chase from one notebook to another

Pages and tomes and torn flyleafs filled with an indiscernible world
No one would dare touch or read
Saucers of spilled, soiled cream
Frayed string not unlike the typical tacking kind to connect crime-scenes

That pitiful, muffled cry

Never can find an escape through your chords nor
find solace without love, without tenderness
The ache steels itself closer to death, digs deeper like a merciless talon
further below into the hearth
where fears and thoughts and many lonely desperate callings
finally serve as purpose—as kindling.
All too mindful not to singe the delicate fur
of captured affection.
 Spring 2019
Thelma Stays

Sentimental Clobber
 Spring 2019
Tiffany Flammger

Do It

If your going to do it
Fucking do it right
Don’t mess around
Wasting precious time
If you’re breaking my heart
Just smash it coldly
No pussy footing around
Chipping away slowly
Tearing a little at a time
Bleeding love from my heart
Dipping your fingers in
Spreading it like modern art
Rip it wide open
Drowned me in the spray
Crush it under your heel
As you laugh and walk away
So, if you’re going to do it
Just fucking do it right
Let my heart finally heal
So, I can get on with my life.
 Spring 2019
Vernon Frazer
 Wrestling the Rage Pit

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 Spring 2019
Walter Odom

SOME ROSES ARE BLUE

Many of my family members and friends are Blue Roses

They are beautiful to the eye but full of thorns
If you attempt to touch them, they will injure you
They were not born with these thorns

Their thorns derive from pain inflicted upon them

Blue Roses have not given themselves to the Husbandman
They have not yet been grafted into the True Vine
The True Vine bears fruit abundantly

It is difficult to pick to fruit when thorns are present

When thorns are present those that need fruit are hesitant to retrieve it
I will pray that the Husbandman comes to prune the Blue Roses
And remove the thorns from their hearts
WE ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE

We are a peculiar people

Our skin has been kissed by the sun
We taught the Greeks
And gave the world civilization
We are not niggers
We are Negus like Selassie
We are the Lion of Judah’s cubs
We are not gods
Although the Romans thought we were
We are children of the most high
We follow the way
We are a peculiar people
WE DIE DAILY

We die daily
We like Christ
The mean and the hateful
Take our lives

I just spoke with Sandra

And broke bread with Trayvon
Imaginary candor
Cause both have gone on

We die daily
This is a fact
When you live in America
And you happen to be black

We say that all lives matter

At least that’s what we say
While Bertram climbs Jacob’s Ladder
He is not here with us today

We die daily
We like Christ
Major difference being
We do not rise
 Spring 2019
W. E. Pierce

May Day

Mechanicals incorporate desires

and virgins circumnavigate Orions

Cold Californian sun reflects

the hardware for this festival

Only the dancers know its orbit

(they’re classifiers of pendulums)

and pay a price in ecstasy

So close to godhead fiery veils

make each maid made vapor wear white

Burnt Frost

Fortune, failure, fiction after

the Fall plots lines to track the bird’s

pacific lapse, the missile’s flight,

a series of iambs, burnt frost,

one thousand pounds of hydrazine:

ascent into the chronicles.

The herald points: Body at rest.

The king’s men catalogue debris.

More opened books of war in heaven

and all made safe from falling things.

Tiny Poppies

No leak betrays our perfect cube

no one inside no insiders

all risk can sublimate away

from our great Oceanic Eye

Below we’ve made a space for poppies

for spores you said would travel well

have no ideas of home you said

No settlements no settlers

just fruiting life embedded hope

death cap emerging from its universal veil

 Spring 2019
William Pruitt

Guiniver

Seven minutes early to the Y, there were no other cars around when I saw her hobble across the lot to

mine. “I won’t hurt you,” she said. Everything after that was borne of sad frustration.

“I just...I just need... I just need to get to the bus station...My friend, no she’s not my friend, she

dropped me off at Top’s, I don’t know why, she’s my sister’s friend, there’s no busses from there to the bus

station, could you please take me there. I’ve been in the hospital, I need to get home to Batavia.”

So it was about transportation. I was early; it was Sunday. I could do that.

When she got in the car, she asked if I could possibly spare the cost of a ticket to Batavia. It was fifteen

dollars and something.

She said her name was “Guiniver,” putting stress on the first syllable.

I asked her what it was like to live in Batavia. She said everybody knew each other, which wasn’t bad,

but that meant everybody was in your business—

“Which is annoying if they think they know you when they don’t,” I said.

“You hit the nail on the head,” she said.

