WINTER 2018
NON-FICTION
Your best days will be those you forget you’re in prison.
How can a man forget he’s in prison? you ask.
There will be times when life inside is only life.
Maybe you’re cleaning, reading compelling fiction,
singing a song in your head like a voice
that tells you to dance (don’t dance).
Maybe you’re watching a movie or your favorite team
in the Super Bowl. So many opportunities
for forgetting bars, stone floors,
thin mat hardened on a cold steel bunk.
Even suffering offers escape if brought in like contraband.
Death, divorce, lawsuits, squabbling.
Your son takes his new father’s name. See?
You allowed confinement to slip—how time passes easiest.
Walls blur like the crowd at a concert.
They mean nothing as their shrieks fade from your ears.
Advice to New Prisoners
Ace Boggess is author of four books of poetry, most recently I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018) and Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
Western February
I counted two-hundred and fifty-five stars in my front
yard, and number one-hundred and eighty-five listened as I whispered
my first real prayer. You
came home, as promised– with hands gripping the sun–
light trickling between the plastic blinds
and eyes darker than my own.
Despite the warnings and obvious dangers,
I would sneak into your powder and paper smelling
crib, curling myself tightly enough to make my knees
ache, I tried counting your eyelashes, concluding there were as many
as there are stars in the backyard: one-hundred and two.
That night it snowed for the first time in eight years, dad joked
you were our snow angel– our blue freckled sun.
Lisa Compo currently attends Salisbury University studying creative writing and working for the SU Writing Center as a consultant. When she isn’t writing, you can find her performing on a stage, or cuddling with her cat, Noel.
PARTY LINE
Who spoke,
who listened,
you could never be sure.
Often you heard
what you preferred not to;
neighbors’ complaints, gossip,
muffled voices of illicit love.
If you lost connection,
your static signaled.
After a blizzard,
if the line was silent for long
Claude or Jimmy Joe drove up your steep driveway
stenciling the new snow with tire chains.
Most days in that house,
the line quiet but not dead,
you waited to be heard
not just accounted for.
Leisha Douglas is a professional psychotherapist and part-time yoga teacher, who is blessed to help others in their deeply intimate, personal explorations. She has worked in a private psychotherapy practice for over twenty-five years. From 2001 to 2010, she co-directed the Katonah Poetry Series with former Poet Laureate Billy Collins; she currently serves as poetry consultant to the series committee. Her poems and stories have appeared in The Alembic, Big Muddy, Corium Magazine, The Cortland Review, Crack the Spine, decomP, Forge, and The Minetta Review as well as others.
Two Poems by Kristina Erny
The eyes on our palms look in and we know.
Squint bright, false noon, terrarium play while
above, the mourning dove’s nest placed just so,
hangs over yard where they are. Our child,
swings, leaps out like stippled grackle, gleams.
Vigorous mouths and electrons are owned
by hoots, shrieks. Anti-night, her full light seems.
We come from outer space to take them home:
flies in jars, study joy and temper, or
build them a new city made of hills, if
just to watch them roll, come up greenly, sore.
Bless, bless these little heaps – straw in hair, lip-
sticks made out of a strip of velcro, plastic hoarded,
stuffed into lining of blue shoe, flowers
rubbed lovingly on scarred lip. She glows, soars.
We hold her. Chubby palms stick to our
alien faces. Our memory locks
away still images which while they sleep
we open, pry apart. Each new day docked
and accounted, named as what we can reap.
Encased here she’s safe as a specimen:
wild, loved. We sing to them nightly, open sky-
light to a show of stars your earth’s forbidden.
Mothers and fathers erased through play, play.
She’s studied in our celestial bliss.
Kisses her heels on our bizarre city’s
motes. We include the nest so she’ll notice.
She’s kin to just about everything; she’s
crescendo ravishing, a song slung back-
ward. Here beyond our breach she exudes her
aural brightness, running from the swing’s slack.
We know, true, we will never bring her back.
The Aliens Consider the Bright She
Kristina Erny is a third-culture poet who grew up in South Korea. A graduate of the University of Arizona’s MFA program, she currently lives and works in Kentucky and has published work in Yemassee, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Los Angeles Review, among other places. Her work has been the recipient of the Ruskin Art Club Poetry Prize and the Tupelo Quarterly Inaugural Poetry award.
We don’t dream as she does. We’ve watched her start,
awake and breathless, stumble into next-
door rooms, place runty hands on her child, through dark
we could slice, we can see through. Tonight’s best
one was a quick dash across traffic, watching
her baby smashed by the oncoming heft
of a truck. This woman can’t tell a snatched
illusion from what’s real. She quietly
folds her body back into the bed, clutched
heartbeat even we can hear. So the night
brings her these terrible gifts: her boys falling from
an elevated dock, deep lake, the right
step, right off of the wrong balcony ledge;
a small nameless friend picking up a gun, points
it, playing, fires. See her pick her way to the boys
again, just to feel them warm and breathing.
