an online journal of voice

Fall 2017

s
BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York
BlazeVOX 17 | an online journal of voice
Copyright 2017

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

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 Fall 2017
Table of Contents
Poetry

Alan Isaacs Jennifer K Dick & Travis Cebula

Alicia Cadena John Meyers
Ana Shaw Justin Rogers
Anna Kapungu Katie Howes
B.J. Best Linda Worden
Bert Barry Marc Carver
Brianna M. Fenty Mark DuCharme
Brittany Stenfors Mark Young
Bushra Khan matthew harris
Clarice Sometimes Maya D. Mason & Thomas Fink
Courtney Prather P. K. Pierson
Daevid Glass R. S. Stewart
Dani Blackpool Rich Murphy
David Rushmer Robert Gibbons
David Wyman Samantha Lacey
Emmitt Conklin Sandy Coomer
Erik Fuhrer Sarah Valeika
Irene Koronas Seth Howard
J. Mulcahy-King Shadiyat Ajao
Jade Homa na Nolan
Kevin Ryan Zoe Guttenplan
 Fiction

Burger Bar Clive Gresswell

From the Other Side Marianela Valverde Varela; translated by Erin Riddle
The Uncertain Light Kelle Grace Gaddis
Pauls Prospect Scott Reimann
Ugly Words Melissa Reynolds
Other Peoples Houses Joseph E. Lerner
Cliff Dwellers Janet Mason
Pikachus Patchouli Shelli Margolin-Mayer
A Rebecca Rodriguez
Creature in the Sky John Paul King
High Speed Junk Christopher S. Bell
The Art of Falling Dian Parker

Text Art & Vispo

R. Keith Visual poetry

Zinnia Plentitude Bracing for Impact
Sacha Archer Speech Bubble Collages
hiromi suzuki purification

Acta Biographia Author Biographies

 Fall 2017
IntroductionIntroduction
Hello and welcome to the Fall issue of BlazeVOX
17. 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 developed 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

Fall 2017

s
 Fall 2017
Zoe Guttenplan

I forget to ignore the little dark insidious ones, the ones who crawl
between your eyelashes and sink into cracks and crevices and creaks
between your toes; the ones you can never quite shake loose from your
towel on the beach, who turn into ink splotches just too late as you
sweep the page; the ones who weasel and worm and worry their way
through your hairs on your arms, legs, even where you dare not look to
see for fear there are too many to count.
Dragging one fingerprint across my collarbone and from the roots of the
mountains; coursing through shepherd trodden paths worn thin by
goats, their bells tolling a steady bass to the wind whistling in fig trees;
seeping into and across the sharp lines man once cut into the hillside;
jumping over dry stone walls and bursting through every crack; rushing
between mountain gorse bushes and even finer, through every spike,
brushing past each thistle point.
I am the jockey of the waves crashing the shore, bursting into splatters
and softly stroking the next one along, picking up shells and sea glass
and salted sand, teasing the toes of barefoot bathers who scream when
they hear me roar and laugh to see me swept up again, back arched and
breath held with afternoon sun scattered across my surface pausing still
for split seconds that seem to stretch slightly while I suck you up.
Icarus

The boy began to delight in his daring flight, and abandoning his guide,
drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. Icarus, called the
father, even as his proud son flew above all birds. And fearing his
student might gain more glory than he, Daedalus made great his wings
and, as children plucking the highest apple from the bough, snatched
his son. Claiming that he had fallen, he laid the body to rest, in a tomb,
and the island was named Icaria after his buried child.
well, here I am silent on
the sound again
licking the salt
from your eyelashes

so we emerge
blinking into the sunlight
catching the last of it
on my tongue

savoring the taste!

you put it in your pocket
save it for later
What is blood but water but red
In the morning sun and brick
And mortar shadows when
You have finished your tea.

Tell me, mother, what is blood

Staining fingers like blackberry juice
Sweet to the touch if you ask politely
But dont look sideways at that one, honey.

And what is blood when it rains

Underneath my umbrella
On the sidewalk and inside taxi cabs
So there are rivers in the streets.
Not always did her hands
half-heartedly calloused
Smoothing breast milk on
your brow
hold each other
molding putty into nervous cubes
drum beats written
scratched out
revised
repeated ad ad ad
nauseam until
not always

Flying west again, and ice cracks

drifting under, she straddles
broken china. One heaped tablespoon
of willow pattern or the other kind
and mix until smooth.
Two feet firmly dug into a
ceramic herb garden
plumbed to the nines
She layers filo over butter
To bake the pie her sons wont eat.
Peel back tin foil and lean forward over
the tray table.
Harpoon a meatball and sigh.
It is still lukewarm.