Her gimp involved a twisting of the right leg, so not only could she not put full weight on it, she

actually couldn’t walk forward, but moved with a screwing or threading motion of her torso, as if she were
an open jar that had to be closed with each step. I didn’t ask her if she was in the hospital because of her leg;

she said she came to Strong from Batavia by ambulance.

I took her to the Trailways station, just in front of the train tracks. She asked me to wait while she

made sure everything was all right. She got out and went in, and I wondered if she believed I would wait for

her. Her hair was cut short; her face gaunt, not unattractive, but her large gray eyes were bright with pity for

her chaotic self and the knowledge of the good and evil others could do her.

“It turns out a person can’t get a ticket without an ID,” she said in exasperation when she came back,

“And she took my ID with her-- she has it.”

I said, “What now?”

She was getting out her tiny flip phone. “I’ve got to call her. She took my stuff. Hey, where’s my stuff?

Where’s my purse? You never do that to a person.” She didn’t address the party by name, but spoke as if she

were continuing a conversation just now interrupted. “Okay,” she said, turning to me. “It’s on Joseph. Or

Clinton. No, just off Joseph.”

“What number?” I said.

“Just drive down this street. She said she’ll be standing outside the house. Here, turn left.” Now we

were on Avenue A, turning right the next block at Hollenbeck. We parked and she drag-legged herself a few

houses ahead, then disappeared to a side entrance. After several minutes she came back. “This isn’t the one,”

she said. After she made another call, we turned right at Avenue D and headed east. We came to the

intersection of Avenue D and Joseph, and she told me she would get out here. I parked on the curb by a

church lined with cars.

 She got out, started walking, then came back. “You are waiting here for me,” she said. Although she

formed it as a declarative sentence, she said it like she was surprised and needed to clarify. When I said I

was, she said to stay right there.

She disappeared around the corner. Then she came back and said, “It’s in her car up ahead. I’ll be

right back.” This time she was away longer, ten or twelve minutes. I was formulating a plan to get rid of her. I

couldn’t believe anything positive would come out of these phone calls. She came back exhausted and

doleful. “Nothing’s in there. She lied to me.”

“What can you do?”

“Take me back to the bus depot. I’ll text my mom. No, take me to the Y. I can wait there.” It was

beginning to rain. She was breathing heavily. “I’ve been in the hospital for a week. I’m not used to all this

walking.”

We were on Joseph, heading back to the bus station . “How about if you give me back the twenty and

I’ll buy the ticket for you.”

“But that ticket would have your name on it, and the passenger wouldn’t be that person.”

She was texting. “Do you know where Emerson Street is?”

“Kind of.” I had a vague idea it was on the west side.

“If you could take me there, I could wait till my mom gets off work.”

“Why don’t I take you to the bus station or the Y to wait?”

“Please, they don’t want me there. This is a place where I can wait in someone’s living room until my

mom can come get me.”

 “I can’t drive that far. I have things I need to do. I could drive you to the Y”— we had turned around

at the bus station and were headed down St. Paul now— “and you could wait there until help comes.”

“I’m not trying to be difficult,” she said tearfully, “I just want to get to this place and wait there. Could

you please, please take me to that place? Or take me back to the Y and I’ll walk from there.”

It was now raining steadily. What I didn’t want was to take her to another dead-end destination. I

had no reason to disbelieve her, but I had never seen her interacting with anyone, not even at the bus station.

Everything about her was about her.

“What’s the address?”

“239 Emerson.” At last she told me a number. It was coming from her mother, rather than the

malefactor who kept sending us in circles. I put it into my phone, and the voice from Google maps brought

into the car a definiteness and precision to our quest. We turned left at Driving Park Bridge.

“Why do you text your mom instead of just calling her?”

“She’s working now,” she said. “If I called her it would put her at risk of losing her job.

Do you have grown children?” she asked. I sensed she wanted to restore the equability between us which

had been stretching thin in her need.

“Yes.”

“Grandchildren?”

“Two. Eight and four.”

“Four! What a great age!”

“Do you have children?”

“Yes. I have a son.” She said it with the pride of accomplishment and identity. “Eleven.”
 When she told me he was born “just before nine eleven,” I asked how could that be, he would be

sixteen. She replied punctiliously, as if I were trying to trip her up, “No, I mean nine eleven, the month and

day.”

