Richard, my editor, has drawn a thick black line through your middle. You have been cut and discarded. Overused and common, he said. I am encouraged to find a substitute. My back straightens as I inhale through my nose. He doesn’t know about us. I carried you in my brown bag with peanut butter and […]
Category Archives: Issue 22
For Federico García Lorca, on All Saints’ Eve by Sarah Arantza Amador
Come, come and see, the dead adolescent! Come and see his weightless hair wave in the brine, mingle with the foam, where sea and river meet. His clear eyes reflect the approaching dawn. Come, come and see, before the tide spirits him away / Come and see the lost girls and boys sit in the […]
an essay on baobab trees by Lee Patterson
there is only 1 blockbuster video & I don’t know how many baobab trees left in the world. I weep for the loss of my future children who will never learn to be kind by rewinding. I have seen more blockbuster video stores than skies, but I have never seen a baobab tree. I am […]
disaster movie by Lee Patterson
you come over dressed as weather: your hair the color of cumulonimbus, your breath an indian summer. you find me in the tub, scrubbing off parts of yesterday that refused to leave with it. we are living in a disaster movie, but it’s not something we talk about: not the asteroid cascading toward earth; not […]
the moon & the moon & the moon by Lee Patterson
my esophagus has been crying, so I bought an umbrella for my heart. everything sags when it gets soggy. my doctor told me that. she had a stethoscope in her ears, the cold metal pressed against my chest. I told her cigarettes have been tasting better lately. she shrugged. the devil won’t mind, she told […]
And We Never Die by Cathy Ulrich
The boy comes to school with some guns in a bag and one in his hands and starts shooting. He points the gun at us; he says bang. He says bang bang bang, like he is playing cowboy, cops and robbers, Duck Hunt. He pulls the trigger and we don’t die. We turn into birds […]
Land of the Free by Brad Rose
I’m in the park. I’m light enough to float. My brain is stronger on the right side. What does it matter where my ideas come from? Is there ever only one thing at a time going on in your mind? I can see the latest birds, now. They look like bullets shooting from those trees. […]
Road Trip by Daniel Romo
How easy it is to underestimate the restlessness of scars. So simple to minimize the relationship of reminder and skin. Neither faulty stitches nor careless neglect are to blame for the contradiction of opening up old wounds. But those who say forget about it assume memory is a choice. That’s no more so the case […]
Compression by Daniel Romo
Once upon a near amputation, a tourniquet fell in love with a limb. Few relationships are tighter than the bond between cloth tightly twisted around skin. Constricting blood flow is the purest form of displaying affection’s depths. Opposites attract, but so do devices wrapping the body as if redirecting life from one part of the […]
Pentacostal Gel by Richard J. Fleming
A watered-down version of physical attraction tears through me like a lack of gravity. I flutter toward the horizon and the pull of the empyrean. I could use a little support here. These wings make my back ache. Heaven’s like a healthcare clinic waiting room. Take a number and wait your turn. Eventually, bespectacled factotums […]
Love on the Rocks by Richard J. Fleming
A bright light goes on in the grotto. Whose idea was that? Not to mention, relentless waves keep pounding the rocks into submission. One of these days, but perhaps not today, I am going to send to the moon for a very special pet rock. It led a quiet life in the Sea of Tranquility. […]
The Giants Open Doors by Ken Poyner
All the doors of the road are open. Someone must have left them unlocked. Or maybe there is a skeleton key. Or someone was willing to pry them open through unleavened force. No matter. You cannot drive on this road: all its doors are open. For now, I will let the baffled, thirsty commuters ponder […]
Jamie’s Dad by Kathryn Fitzpatrick