Fingers pressing into fingers

Her heartbeat lingers
Farewell again, once more a stranger
Pushing daughter into danger.

No tears.
But as we hug she
squeezes fears out the corners of her eyes.
There is no five-fingered discount on time.
She holds the train door anyway
Until the tunnel eats her whole
hurtling backwards and
knocked off balance by the lingering
taste of burnt filo, and salt.
September brings branches of apple trees, bare.!
Kitchen countertops are piled high with
fruits of the labor of sunburnt sicklemen
and girls in hand-me-down denim dungarees. Bleeding, freshly
sliced straight down the middle, spilling

seeds from each wounded core.!

Cut with a knife too blunt to keep the hearts from rotting more.

Boots waxed but unlaced leaned against doorframes,

Still sand-saturated all the same.
This gold is stolen
well take it anyway convention be damned.

The tide rises with fishing boats dressed in

torn shot silk as it drowns the rope hanging
by the side of the path.
Too windy to strike a match
to feel us wishing within our boundaries.
 Fall 2017
Zinnia Plentitude

Bracing for impact

News Scrall

Trump
Sucks,
Again
It is counterproductive to infalte poetic hysteria

counterproductive
koun(t)rprdktiv/
 Fall 2017
na Nolan

Her

The first time we met you were quiet

You stood back from the crowd, a small smile on your lips that withheld your words
But I could see a world in your eyes
(Suppressing, Oppressing, entirely impressing)
A universe of stars around your irises
Sheltered by the pink ornamentation on your eyelids

The next time I saw you

You were with her
We had talked since, our phones creating a slipway, pathway, (hideaway?)
Between our minds
A shortcut between our secrets
She held your sleeve, but not your hand
And my fingers ached to intertwine with yours
Like roses in a garden

And then you were drunk, wasted, gone

But you tasted like sunshine
And it filled me to the brim with yellow smiles
My fingers tangling in your hair
My knees forgetting gravity
There have been meetings since
Mistakes in a coffee shop
(Mistakes- your word, not mine)
And when I saw you after
Your lips smothered, covered, being discovered by others
Who werent mine
You seemed less somehow
Smaller, no taller, as if in withdrawal

The nerves on my skin were still electric

The negativity of my atoms aching for your protons to flow across them
But the socket in my chest was dying
The plug pulled, the roses withering
For you are hers
And although I am just a flower
And you are a garden

I will not feel these weeds

The Woman

I wish to tell you of a woman

Surrounded in a haze
Who wandered into the supermarket at midday
With her pyjamas hanging loosely around her
A dull grey that reflected her hair
The skin swollen round her eyes, holding the colour
Of an angry sunset-
But the look of a deep ocean
Filled with things that no one quite knows about
Secrets that are wild as the current, aching to spill
Forward and yet pulling back each time they
Slipped towards the bay
And I wondered at her hands as they grasped
Tins of beans from the shelf, to her arms
No basket for her trembling fingers
Just an invisible wind that kept them shivering
Like autumn leaves hanging from bare branches
I thought that maybe someone would pray for her
And her cracked lips that mouth words behind understanding
As she shuffles between the shelves
Alone
Yellow

Yellow has always been my favourite colour

Yellow is the colour of the sunshine
That illuminates the shape of your skin
In the mornings
Reflecting each freckle, each line, each hair back to me
And showing me the shades of green in your eyes
That sparkles in the rays of light
Each time you move your head
And catches my hand as it reaches for yours
Dancing on my fingertips as they run through
Your silky hair that always
Reminds me of a dying flame

It was the colour of my Grannys kitchen

Where I used to sit at her dining table and swing my legs
That did not quite reach the ground
She would make me pancakes
And the smell would fill the air
And she would hum softly as I
Provided a stream of thought to be spoken aloud
And when the stack was placed in front of me
Covered in yellow butter, and yellow lemon
I would smile a gap-toothed smile
And feel the yellow in my soul
 Fall 2017
Shelli Margolin-Mayer