When we got to the address, she showed no uncertainty or doubt, as glad to turn me loose as I was to

leave. “Good luck getting home,” I said. She got out of the car, crossing the street to the place where she was

supposed to be.
 Spring 2019
Yunbai Kim
 Spring 2019
Zach Da Costa

She forgave me with a smile

for throwing out five dollars worth of crack cocaine

wrapped in a little ball of aluminum foil and tucked away in a leopardprint box
with passports and health cards and guitar picks and hidden lust.
"You actually went into my thing and took it and threw it out?" she said.
Yes. You're the one who said it tastes like shit and smells like burning piss and plastic...
"Yeah, I don't even like the high", she admitted. "It's just something to do..."
I thought about the nature of boredom and addiction
and their relationships to intelligence and stupidity,
while she twisted her face up with one eye scrunched tight
and her lips all sideways like she was having a stroke,
and then she let out the cutest little fart...
and I looked at her across the bed and I forgave her with a smile.
She giggled and squealed and shook her head at me
and backed her bare ass up into me,
and ten minutes later we lay naked and entwined in a mess of blankets and bodily fluids
and cat hair and dog hair and spilled beer and bad dreams,
and she stared at her phone while I stared at the ceiling,
before getting up to empty my bladder and refill my glass.
And when I came back she looked up at me from her pillow and her phone
and she saw my eyes, saw my judgments, my valuations,
my doubts and fears and secret dark places that even I pretend don't exist...
And she forgave me with a smile,
for all the wrongs I would ever commit.
And there would be many.
Sometimes I forget

Sometimes, I forget that I have a brother

because it’s just easier that way.
I forget with sex and drink and absence and violence and other cheap tricks to silence the mind and make it
forget what it really wants to turn over and excavate.
How many times have I drowned him in dark beer and cheap scotch?
How many times have I trampled him on long concrete walks to nowhere?

Sometimes, I forget that I have a brother…

Until I hear some poor soul muttering Freudian death threats to their alternate egos on the subway,
Until I see a child, fat, innocent, and helpless, beaten and berated for having the ill fortune of living with
monsters.
Until I hear my mom talk about him with someone else,
someone who cares, or maybe doesn’t care enough,
someone who talks without really saying anything,
someone who prays, damned if I know what for.
Someone who lives in the centre of existence itself, while I slowly wither away on the periphery, feeling
sorry for myself as I shit in the privacy of my own home,
as I lace up my boots and buckle my belt,
as I eat with a knife and fork,
as I sleep on a bed with sheets,
as I tire of human contact,
as I roam city streets, tempting them to lock me away,
as I think, without questioning whose thoughts they are,
as I fuck something other than my own hand,
as I remember my father with his skull intact…

Sometimes, I remember that I have a brother who does none of these things
because of what he’s already done.
And I think about him thinking about me,
And I wonder which of us should forgive the other…
My Independent Boner

It’s 9:26 on a Tuesday morning and I’m sitting here on the Sheppard subway line with a hard-on that could
blind a cyclops.

I have no idea why this is happening since I’m half asleep and there’s not a decent-looking woman in sight
and all I’m thinking about is the 8 hours of paint and dust and cranky bosses and asshole clients and the
wops fighting the porkchops and me sitting on a dirty floor against a wall still wet with paint, not caring,
eating cold leftovers with a drywall knife because I forgot to bring a fork this morning.

I have this hard-on that could silence a screaming woman, or make her scream louder, and I’m trying to will
it away but the more I think about it and the more I try to free my left leg from this fleshy splint, the harder I
get!
And by now the head is poking up on the denim and is trying to escape that way, trying to live its own life
irrespective of the tired old sap with sleep-matted hair and crooked beard and fresh-from-the-dirty-laundry-
bin clothes that it’s attached to.

And you know…

My mysterious, lonely, independent and emancipated boner would probably do pretty well without me. It
basically does all the decision-making for the both of us as it is…
At least if we went our separate ways I could think more clearly and come home to an empty apartment
instead of a lying junkie stripper and the Jesus freaks upstairs.

Maybe I’d write better poems too..?

About what, though?

The moon and the sky and a rushing river, or a nice, clean house on a hill with a cockadoodle and some sort
of macrame-ing librarian type with a fuckin’ PhD telling me she loves me and everything will be all right?

No.

Those poems don’t work.

There are entire shelves and libraries and centuries to prove that those poems don’t work.

So I go back to my basement cave in Etobicoke with no lights in the bathroom, with a river rushing through
the hallway when it rains too much and the tile grout gives way, with a hundred pound dog sleeping on my
bed and a hundred pound woman sitting on the floor eating all my food.
So I just try to drain that ruthless bastard in my pants until its will to live is brought down to my level.

And the cycle presses on and on,

and I never come home to an empty apartment.
 Spring 2019
Acta Biographia — Author Biographies

Adam Druck

Adam Druck is a writer and playwright residing in Philadelphia. His work has previously been published in
the online magazines, The Airgonaut and Earl of Plaid.