See her adjust the blanket and turn on the night
light. See her tell her husband, his shush; he knows they
are not real. The man doesn’t have these kinds
of dalliance in false futures or deviant fake memories, at
least that we know. She’s easier to read. Her face like a window into the galaxy, she’s
precious with her needs. Precious her tiny human nose pressed
against her boy’s neck, palm down against
the bony ridges of his back, his thin sheet, her hopeful armor.
Maybe we should take her instead of them. Chart her
mindscape as a portrait of coming disaster.
As we study her we’ll grow to dream love
ripped tenderly from our own known tentacles. We’ll mother too. Wake
quaking from our own sick sleeps. Wisdom painful, gained through
probing encoded lobe, circles enclosed in a mother’s circles, her tortured dips, dreams.
The Aliens Watch a Mother Dream
Runt
Horses in the corral
like the crowd around a bassinet. Horses
jockeying for a whinny’s-width of room at the trough
like condolers circling a hearse—a dervish
of snot and leather. The old
and the lame always eat
shit and swishing tails. The breech foals are just bitter
memories in their mother’s bellies. The brood mares
are still famished for silk bows and curlicue brushes
and someone to fuss over their manes. They balk
at the sound of studs
lusting in their stalls. Out in the pasture,
in the day’s slough, a salt lick melts
into mineral on the hand-me-down saucer
of a little boy’s tongue.
Ian T. Hall was born and reared in Raven, Kentucky. He is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Tennessee, where he serves as the assistant poetry editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts. He has published poetry and fiction in Kentucky Monthly Magazine, The Louisville Review, Heartland Review, and Modern Mountain Magazine, among others.
Another Music
…………………………..– Viola Liuzzo, in memoriam
……..I
I still can see
the broken bird wing
car door
hanging open
the night
you were gunned down
on Highway 80
as we bussed back
to Selma
from Montgomery.
……..II
Let the music begin
its requiem
in the silence within,
the lost
light sound the earth,
the root
flourish, and faith
in what can be
walk the water once more
free of fear and terror.
Bruce Lawder has published three books of poems and a book of essays on poetry, Vers le vers, as well as numerous articles on painting. In addition to Friedrich Hölderlin, he has recently translated work by Johannes Bobrowski, Georg Trakl, Paul Celan, and André du Bouchet. He lives and works in Switzerland.
Winter Ecology
Outdoors, the
instructor scraped
snow, exposing
vole trails and one
small gray-brown vole,
a wee sleeket
cow’rin tim’rous
beastie like the
one Burns’s plow
unearthed. The
instructor had
barely given
it a name when,
swift as a guillotine,
a red-tailed hawk
swooped to snatch it,
roosting in a tree
to breakfast and
ignoring us
with Olympian
indifference.
We stood stock still,
shocked and thrilled
to see a bird
of prey up close,
vole guts dangling
like spaghetti
from its bill.
Kathleen Naureckas is a retired journalist whose poems have appeared in Bluestem, Light, Measure and Willow Review, among others. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, “For the Duration,” in 2012.
My human is different now
than she was when she got me. It happened sort of slowly like the way time passes from cold to cold,
but it also happened fast sometimes like the flick of a tennis ball out of a hand and across the yard
or like when we drive through the mountains and we go in one side and fly through the stillness
and the fake lights and come out on the other side where the smells are different.
Lots of times my human was alone.
Not really by herself, but on the inside
and it was just me and her on the kitchen floor or in the corner of the bathroom
when she was scared and her face got all wet and she whispered the word sorry to me which is the word
humans use when they wish to go backwards.
Sometimes it was crashing and sometimes the air smelled still
but really it was moving in ripples so fast I got dizzy and just stayed quiet and lay on my bed.
The other human we lived with never liked me. It got me treats to make my human happy, but really
it just wanted my human all to itself. The place we all lived together was right by a big park.
My human and I would walk at night and squeeze through a fence and sit on the cool hard ground
of the tennis courts and my human would look up at the sky. Sometimes she would kiss between my eyes
and tell me I was a good boy.
My human was always like hair raised on shoulder blades and smelled like the back of a knee or the taste
of a bitter grape from the plant in the alley. Sometimes glass would shatter and tiny pieces would get
stuck in my paws. Sometimes my human would scream and pound on the floor and pull on her face and
make red lines on her legs with sharp metal and I would lick the penny tasting blood.
We are safe now.
Now my human smells like campfire smoke stuck to clothes and the wooshing air that’s dissolving
and the inside of a new blade of grass.