Pikachus Patchouli

-HER-

Danny, I get it. You need me to change? I can do that. I was actually just thinking that my blue
highlights were kinda boring. Plus, theyre fading. Temporary anyway.
Danny just glared at me. His eyes then went soft and he looked down, shuffling his feet.
I pushed away any silly tears and said, Really! I can change. Im all about change.
Reaching for the chain-link gate, I said, Lets go up and have sex. Ill let you do that thing!
Then I paused for dramatic effect but mostly because Danny never actually asked for anything
interesting during sex. He was sweet that way, wasnt much of a conversationalist. He probably just liked
hearing me talk. I had that effect on men.
But Danny just shuffled his feet more vigorously. So, I seductively toyed with the gate that led to his
second-floor walkup, waving it to and fro.
I could have sworn he was going to propose; before. Why else would he have taken me to meet his
mother?
I wasnt going to let Danny leave me so soon. Hes polite and kind, if not a little reserved for my tastes.
But I thought I could get used to him. I had a sense for these things. After all, these had been the most
intense three days of my life.
 -HIM-

I shuffled my feet outside my apartment. At first, out of frustration then out of pity for myself, my
mother, and the one-night-stand that would not leave.
I told her my name was Dan or Daniel, but never Danny. No one called me Danny, damn it.
It had been three days of being polite. Three days of disjointed dialogue with this gal who called
herself Pikachu. And, yes, three days of sex.
Josh from the office had offered me Ecstasy on Friday. I had been scared to try it in college, but Im a
newly divorced thirty-four-year-old now.
Josh and I had gone over to the bar for another drink after a tragic Mexican chain-restaurant dinner. I
popped the X with a Cadillac margarita. The next thing I knew, or at least cared to remember, this woman
with blue streaks in her hair was going to town on me in my bed.
She looked older than me at first. But after the Ecstasy wore off, I probably had ten years on her.
I took her to breakfast because thats what one should do. And, it was a way to finally get her out of
my apartment. When I got back from the gym, she was sitting in front of the gate to my building. She said
she left her toe ring on my toilet.
I suspected that it was bullshit and that she was batshit. But I let her in, stating that I needed to leave
again; go see my mother. How she talked her way into my car?
I didnt know what else to do so I drove to my moms house. Mom was so helpful with my divorce.
Maybe because the divorce was my moms idea? I guess I was hoping Mom could get me out of this mess too.
On the short drive Pikachu, she wouldnt tell me her real name, Pikachu talked non-stop about what
a good lover I was and how our auras aligned with her last angel reading. Then there was that god-awful
patchouli that she repeatedly sprayed on herself while we drove.
I asked her if she would be so kind to stay in the car. Id only be a moment then Id drive her home.
She said she wasnt that nervous and was on the porch hugging my bewildered mother before I entered the
front yard.
Thats when it happened. Mom sneezed.
 Pikachu said, Its my perfume! I knew it was too strong when I made it and, well, when Im nervous.
Plus, Im ovulating. The combination is overpowering. Bathroom through the green door?
The next sound we heard was the shower. I had barely finished subtly explaining the situation to my
Islamic mother when Pikachu burst into the living room wearing my moms wedding dress. Her once blue
streaks now dripping off her wet head onto the gown.
You had quite a rack back in the day, huh? Pikachu said. Dont worry I can fix this. With two
hands Pikachu deftly ripped away the conservative lace above the bodice. Blue dye ran from her exposed
neck and shoulders into hollow cleavage. See, its much more modern this way. Now we dont have to pay
for a tailor. Ill just stuff my bra.
My mom began to wail and was pointing her evil eye charm at Pikachu. I was already bouncing my
head against the steering wheel by the time Pikachu ran naked from the house, waving her clothes in the air.
We drove in silence. I was numb. Thats the only reason I can think of as to why I drove back to my
apartment building. But there was no way I was going to let her back in.
I shuffled my feet. These had been the most intense three days of my life. Although, Pikachu did say
she let me do that thing.
 Fall 2017
Shadiyat Ajao

Soil, Silt, and Georgia Red Clay

Till me.
Aerate my curiosity,
rehydrate my resolve,
make space for my roots, shy
as they are. Put
some back into it and
mix me up like you mean it.

Be nice to me.
Reticent to retain
water, are you worth your weight in
perlite? Bouyant and foolish
when Im saturated; were both kissing
at the lip of this ceramic pot with
no desire to leave -- just enjoying the view from up here.
Drop me.