Ana Vidosavljevic

Ana Vidosavljevic from Serbia currently living in Indonesia. She has her work published or forthcoming
in Down in the Dirt (Scar Publications), Literary Yard, RYL (Refresh Your Life), The Caterpillar, The Curlew, Eskimo
Pie, Coldnoon, Perspectives, Indiana Voice Journal, The Raven Chronicles, Setu Bilingual Journal, Foliate Oak Literary
Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Madcap Review, The Bookends Review, Gimmick Press, (mac)ro(mic), Scarlet Leaf
Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, A New Ulster. Her very first collection of short stories Mermaids will be
published by Adelaide Books.

Barbara Buckman Strasko

Barbara Gurgel

Barbara is part time Graduate student from Massachusetts with a full-time desk job. She has a handful of
nonfiction publications as author and editor, mostly concerning warfare, drones, and the rules of war. She
wrote and re-wrote this story over the course of seven years. None of her fiction has been published until
now.

Benjamin Joe

Benjamin Joe lives in Buffalo, New York where he works as a freelance writer for The Niagara Gazette
and IPWatchdog.com <http://ipwatchdog.com/> . His first novel, Nirvana Dreams, was published by NFB
Publishing in November and excerpts from it can be found in the March 2018 Ghost City Review and Issue 14
of Riggwelter Press. Short stories have been published by Burning House Press and Aspirant Co.

Beyeni Da

Beyeni Da Agoons is a management specialist from Cameroon. Lives in Yaoundé. Compulsive writer and
visual artist. Works with talented kids in Yaoundé. Currently contracted to nalevelempire.com as a
producer.

Bob Whiteside

Bob Whiteside lives in Buffalo, NY. When not writing poems, he is aimlessly walking around the city he lives
in.

Brandon McQuade

Brandon McQuade was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. He graduated from the University of
New Brunswick with an Honours Bachelor’s Degree in English (2015). The following year, he attended
Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained an M.Phil in Irish Writing. His work has previously appeared in
BlazeVox Fall 2018 issue. Brandon lives in San Antonio, Texas with his wife, Jacqlyn, and their dog, Nevi.

Brian Anthony Hardie

Casimir Wojciech

Casimir Wojciech is from Northern California. He edits Silver Pinion. https://silverpinion.blogspot.com/

Chris Bullard

Chris Bullard lives in Philadelphia, PA. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania
and his M.F.A. from Wilkes University. Finishing Line Press published his poetry chapbook, Leviathan, in
2016 and Kattywompus Press published High Pulp, a collection of his flash fiction, in 2017. His work has
appeared in recent issues of Nimrod, Muse/A Journal, The Woven Tale, Red Coyote and The Offbeat.
Chelsea Bayouth

Chelsea Bayouth is a writer and Emmy Award Winning visual artist from Los Angeles California. Her poetry, essays,
and short stories have been published in BOAAT, Roanoke Review, The Rattling Wall/PEN Center USA, Lunch Ticket,
Heavy Feather Review, Stirring Lit, Dryland, Borderlands and many others. She is currently a reader for Palette
Poetry and has work forthcoming with Harpoon, CALYX and BlazeVOX. More of her work can be found on her
website www.chelseabayouth.com <http://www.chelseabayouth.com> ."

Ciara Banks

Daniel Y. Harris

Daniel Y. Harris is the author of numerous collections of xperimental writing. His individual collections
include The Tryst of Thetica Zorg (BlazeVOX, 2018), Volume II of his Posthuman Series, The Rapture of Eddy
Daemon (BlazeVOX, 2016), Volume I of his Posthuman Series, The Underworld of Lesser Degrees (NYQ Books,
2015) and Hyperlinks of Anxiety (Červená Barva Press, 2013). His xperimental writing and sauvage art have
been published in BlazeVOX, The Denver Quarterly, European Judaism, Exquisite Corpse, The New York
Quarterly, Notre Dame Review and Poetry Salzburg Review. He holds an M.Div from The University of Chicago
and is Publisher & Editor-in-Chief of X-Peri. His website is danielyharris.com.

David James

David James has published three books, six chapbooks, and has had more than thirty one-act plays
produced. He teaches at Oakland Community College in Michigan.

David Rushmer

David Rushmer works at the English Faculty Library, University of Cambridge. He has published artworks
and poetry recently in Epizootics, E.ratio, Human Repair Kit, Molly Bloom, Otoliths, and, Shearsman.
His first full-length collection of poetry, Remains to Be Seen, was published by Shearsman in 2018.

Dave Shortt

Dave Shortt is a longtime writer (from the USA) whose work has appeared over the years in a number of
print & electronic literary-type venues, including The Ekphrastic Review. More of his poems can be found in
recent issues of Poetry Salzburg Review, Blackbox Manifold, Molly Bloom, & the print anthology Emanations:
Chorus Pleiades. Later this year, one more will run in Silver Pinion."