Her other humans come over and they are loud and gasp for air in the good way called laughing
and I never feel afraid anymore.
I know
that she knows
that I was there for everything, that I felt the world moving even when the humans couldn’t feel it
and that in the morning when she rises
I’ll be at her feet
ready for my walk.
Katherine Page is a writer and elementary school teacher living in Leadville, Colorado. She has had her work published in Bluestem, Open Minds Quarterly, and Macalester College’s Chanter Magazine.
The water has made it up to the first floor windows
I’ve stopped watching / the water crowd surf the panes / break loose / spit through cracks
/ drench couch cushions and flannels and faces.
The TV is on / my eyelids glued to my eyebrow bone / On the screen / video of kids silent
by water / They have taken to floating stages / like life rafts / On the screen /
commentators shout over whitewater / they get louder / sell ad space / wait / On the
screen / everyone is waiting for the punchline / looking for the joke / they find / a headline
instead / On the screen / everyone is laughing / they say / a parade has been scheduled bring
your life vests.
Cross-legged / leaning against the couch / hiding from the spit / I sit / My feet asleep / I
don’t stand / I rock / ask for cups of water and meals served on coffee tables / My dog licks
my face / I don’t turn my head / I don’t turn / can’t turn / while the sloshing against the
windows becomes / not a background noise / but a / drowning.
If breathing under water was possible / I would already be doing it.
Mariah Perkins is currently an MFA candidate at Wichita State University as well as the co-editor-in-chief of mojo/Mikrokosmos. Her work can be found in Lunch Ticket, Fugue, Crack the Spine, and heard on WYCE’s Electric Poetry. This sample of work aims to discuss personal and collective anxieties.
Two Songbirds
This cigarette
is a sweet blaspheme whose retribution might be death.
I hear her singing with neon luminescence
in the apartment across the way,
unwinding rhapsody, reverberating hellfire,
the last gasp of nocturnal mania
before the sunrise.
A line,
“Oh, I slipped on the dock
and busted my head.
I woke up with Johnny
between my legs,”
fills me with corruptive laughter.
A vulgar muse hangs
between my thighs
so, as the milky sunlight creeps up the sky,
I sing to my neighbor
this reply:
“Johnny’s got nothing
on this guy here.
By the time I’m done with you,
you’ll be in tears.”
Magmatic blush and silly-dumb smile
as we lock eyes from our windows,
both of us nubile and half-naked
in the virgin-dawn light.
Two blue birds in a cherry tree,
preening and singing,
carry their carnal knowledge
with grace.
This spring morning,
I feel my heart lifting
like the sun that never grows weary
of stretching its long-limbed rays
across the amazed gasp
of space.
The beginning of Daniel Senser’s poetic career coincided with his initial descent into madness. He made a vow that he would write so that someone in need would find his poems and feel liberated by them, as so many poets did for him. The real challenge, however, was in liberating himself. Much has been accomplished in that regard, and he believes it shows in his poetry.
Two Poems by William Snyder
……………………………………..Baseball World Series, 2013
……………………………………..Eighth Inning, game two
We see Martinez pounding his mitt with a fist, his face
pumped and angry, the tight, corded muscle and skin
adamant—he’s popped up Napoli, ending the Boston eighth.
We follow Napoli’s dugout jog, then Martinez’ tight gait,
his walk off the mound. He does not smirk, or grin—
he pounds his mitt, a ballgame metonym of hate.
Martinez, twenty-two, a rookie, the Cardinal’s ace,
struck out Victorino, then Pedroia—his fastball spins—
and he’s popped up Napoli. Boston deflates
in its dugout, glumly prays for hits, runners on base
in the ninth. But the Cardinals grin, as one, having pinned
their inning on Martinez—in his pounded mitt, their faith
rewarded. But what does it mean, this pounding, this great
flare of aggression Martinez displays? Examine its origin:
Tsunami-tattooed, he’s popped out Napoli; but is it fate,
or are his fists and hardassed struts and pumps straight
forward genes? Regardless—we love the passion:
his mitt-pounding shouts, his fist and face delineating
our desire to pop our bosses, our leaders, our gods, our fate.
HOW WE WISH TO USE OUR FISTS: A Villanelle
………………………………………….Melbourne, Florida, 1965
You were driving home to your place above Dubs,
the store where you teach Mel Bay. You are
twenty. You are crocked—Bush Bavarian, rum
and Coke. Now your VW stopped in the weeds
by a ditch, engine off and ticking, the deputy’s Ford
idling behind like a fever, blue lights looping
the roadside, palms and moths and mosquitoes
flitting headlights, door lights, moon.
His green cuffed shirt, his leather belt, his gray-green
hat, and, Son, he says, does your father know
where you are tonight? Heat, humidity glazing stars
and sky like quartz, here, at one in the morning,
and, No, you say, and he asks where you’ve been.