Crack the pot please.

I have no business here. Dont
listen to me sometimes.
Just make space for me in our garden.
Just make space for me to grow.
Just make space for me.

Til me
You wont know sunshine the way I do.
You wont taste the earth the way I do.
Youll think you know what it is to breathe life into something.

Till me.
cider

Hard Cider dry,

the sweet cousin
of Applejack and his
whiskey bite. Rabid
and foaming at the mouth of your glass,
I tickle your nose.

Lord knows
Im made of the same stuff.

We were
skin, apple pulp,
and seed - waxy slick
pressed crushed
 Fall 2017
Seth Howard

LATE SUMMER IN ASAKUSA

Drifting along the purple line of silk that floats into the
tunnel. I sit quietly in the seat across
from two Japanese women,
one in her forties, the other somewhat older.
& I sink down as I listen to their quiet
speech, as a poem overhead,
or a far-off radio, in which the words
are not entirely mine, or theirs, but subject to that primordial in-between.
A permeable membrane, where God resides,
& double-speech is
not simply an element of fiction
The younger woman wears a sick-mask, she gently pulls at
on occasion, & I feel, for a moment
at home. The rhythmic-pulsing of the
train as it slips through the green darkness.
& a feeling of rest, of release, that
I now had nothing to fear I recalled nights along Sumida river, fireworks with Toma-san.
Cans of Asahi beer, or a glass from the local brewery
The austere look of a lovely girl in
the crowd, & this sensation of being in love.
There was a shell of darkness from
which we made a breakthrough, the long hours
in stillness along the pulsing river lights
Yes, it was said we had lived multiple lives, but where
were they to be found? In silent memories,
in the stirrings of a word that took
one back to a place
somehow still alive, a distant-flame that lifts
in the last hours & I wondered if she
had remembered me, this new figure I had become, who somehow
encompassed those histories. A hope still
alive in the purple-filament, those orange-gates
that stood drawing me in.
How was it I was now
someone entirely different?
& yet, there was a ghost
of my former self, that breathed
in greenish-shadows, those
unsuspected moments that
arose, when a memory refused to die
SOLITUDE AT TENJIN MATSURI

Paper lanterns line the darkened-pathways,

& you are held a moment in stasis.
It was late-summer, an event in which
you think of death.
A dream came to you
then, like the weightless wisp of a drake-fly at nightfall.
& you stood waiting for her
who seemed always to be near you.
You think of death
when boats float by with paper
torches, & young girls in yukata walk the
lanes with serious faces. A pale mask drops to the ground like a stone.
You light a cigarette, & the distant trees
move in darkness. The warm wind of late summer lifts,
& you return
to that place where you felt safe.
How will it end? Or perhaps it already had.
You hear a broken music
somewhere distant, & the Schizophrenic-movements
of your limbs seem almost
a dance, in this night-festival.
Had the gods known
something you had not, had they some
sense of how it all would
end? You think of death, & the dying-embers of her last words spoken to you.
You think of the crows perched
along the electric-lines.
Yes, you had arrived
late, & they had denied you
entrance. You who
embody a trinity, who encompass
a multitude in your solace.
& still they do not believe you.
A luminous-moth floats
in the air before you, & this
broken music returns, to guide you beyond what
is known.
Your mind slightly out
of balance, your days
roll on without consequence.
WAITING FOR HER ANSWER

Night fires aside the mountains heart,

moments alone, or with a few
distant voices. I recalled what the world seemed to have forgotten.
I kept with me a few things of probably no importance.
There were days scattered with ash,
there were nights
on the lakeside in which
fish slipped past. I drank from the clear waters
of a well that no longer exists.
I walked the path
of crimson sorrow.
There were days that arose in the glimmer of a coin,
a castle from which the elms settle back.
I hunched down in search of something.
I rose from the red river that caressed the mist.
& there, a solitary soldier.
There moved in the motions
a question I
wished to answer.
O what was it the world had forgotten?
Liquid mystery, I must
ask of you once more. Luminous wheel that transcribes the residue
of sounds. I look, & a grey chrysalis floats before me.
I search, & the sun is a forgotten rose.
They had told us we had been
wrong all the while, they had spoke
of some loss we had never witnessed. A remnant
opened like a nocturnal flower.
& I returned to the locus that had no
name.
I opened the glass doors that
bore another chance.
There was no one listening when I woke on the other shore,
& the darkened tracks were silent when
she asked me who I was.
Greenish phantom I arose from in a daydream,
double figure that followed
me at dusk.
In what haze comes this question, what
night a flame that lifts at distant
shores? I long to see her, if but
one more trial will provide us with some hope.
WHEN TIME HAD RETURNED TO US

Held in the stasis of this pulse of the afternoon.