David Wyman

David Wyman's first poetry collection Proletariat Sunrise was published by Kelsay Books in 2017. His poems
have appeared or are forthcoming in BlazeVOX, Dissident Voice, Clockwise Cat, Picaroon Poetry, Down In
The Dirt, The Voices Project, Squawk Back, Tuck Magazine, The Aurorean, A Certain Slant, The Wallace
Stevens Journal, Old Crow Review, Spout and Green Hills Literary Lantern among other publications. He's a
fan of Karl Marx, jazz guitar and the visionary poetry of William Blake. He lives in Massachusetts where he
teaches American Literature and Composition at Mount Wachusett Community College.

Elena Botts

Elena Botts has lived in the Hudson Valley, Johannesburg, Berlin, NYC, DC, and many other places. In the
past few years, her poems have been published in dozens of literary magazines. She is the winner of four
poetry contests and has had six books published. Her visual artwork has won numerous awards and has
been exhibited in various galleries. She has also collaborated on, released and exhibited sound and moving
image art.

Erik Hernandez

Originally from Fairbanks, Alaska, Erik Hernandez currently lives in Anchorage, Alaska working as a court
clerk. He received a bachelors degree in Political Science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Erik
enjoys spending his free time in coffee shops writing and reading poetry or humor or satire.

Erika Howsare

My poetry has appeared in Fence, Verse, Encyclopedia, EOAGH, Aufgabe, and elsewhere, and Saddle Road
Press published my second full-length book, How Is Travel a Folded Form?, last summer. My sixth chapbook
will appear next winter from Dancing Girl Press. I live in Virginia, where I work as a journalist and post
photos of the ground at erikahowsare.com <http://erikahowsare.com> .
Fae Sapsford

I'm a student at the University of Nottingham currently pursuing a degree in English with Creative Writing. I
mainly write poetry, and my influences include Frank O'Hara and Sam Riviere. I’m originally from Bermuda
and the ocean is a main focus in my work.

Gregory Wallace

Gregory Wallace is a poet and artist living in northern California. He is author of The Return of the
Cyclades. His work has appeared in Black Scat Review, BlazeVox, Danse Macabre, Sonic Boom, Clockwise
Cat, Outsider Poetry & Five 2 One. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a Master of Arts in
Creative Writing.

Heller Levinson

The originator of Hinge Theory, Heller Levinson lives in the lower Hudson Valley. His most recent book is
Un-- (Black Widow Press, 2019).

hiromi suzuki

hiromi suzuki is a poet, artist living in Tokyo, Japan. The author of Ms. cried, 77 poems by hiromi suzuki
(kisaragi publishing, 2013), logbook (Hesterglock Press, 2018) and INVISIBLE SCENERY (Low Frequency
Press, 2018). Her works are published internationally in Otoliths, BlazeVOX, Empty Mirror, Hotel, Burning
House Press, DATABLEED, MOONCHILD MAGAZINE, Hotel, talking about strawberries all of the time,
Mookychick, Coldfront, RIC Journal, 3:AM Magazine, The Cerurove, A) GLIMPSE) OF), Asymptote and so
on. More work can be found at hiromisuzukimicrojournal.tumblr.com.

Iain Britton

Since 2008, Iain, a New Zealand Poet, has had five full collections of poems published, mainly in the UK.
Recent poems have been published or are forthcoming in Cordite, Southerly Journal, Harvard Review,
POETRY (Chicago), JACKET2, The New York Times, DMQ Review, Mayday, Stand, Agenda, Poetry Wales
and the Journal of Poetics Research (Australia). THE INTAGLIO POEMS was published by Hesterglock
Press (UK) 2017. https://www.facebook.com/iainbrittonpoet/
Irene Koronas

Irene Koronas is the author of numerous collections of xperimental writing. Her individual collections
include declivities (BlazeVOX, 2018), Volume III in her Grammaton Series, ninth iota (The Knives Forks and
Spoons Press, 2018), Volume II in her Grammaton Series and Codify (Éditions du Cygne, 2017), Volume I in
her Grammaton Series). Her xperimental writing and sauvage art have been published in BlazeVOX, The
Boston Globe, Cambridge Chronicles, Clarion, E·ratio, Lummox, New Mystics, Otoliths, Pop Art, Poesy, Presa, Taos
Journal of International Poetry & Art, Silver Pinion and Word For/Word. She is an internationally acclaimed
painter and digital artist, having exhibited at the Tokyo Art Museum Japan, the Henri IV Gallery, the Ponce
Art Gallery, Gallery at Bentley College and the M & M Gallery. She’s a graduate of the Massachusetts
College of Art & Design and is the Publisher and Managing Editor of X-Peri.