A party, you say, West Melbourne. Frogs grinding.
Scent of orchard flowers. Wellsir, the deputy says,
I’m gonna let you go this time. Better not let me
catch you out here again like this. No sir, you say.
A flash to the north, a storm far away, and that flash
a gift of light, like the gift you’ve just been given.
And the palm-shapes across the road, long fronds
swaying—like grace, like shadowed tapers
fanning absolution. The deputy drives past, his eyes
opened east—to town, to his nightshift ending
and bright in the morning. You pull on to the excellent,
open road, twist the vent, and the night air
enters, cooling, fanning, fanning you free,
and you accelerate—carefully—and shift, adhering
carefully to the gray-white hyphening slowly lines.
DEPUTY
William Snyder has published poems in Poet Lore, Folio, Cottonwood, and Southern Humanities Review, among others. He was the co-winner of the 2001 Grolier Poetry Prize, and winner of the 2002 Kinloch Rivers Chapbook competition; the CONSEQUENCE Prize in Poetry, 2013; and the 2015 Claire Keyes Poetry Prize. He teaches writing and literature at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN.
SOMETHING ELSE YOU SAID
It was sometime in March.
We threw small stones
as far as we could throw.
And there seemed to be
no other people anywhere
as far as we could see,
which was a long way
on this morning in March.
We sat on the cement seawall
that stood against the sea,
against the storms, against
the returning of the waves.
It stood and withstood
and still remained strong.
That cement is made of sand
could be called a mystery.
We had been discussing
or almost discussing
the approaching tide,
the highest tide on record
which, like your bride-to-be,
had come in this morning
unexpectedly
and was at its peak as well.
We both knew,
without the slightest hesitation,
that with a tide like this
you either, like the seawall,
stand steady and get wet
or just turn around and run.
Then you said,
“Well, it would be different if I were famous, like Hemingway.
I could do things like, leave her for you, and people would understand.
They would say, oh, that’s okay, he’s Hemingway.”
And that was that.
Just as your sentence became my memory
of an unseasonably sunny morning in March
the seawall collapsed,
as if it had no idea it was made of cement,
and shattered the sound of the high spring tide.
Elizabeth Underwood has been an advertising copywriter and copy editor since 1992. She is currently employed as a copy editor in San Francisco. Other vocational experience includes many years of both professional and volunteer work as on-air talent for six radio stations. Her current radio involvement is with KWMR as the host and programmer of “To Hell and Bach,” in which she integrates most genres of music and spoken word. Occasionally, when lucky, she works as a voice-over talent and vocalist. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cape Rock, Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Midwest Quarterly, Paragon Journal, Slab, and WomenArts Quarterly. She has attended numerous writing conferences and workshops, including several workshops at the Tor House Foundation (1990-1998) and Point Reyes Writing Retreat (2010-2018).
Georges Duhamel's Patient
He had written of the rains, the creeping fog, a faint sun over scarred earth, frozen fields strewn
with rusting heaps crisscrossed by endless strips of tar.
Now he listens, day after day, to a bald head in a bare room that doesn’t change.
Between these walls, this congregation of the maimed.
They will not let him out or let him explore other wards.
Caught between the two states, he would almost rather die than stay another moment in the elongated somewhere.
Drab walls, stale air, bloated hours. Flies on standard-issue curtains.
Michael Washburn is a Brooklyn-based writer and journalist and the author of the short story collections Scenes from the Catastrophe (2016) and The Uprooted and Other Stories (2018).
Racing the Train
Along the river heaving its last ice
against the bony ridges bent
as if to drink from the molten cold,
drive and glance across the churn
the black glide of a coal train
snaking the mountainside still white
on its northern slope, each slender tree
a stroke of wood and stroke of shadow,
and speed together to become air
and lift from the gray road, out
of the valley, from the dammed
flow and the perilous curve
into a lightness quicker than fire
and a rising in the gut caught between
a laugh and a howl, as if with the train
on this road out of the mountains,
a soul could outrun the earth,
forget the old bridges and sunless hollows,
the houses rattled when each run
shakes the few cups in their rooms,
and the red lights glimmer at the crossings,
the trail behind the train and road
a map erasing itself, as if the earth
can open and take whatever stops.
Gabriel Welsch writes fiction and poetry, and is the author of four collections of poems, the most recent of which is The Four Horsepersons of a Disappointing Apocalypse (Steel Toe Books, 2013). His work appears recently in Moon City Review, Adroit Journal, Gulf Coast, Crab Orchard Review, Chautauqua, Pembroke Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and Mid-American Review. He lives in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, with his family, works as Vice President of Strategic Communications and Marketing at Juniata College, and is an occasional teacher at the Chautauqua Writer’s Center.