Nothing will kill you. Nothing will tear you apart, limb from aching limb. Nothing, yes, just beyond these walls—nothing will rip you to— “People only listen to Depeche Mode on the weekends,” he says, as he fills my cup. Our fingers lightly touch and then he goes to change the song— Enjoy the Silence[1]—enjoy this […]
Category Archives: Issue 9
That Southern Ghost Two poems by M.C. St. John
That Southern Ghost Crossing an alleyway, he hears two sharp honks from a car rolling down the ruts of ice toward him. The sound snaps his thoughts clean in half—her smile through the windshield, Cheshire in the reflected trees, is all he sees now. Those are familiar teeth, he thinks. The tires crunch snow. The […]
The Rationale by Ken Poyner
Between us there is notice. A braille of recognition, a mummery of portraiture. You expect cycles of me, rumors of left-handed gods, a great passion for ingestible stones. Mine is the part of meeting expectations. Yet expectations supplely oppress you. And here I am wingless, and for the full moon grieving sinful, rich feathers. Feel […]
Upon discovering my mother’s suicide note, again by Cimmaron Burt
“Knowing the imperfection of repair, I realize it’s not something in me that is causing the contradictions it is something that is not. A discarded shard. A sobering thought the longer one lives, the more times a part of them will be injured and subsequently fixed — minus bits of essence. Therefore, death is the […]
Evidence of Common Descent Two Prose Poems by Howie Good
Evidence of Common Descent Now that we have moved the clocks ahead, I keep glancing around for the inevitable beggar. Good thing you aren’t here. The clouds resemble moldy photographs of potbellied pink cherubs. I have never seen that before. God’s own son must be stuck at Customs in a railway station near the border. […]
Somewhere in Rooms with No Mirrors A Collection by Steve Passey
Somewhere in Rooms with No Mirrors I’ll tell you about responsibility vs. accountability: You know these boys, these girls – “Team Leaders”, Capos, Corporate motherfuckers coming to pass down the word from on high. Got that degree, got off the farm and here they are saying “We all have to tighten our belts” – Meaning […]
your love life as told by book review outlets Two Pieces by Michael Prihoda
your love life as told by book review outlets “…a tour de force; each page pushes the boundaries of what love can do.” – New York Times Review of Books “The most stunning thing to happen in love this year!” – Publishers Weekly “More like 50 shades of NO WAY!” – Village Voice “…bitingly visceral, […]
I’ll Trade You Maude for Lou by Jaclyn Adomeit
I trade funeral cards with people I meet in seedy Vietnamese restaurants. Today I exchanged ‘Maude Podiluk; 1961 to 2013; for none of us liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself, Romans 14:7’ for a ‘Lou Mbituyimana; 1946 to 2015; Fuku sui bon ni kaerazu.’ I have a whole slew from friends’ parents: […]
Talking to the Dead Two Haibun by Deborah P. Kolodji
Talking to the Dead In California, the night is swollen with lemon blossoms. Easily lulled by porch swing sways and creaks, my eyelids start to droop and I dream talk with an aunt in Minnesota. sudden leaf rustle my father calls about her funeral arrangements Drought Our address is odd, which means we can only […]
The Memory Machine (Public Beta Release) by Ian Gibbins
1. Initialisation Demanding neon attention, our apparatus fires up, beckons contact, seeks conversation. Freshly minted coins drop, trip subliminal gears, follow snakeskin boots, bind our wind-burnt ears. We absorb these restless pulses, lasers shimmering cool through grid-locked holograms, intertwined with spectral traces too well-known to be true. What can we do but precipitate a surreptitious […]
Bluebeard by Dion Farquhar
Raising his wine glass to toast his wife at dinner, one-percenter Bluebeard matter-of-factly observed, “Market’s a code for private, selling off what was once public.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the servant flinch. As he droned on about the centrality of levels of liquidity achieved by derivatives and the positioning of […]
Ghosts Don’t Answer the Phone by T.J. Peters
This inadvertent find, a unit of forgotten digital storage, carries a morbid curiosity that’s almost too hard to pass away. Grandparents are meant for dying, of course, but are they meant for dialing, as well? The contact reads “G&G P”, the surname abbreviated without punctuation. There is no call log, no photograph, no evidence that […]
Happy Birthday John by Veronica Lupinacci
Happy birthday, Silky J, Johnathan Tiberius Sardelis The Great, Thoroughgood Longstrider, Yonnie, you would be thirty two. I told them we would really notice you’re gone when we marry people you never met and we name our kids after you. When our tattoos are cracked peeling mud scrolls. You weren’t dead when you died. You […]
Yoko Ono Said Two Prose Poems by DeMisty D. Bellinger
Yoko Ono Said Yoko Ono said that I could not have really loved The Beatles and that I didn’t know John Lennon. “Did you cry when he died?” I explained to Ms. Ono that I was not alive when Lennon was shot. She said, “Oh.” The word made her lips, painted spilling-blood red, round out […]
Black and White By Mike Jacobson
Wear white. Were white. Black gloves hiding skin. Hidden mirrors occluding their splendor. Wear black. We’re black and came back. Millions of colors crowded in. Cancel! Clouds trailed wispy white while or all the while. Millions of black clouds coming around the mountain when she comes. Clouds backing into spaces. Periodically white clouds intervened. She […]
Shattered Shadows by Heath Brougher
The owl lets go of the bungee and serves the hippo on rollerskates a plate of mashed potatoes. They are a delicacy when the mutagenic ground will sprout nothing else in the aftermath. If there is an aftermath. The wind turns to steel. Smashed netherworlds gather round the ant hill recently ravaged by an airstrike. […]