It seemed at last we were to burst
forth from the bindings that had kept us in stagnation
Perhaps there are some things we must
realize on our own,
& having found a key, our
invocations become visible, to leave the
temple with its
orange leaves, the bluish light that swims across the steps.
& so, we seek a connection with the past,
those steam-room-chambers where we had dozed,
& a woman snatched crisp
bills from
your hand. You viewed
the screen as if half-drugged, those cycles
that return us to who we are
Where is there a gate for us to enter?
& like a seagulls slow arc across the waves, we come to this place in our histories.
Dream-fragment, a broken night, when
you had stumbled into the bathroom stall
Somehow, it seemed, you would find your way home.
The city lights that swim
in the motions that
move us through time, & the magnetism that held us together
So, we begin once more where we left off,
& find that some things had been
out of place. You search for a foothold, a folded piece
of paper you had kept, as you entered the bluish-lights of a bar & grill
Faint music,
a pulse of someones latent
memory, as if they had
forgotten they had known you all the while.
White-wisp that drifts in the silence
surrounding, there is a faint, far off memory that calls.
A beacon that sings through the air like
a hawk, & turns
upon a moments thought
that we may have some intimation of who
we are, as we observe a scroll unfolding in the shadows
THE ONE PLACE I FELT WELCOME

Lined across the bar, shot glasses captured blue lights

that shone from somewhere behind There
was a flash of orange ember, as someone lit a cigarette, their
face a brief illumination of pale flame. & so, the cool
release of a days work done,
they had followed you only so far, before theyd given
up the insidious game, to leave
you for a moment in your chair, a fixed
presence, until the music began to pulse, & the faint fire seemed to awaken
on her lips
It was the cool blue behind the
bottles of vodka, & a smooth line into the night
They had spoken amongst themselves,
& you somehow had joined in, though not
entirely trusted. They had known you only through rumor,
or the words you had etched on the glass ceiling
beneath smoke trails that drifted
in the cool burn of vodka that slipped
down her pinkish throat
There was something perhaps frightening about one who had begun to speak, after years
of remaining silent, in the shadows pale reluctance.
& so, at last you had found yourself, & still
they had not known you Was it then too late to emerge in the
grey silences, the faint rouge of her lips, & the brightness
of her open eyes.
I gazed upon her naked face,
& she had seen me in my liquid movements,
to place myself amidst the rhythms
of translucent intimation & the pale blue lights reflected off the bar.
That night in open acceptance of all that
had come our way. On the back of her shorts, the letters
written: C.R.E.A.M. as she had walked past,
her slightly wavy blonde hair, cut so
that it hung almost to her shoulders In these
beginnings of possibility, I was some solitary figure amidst this collective consciousness,
with my blue cap, on which was sown the letter H & I felt the
air hum
with an elliptic rhythm,
that grew distant
as I realized this lifestyle couldnt last
A LIFE YOU HAD CREATED FOR YOURSELF

Within the confines of the afternoon, I found a place to exist.

A sharp pain in my side as I locate my breath,
time, vacant, stretched out before me as a gateway that would lead me
beyond the days recurrence, past
gydon & donburi shops, in the cool
darkened-air of mid-summer,
where young girls stretched gracefully in the sun,
& smiled at me like they knew who I was
We had met in the cafs, reading novels together, analyzing the lines, & trying not to flirt.
We would meet at the Starbucks not far from the station,
where I had written fictions.
My life tortured, but immersed in
symbol
The slightly-dangerous-feeling of perhaps having gone too far your own
way, & yet a sense of release at the freedoms
I had experienced, creating a world for myself in which
to thrive, working to master the
foundations of Japanese & yet now that
I had been away from the country for
so long, after listening to Japanese-Web-Radio for eight years, I came upon
a new fluency. So began my studies of French
A new clarity of thought, & a mind free
of much of those discrepancies
which had deterred me in the past.
Perhaps we were not destined to live long, but I had seen
many drop off along the wayside
& still that barrier between
me, & the rest of the world, who
was so eager to choose the other way, set on confinement rather than freedoms
Was it because I
had known who I was?
& so, I scrounged around the basement of Ikebukuros
Junkudo, for what manga may be of interest,
along with the eighth floor, where Id found volumes of Franz Kafka,
Jorge Luis Borges, & Marcel Proust
Such was the love-nest I had found for myself,
in the days gradually becoming
darker.
Had they not yet
known who I was? I who was so
controversial, who had barely
done anything wrong, & yet remained a rebel inside
PROGRESS OR DECLINE