J. D. Nelson

J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words and sound in his subterranean laboratory. Visit
http://www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Colorado.

Janis Butler Holm

Janis Butler Holm has served as Associate Editor for _Wide Angle_, the film journal. Her prose, poems, and
performance pieces have appeared in small-press, national, and international magazines. Her plays have
been produced in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

James Schlatter

Janiece L. Malone

Janiece L. Malone is an NC native and graduate from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She
received a degree in International Studies and studied abroad in Costa Rica. Janiece prefers writing avant-
garde literature. Her work emphasizes the inclusion of marginalized communities and underrepresented
cultures. She blends the beauty of ethnic diversity into the worlds of Romance, Fantasy and Poetry. She is an
author on the International Mobile App platform MicroStory based in France. She is also a member of the
International Association of Professional Writers and Editors. She's a sucker for a good romance, a
dystopian, or any show that deals with people developing special powers. You can connect with Janiece here.
Sign up for emails on new releases, writing tips, and free entry writing contests. Author
Link: https://janiecelturner.wixsite.com/jlmn
Jeff Bagato

A multi-media artist living near Washington, DC, Jeff Bagato produces poetry and prose as well as electronic
music and glitch video. Some of his poetry and visuals have appeared in Angry Old Man, Blaze Vox, Brave
New Word, Empty Mirror, Futures Trading, , H&, The New Post-Literate, Otoliths, and Utsanga. Some short
fiction has appeared in Gobbet and Danse Macabre. He has published nineteen books, all available through
the usual online markets, including Savage Magic (poetry) and Computing Angels (fiction). A blog about his
writing and publishing efforts can be found at http://jeffbagato.com.

Joan McNerney

Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press,
Dinner with the Muse, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Blueline, and Halcyon Days. Four Bright Hills
Press Anthologies, several Poppy Road Review Journals, and numerous Kind of A Hurricane Press
Publications have accepted her work. Her latest title is Having Lunch with the Sky and she has four Best of
the Net nominations.

John Grey

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Midwest Quarterly, Poetry East and
North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Hawaii Review and Roanoke
Review

John Clark Smith

John Sweet

john sweet, b 1968, still numbered among the living. A believer in writing as catharsis. Opposed to all
organized religion and political parties. His latest collections include APPROXIMATE WILDERNESS (2016
Flutter Press) and the limited edition chapbooks HEATHEN TONGUE (2018 Kendra Steiner Editions) and A
BASTARD CHILD IN THE KINGDOM OF NIL (2018 Analog Submission Press). All pertinent facts about
his life are buried somewhere in his writing.
Jonathan Everitt

Jonathan Everitt is a Rochester, N.Y.-based freelance writer whose poetry has been published or is
forthcoming in Small Orange, Impossible Archetype, Ghost City Press, The Bees Are Dead, and ImageOutWrite,
among other journals. He is currently a creative writing MFA candidate at Bennington College.

Kevin Ryan

Lawrence Upton

[Lawrence Upton (lawrenceupton.org <http://lawrenceupton.org> ): poet and graphic & sound artist. Some
commentaries on Bob Cobbing (2013).Co-edited Word Score Utterance Choreography in Verbal and Visual Poetry
(1998) with Bob Cobbing, with whom he also made Domestic Ambient Noise, spanning 300 pamphlets & more
than 1800 pages (1994-2000). Second solo exhibition (“from recent projects”) September 2012, London. Made
photo, synthesis (for solo viola) on commission to Benedict Taylor (2013) (Subverten CD). Convenes Writers
Forum Workshop etc (since Cobbing's death in 2002). Academic member Athens Institute for Education and
Research.]

Liz O’Connor

I've had a lifelong love of literature, combined with dancing ballet which has been my artistic
expression. More recently, and still 'in love' and dancing, I've been practicing and teaching yoga and writing
poetry. The poems I've submitted are part of a collection called 'Inside Voice'. I enjoy drawing, music and
being outdoors. I live in suburban NJ and aspire to live by the ocean and continue to write.

Marcia Arrieta

Marcia Arrieta lives on the canyon between oaks & flowers in Pasadena, CA. Her work appears in Anastamos,
Otoliths, Hobart, Whiskey Island, Ambush Review, Empty Mirror, Eratio, and the winnow, among others. Her
third poetry collection perimeter homespun is recently published by BlazeVOX, and she has a fourth
chapbook vestiges forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She edits and publishes Indefinite Space, a poetry /art
journal www.indefinitespace.net <http://www.indefinitespace.net>
Marissa Skeels

Marissa Skeels is a Melbourne-based editor and translator who has lived in Japan for several years. Her
translations appear in Overland, Inkwell, and elsewhere.