One Pot After Another Two Prose Poems by Keith Nunes
One Pot After Another always the flower pots on the veranda, the whiter than white sheets and the order of business in the dining room, you poke around in the bedroom but after some years you don’t care who you’re pleasing because the face under you belongs to your dead sister, no-one explains that you’re […]
The Garbage Man by Glen Sorestad
Before I started school, my earliest memories are of the tenement house our family lived in on East Broadway in Vancouver. I remember a man who sometimes visited with my parents. Actually, I don’t really remember so very much about him — face or size or voice — but the surname was Orrie, something sounding […]
The Bus Ride Himalayan Mountains, Nepal
by Deborah Guzzi
The bus back to Kathmandu—draped from roof to bumper with riders—careens from rock walls to ledge, beeping. Stray dogs and wayward cyclist dodge its downward path into the valley’s maw. Its open windowed, metal sides, rumble-creak over the serpentine mountain track. Dust clouds scarf behind. Molting pine forests hold back crumbling ochre walls on the […]
The Sea by Charles Hayes
Arching its neck over the undulating highway to feed from the other side, an orange dinosaur fittingly forms a gateway for my passing, a secrete portal to new things in a world of vivid color. In awe of this unexpected find, I smile and look aside at the jungle flashing by. Along its face smiling […]
Friend by Lori Cramer
Carly was the kind of friend who’d compliment you on your hand-me-down sneakers, rave over the natural highlights in your dull brown hair, and cackle at your lame jokes as if you were the funniest comedian ever. But she was also the kind of friend you didn’t want to introduce to your boyfriend because you […]
True Account of a Pilgrimage to See the Bishop of Bridges by E.C. Messer
I arrive at the first river town of the North. I have come to witness the River-Crossing Festival, to attend the Blessing of the Bridges and receive, if I am able, that most important of boons for travelers and poets alike. When I arrive, I am too shy to ask if the Bishop is already […]
Over the Ridge in October by Amanda Phillips
There’s nothing but old clouds above the sycamores, struck flat by the October heat. We pause on the muddy ridge and look out over the river – it’s a creek, but we call it a river because we always feel so unimportant. There’s a chalk-colored bird. There’s the open field below the river filled with […]
Empty by Cindy Rinne
In darkness I walk past barricades and observe the eye of Shiva carved at the crest of a building. My destination. Lights glow through closed windows like beacons. Push open the heavy door. Muffled voices blend from a distant classroom. I am ten minutes early. The couple drives 500 miles from Bishop to purchase cheese […]
Sanctuary Wolf Hollow, Ipswich, MA
by Domenic Scopa
Bored with dehydrated beef the conservationist throws to him, the alpha-male Argus who lost his sole love when she snapped her leg, tangled in a thorny thicket, overtaken by the cool fever of septic shock, roams the fenced-in pasture and its amnesia. It seems that grief compels him to shuttle past the cave mouth, back […]
S.; or, a Retrospection by Travis Chi Wing Lau
“How wonderful it was this coming to know, certain of the knowing to come. Every word was weighted and every glance an inquiry. Each gesture gave just that little too much away.” i. We met when the prosecco still had its bite. Under the auspices of Santa Monica still wintering, still bathing in its cold […]
Disquiet by Sarah Bigham
A place of learning, a place of support, a place of challenge, a place of growth. So brave to be here, between jobs and babies, debts and memories of those who said they were not meant for academic glory. Will it be here? Will it be one of my own? Will we escape, running out […]
Snoring in Your Ear Two Prose Poems by Perry L. Powell
Snoring in Your Ear So you were keeping someone’s rabbit. And the dream is laid out like Ohio. With one what to do about it followed by another. All while the whole naked banana waits. Then there are the children. These children who when gone are always here. These children who when here are always […]
On Constructing the Ghost Two Prose Poems by Jessica Cogar
On Constructing the Ghost I am teaching the significance of a broken chandelier as it falls toward me. A token of glass catches itself on my sweater—my tour guide of what’s breakable, what can be viewed but never touched. The projection of this image stretches across the underside of my wrist and what is borrowed […]
Box by Melanie Dunbar
It was a box before it fell, and if not box, then balloon, full of heavy, and as it floated down it fell, and stories were, and not held back, but told and told and down, cat and girl it fell and green parrot or plant, and shine shine shine and brick, pigeons, or squab […]
You Are Here by Joseph Hesch
As he doodled on the blank page, filling it with circles and arrows and hoping that Freud was right and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Andrew prayed that the old lightning would strike and worried that another type already had. The pen dragged along, as if it didn’t want to do more than […]
Wit/Woes of The Jester A Collection by Hermine Robinson
Wit/Woes of The Jester I am not the only one who wears a face that is not my own. The ones who come to smile/jeer at me are compassionate/cruel in their own right. I see it in the laughing/crying crowds. I see it in the smiles/frowns of couples holding each other’s hand/heart too tight; caught […]
Three by Mark Magoon
I bite the distance between me & you. I try to the moon. You like it rough so Lay me I say. Fuck us both to the third person. Turn our names out & lay us both afterwards to dry. To cure. Afterwards we are other—we are good humans, skins, fine old leather. Worked. You […]