says the chiropractor’s more useless than a boob on a nun so he fishes the above-ground pool for leeches to attach to his back and suck at the tension. They are drop-stone earrings, the jagged spine of a tired horse. Jamie’s dad drinks Coors Lite after work after he shrugs off his jacket with the […]
Forecast for the House of the Seamstress by Angela Apte
While other babies gummed their fists, the daughter of the seamstress teethed on oracle bones and grew to read anything. Tea leaves, a three-card spread, the Lives of the Saints. The villagers, famous for keeping birds – birds that talked, birds whose tail feathers curved like sabres – would stand outside the window of the […]
Happy Days by Jim Burke
I see bare-assed trees against the skyline, spooky as hell. They are waiting, knowing, something’s coming, rising, and I’m listening to the American actor, Jon Hamm, reciting Frank O’Hara’s poem, “Mayakovsky.” All across the sky there is light. I was five years old in nineteen fifty nine. I had beaten pneumonia. My younger brother Doug, […]
Topiary Gardens by Barbara Westwood Diehl
In the postcard city of Topiary Gardens, the hedges wish to be more than they are. You may have similar longings. Dreams. Being evergreen is not enough for them. Myrtles, laurels, hollies—all wish to be more than mere shrubbery. More than bearers of inedible berries. Flowering in impenetrable forests. A yew yearns to be more […]
Blues Biography by Garrett Phelan
Sometimes I come across as artifact, a found blues, biography of bone washed up into a whisper waiting. A stepping-stone wobbling, a root fastened to a fist, and tongues salvaged trapped in amber sold as prayer beads. Or, a vicious grip of longing stuck to a doorknob. Garrett Phelan is the author of one poetry […]
Ossuary by Garrett Phelan
like bamboo in wind. Wings of cicada. Baseball bats in a bag. Stones. Fingered rosary beads. Marbles in my pocket. All the soreness of crow call or of blood stopping up the wound. My mother’s eyes. All the gray in granite. Shoebox tissues. Pens in a book bag. And a branch scratches the window. Fingernails […]
A Bright Shadow is Cast Over the City by Evan Cozad
All the clowns are jumping off the bridges. All the bulls are stopping in the middle of the streets. The cats have all fallen asleep in back allies, and all the nuns are putting their hands in their pockets. But I’m at home in the tub, blood pooling out of my nose into the water, […]
The Ins and Outs of Topiary Hierarchy by Evan Cozad
The topiary animals come to life at night. Each of them able to uproot themselves without any struggle. The lion, the elephant, and the duck participate in a social club together. It’s a very exclusive thing. They never invite the dog or the rabbit to join. But they eat their baklava and drink their tea […]
Alice in the War Years by Kyle Hemmings
It’s summer, a season of forgotten berries and a neighbor’s neglected hyacinths. Today, the sky is the color of peeled potatoes but the sun manages to make eyes at Alice, here and there. Mitch, a half-blind boy with down-turned eyes and a forearm of beetle-shaped scars, is teaching Alice to do “The Doolittle Drop,” a […]
Class by Tim Love
Badminton players ignore all the floor’s circuitry but for the white lines. No soap operas for them, no quizzes about shop-names, no asking for your star sign. They support the arts, painting you posing with pitchforks like Neptune with his trident. They praise with pastorals your picturesque poverty, eat Ploughmans in solidarity, keep allotments, keep […]
FEATURED: Three poems by Barbara McVeigh
Ken Never Saw It Coming Barbarian. It means. My name was made from universal sounds. The same howl in any tongue. Click. Come closer. Don’t mind the iodine. Barbarians bite and snap and lick the inner ear of any listener. If a tree falls. Body parts. Hunger beating on a drum. I make war with […]
Table of Contents Issue 22
Barbara McVeigh (FEATURED): Three Poems Tim Love: Class Kyle Hemmings: Alice in the War Years Evan Cozad: The Ins and Outs of Topiary Hierarchy Evan Cozad: A Bright Shadow is Cast Over the City Garrett Phelan: Ossuary Garrett Phelan: Blues Biography Barbara Westwood Diehl: Topiary Gardens Jim Burke: Happy Days Angela Apte: Forecast for […]