Nakahara Chuya (1907-1937) was a bohemian writer in 1920’s and 30’s Japan. He was a child prodigy of
tanka poetry, but the loss of his brother as a teen drove him to switch to free-form poetry and prose.
Bursts of prolific outputs followed the loss of another brother in 1931 and death of his son in 1936. His
work has been celebrated in Japan since after his death for its uniquely lyrical language and odd
imagery.

Marjorie Sadin

Marjorie Sadin has poems in The Barefoot Review, Microw, Emerge, The Little Magazine, Jewish Women’s
Literary Journal, Tower Journal, among many others, and five books of poetry in print. Her Vision of Lucha
book portrays struggle and survival, love, death, and family. It was published by Goldfish Press. Recently,
she published a chapbook Struck by Love by Goldfish Press. Marjorie lives and reads her poetry in the
Washington DC area.

Mark Prisco

I’m enrolled in an English Literature Masters at Waikato University, NZ. I have had a few poems published
in the Mayhem Journal 2016-2018 (University of Waikato). Also, I have 5 poems in BlazeVOX, Spring 2018,
and 4 poems are due to be published in their Spring 2019 issue.

Mark Young

Mark Young's most recent books are les échiquiers effrontés, a collection of surrealist visual poems laid out on
chessboard grids, published by Luna Bisonte Prods, & The Word Factory: a miscellany, from gradient books of
Finland.

Mary Newell

Mary Newell is the author of TILT/ HOVER/ VEER (Codhill Press 2019) and poems published in BlazeVox,
Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Spoon River Poetry Review, Entropy, The Hopper, Earth’s Daughters, Written
River, About Place, etc. Dr. Newell (Ph. D. Fordham, MA Columbia, BA Berkeley) has taught literature and
writing at Fordham University, West Point, and other colleges. She lives in the lower Hudson River Valley
and curates the Hudson Highlands Poetry Series in Garrison. Website:
https://manitoulive.wixsite.com/maryn
Maya D. Mason

Maya D. Mason, co-author of Autopsy Turvy (Meritage Press, 2010), has published in BlazeVox, ditch,
EOAGH, Helios Mss, Marsh Hawk Review, Offcourse, and Set. She teaches fine art at Union County College
and New York Academy of Art. Her artwork is featured in various collections in New York and Europe.

Nicholas Alexander Hayes

Peter Donnelly

Born in Dublin in 1988, Peter Donnelly’s first collection, Photons, was published by Appello Press in 2014.
Following its publication, playwright Frank McGuinness commented that "Peter Donnelly already shows he
has a strong imagination; indeed, a savage one presents itself on occasion when the beautiful and brutal
confront and confound each other. His second collection will be published by Smokestack Books.

Rey Armenteros

Rey Armenteros is a Los Angeles-based painter and writer who has had his writing appear in numerous
literary journals and art magazines. He has pieces forthcoming in Nasiona Magazine and Still Point Arts
Quarterly.

Rich Murphy

Rich Murphy’s poetry collections have won two national book awards: Gival Press Poetry Prize 2008 for
Voyeur and in 2013 the Press Americana Poetry Prize for Americana. Asylum Seeker is the third in a trilogy out
now (2018) Press Americana. First in the trilogy was Americana, Body Politic, the second, published by Prolific
Press in January 2017. Murphy’s first book The Apple in the Monkey Tree was published in 2007 by Codhill
Press. Chapbooks include Great Grandfather (Pudding House Press), Family Secret (Finishing Line
Press), Hunting and Pecking (Ahadada Books), Phoems for Mobile Vices (BlazeVox) and Paideia (Aldrich Press).

Robert Paul Cesaretti

Robert Paul Cesaretti has published in Plain Brown Wrapper, Poetic Diversity, The Atherton Review, Gambling
the Aisle, SN Review, Dark Matter Magazine, Mad Hatters‘ Review, Commonline Journal, Avatar Review, The
Zodiac Review, The Writing Disorder, Wilderness House Literary Review, Gloom Cupboard.
Robert Sheppard

Robert Sheppard is currently working on a sonnet-project called The English Strain and two parts have so far
appeared: Petrarch 3 from Crater Press, Hap: Understudies of Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch from Knives, Forks and
Spoons. The Earl of Surrey, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Michael Drayton follow.
Sheppard is the subject of The Robert Sheppard Companion (edited by James Byrne and Christopher Madden)
to be published in 2019. He lives in Liverpool, UK, and he is Emeritus Professor of Poetry and Poetics at Edge
Hill University. His critical work The Meaning of Form in Contemporary Innovative Poetry is published by
Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Robert Wexelblatt

Robert Wexelblatt is a professor of humanities at Boston University. He has published five fiction collections; two
books of essays; two short novels; a book of poems; stories, essays, and poems in a variety of journals, and a novel
awarded the Indie Book Awards first prize for fiction. Two collections, one of Chinese, one of non-Chinese
stories, are forthcoming.

Roger Craik

Roland Kuhlmeyer

I am currently a deputy head and English teacher in a secondary school. I used to work as a journalist for UK
national papers and during that time, wrote three books about new religious movements: Shopping For God
(Harper Collins), Charismania and The Rise and Falll of the Nine O'clock Service (both Mowbrays). I am
forlornly trying to find an agent for a novel about climate change.

Sabrina Ito

Sabrina Ito lives in Honolulu, HI with her husband, Victor, and her son, Xander. An International
Baccalaureate (IB) teacher in Kailua, Sabrina also enjoys writing, cooking, spending time with family, and is
at her happiest in or near the ocean. Sabrina’s poems have appeared in Clarion Magazine, Slipstream Press,
Coachella Review and The Cossack Review, among others. Sabrina’s debut chapbook, Witches of Lila Spring,
was published in 2018 through Plan B Press. Her next poetry chapbook, Messages from Salt Water, is
forthcoming through Finishing Line Press by the summer of 2019. For more information, visit Sabrina’s
website: https://sabrinaitopoetry.com
Sandra Kolankiewicz

Sasha Newbury

Sasha Newbury is a 24-year-old Copywriter living in London, originally from the not-so-sunny shores of
Southend-on-Sea. She studied English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London and despite
desperately longing for - is still dogless.

Shira Katania Cluff

Sophia Canavos

Sophia Canavos lives in Western New York. She’s currently interested in translations of poetry, the Silk
Road(s) and micro glia.

Sugar Tobey

Sulawulf Valor

Sulawulf Valor is a trans(a)gender, non-binary, and shameless queer poet/writer. Xe gravitates towards
content concerning but not limited to: Demi-sexuality, the pitfalls and joys of alternative love,
Depression/PTSD/mental health, intersectional feminism, gatekeeping, identity politics, and survival. Xyr
future aspirations involve making a breakthrough with poetry and publishing. Currently residing in the
Pacific Northwest, Xe has intentions of seeing more of the world for further experience, connection, and
inspiration.

S.W. Campbell

S.W. Campbell was born in Eastern Oregon. He currently resides in Portland where he works as an
economist and lives with a house plant named Morton. He has had numerous short stories published in
various literary reviews. His first novel, The Uncanny Valley, and first short story collection, An Unsated
Thirst, are available for purchase at his website, www.shawnwcampbell.com
<http://www.shawnwcampbell.com> .
Thomas Fink

Thomas Fink, Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia, is the author of 9 books of poetry, most
recently Selected Poems & Poetic Series (Marsh Hawk P, 2016), 2 books of criticism, and 3 edited
anthologies. His work appeared in Best American Poetry 2007. His paintings hang in various collections.

Tiffany Flammger

Tiffany Flammger, has been writing poems and short stories for most of her life. This is the third time having
a poem published on this site. You can read more of her work on her Facebook page at
https://www.facebook.com/Tiffany-Flammger-317069942085725/.

Vernon Frazer

Vernon Frazer hides in plain sight.

Walter Odom

Walter Odom is a 48 year old writer from Nashville, TN. He is married and has one son.

W. E. Pierce

W.E. Pierce's poetry has appeared in The Literary Review and Heavy Feather Review, and is forthcoming in
Word For/Word. He lives near Chicago.

William Pruitt

William Pruitt has published his stories in such places as Hypertext, Oyster River Pages, Adelaide Literary
Journal and sicklit, and his poems in Country Journal, Anderbo.com, Ploughshares, Longhouse, et. al. He has two
chapbooks from White Pine and FootHills and self-published a full-length book of poems, Walking Home
from the Eastman House. He taught ESL for BOCES in Monroe county for 26 years and is currently assistant
editor for Narrative Magazine. He lives in Irondequoit with his wife, Pamela.
Yunbai Kim

Yun Bai Kim has reached 2nd puberty last year.

When he refused to Other's gaze from the time, his toothache came into being and made him write,
particularly, in a rainy day.
While the toothache lasts, he will keep writing.

Zach Da Costa

Zach Da Costa writes prose and poems and hates writing bios. He has recently had work in HAG MAG,
Blood and Bourbon journal, and The Trinity Review. He lives in Toronto and will paint your house for $500
a room.