Rain in the city, grey of the windblown-buildings & a figure

down below, I watch as he moves in silence. Perhaps
he had seen me above, huddled
under the overhang, as I search for
a moment to light my cigarette
These late-afternoons, & yet this one
somehow different. I had sensed some quiet
beginnings in the texture
of the air, & still a subtle-nag
that I must press on, in my late-pursuits
I had searched for a way to speak
with her, amid the walls that rose from a place of stasis. & somewhere
behind us, as if in the night,
a giant machine rolls by, moving slowly through
the back-streets
toward some unknown-destination
We were putting in the work
they said, though the city was
gradually being overrun.
& so, we fought our quiet-battles, slipped back into
the intimacy of our solitudes.
There was an almost-imperceptible-hiss
emanating from somewhere
beyond the door, that only now had tapered off
& so, we laid new plans, for this future
that had not always entirely supported us.
Had not always felt safe,
in the darkness of the late-afternoon, the hum of a fan, & the fragments
of speech that pool in the anticipation of progress
that arises, in a moment
of minutest change. A door closes in the
far-back-hall, someones faint footsteps echo
behind a fuzzy-logic.
& we who work with primordial language, now recognize
the imprint of our lives, that breathe
in the stop & go of our fixed-routines,
those rituals to which we make
the slightest-adjustments Let us enter this gate
that guides us in the lateness of our days,
& not forget the reason we came to these countries
 Fall 2017
Scott Reimann

Pauls Prospect

It is difficult to tell the difference between a dying house and a dead house. Some peoplelike Pauls
parentsargue that once a house is abandoned and in a state of disrepair the house is dying and soon to be
dead. Other peoplesuch as Paul and the opportunists of the cityargue that a house isnt dead until it has
been demolished and hauled to a landfill.
Gentrification had been running chameleon-like in many cities for a number of years and now it was
sweeping Buffalos West Side. For the first time in decades buyers were paying over asking price. Money
was pouring in from down state and out of state. Day and night you could hear hammering, sawing, and
drilling. Less heard were the gun shots and screams that filled the neighborhood a year or so ago. These
were still heard among the din of power tools, but they were seenby someas noises of animals as they
retreat from a habitat that is being more and more rapidly encroached upon. The last cries are the clarion
laments to the habits and ways of life that endured. They are cries against large, encroaching forces.
Online Paul saw the listing for the house at 56 Prospect Avenue and he quickly took a Google Maps
tour of the neighborhood. On the listing site there were no other pictures of the house besides a facing
picture. From the Google tour he could see that the picture provided with the listing was quite dated. Still
Paul saw the potential to make money. Pauls parents saw trouble. Thats a bad neighborhood. You dont
know what goes on over there. Those people are animals. Theyre savages. While many of his friends
had set out on their own, buying houses, charging rent, making money, Paul was still living in his parents
basement. Not looking at his childhood wallpaper was an upgrade, he thought. He looked around at the
furniture, the walls, the windows, the lamps and light switches. None of it was his. He wanted a place to call
his own and he wanted to make money.
With a medical campus within walking and biking distance and bus lines running crosswise not far
from the house, Paul saw the future monthly percent increases of his bank account.
He could do this. He knew he could do this. He had never done this before. He had no experience
remodeling a house or measuring and cutting molding and trimwork, still he believed he could do what
others were doing. He could do it better and he could make some serious money for himself. He knew he
had to first put up some money. Like a downy, old dollar bill crisscrossed with creases, the old clich sat
crumpled waiting for Paul to snatch it.
Paul looked around him and surveyed the landscape. He saw competitors buying up houses all over
the West Side. Good opportunitieslike 56 Prospectwere running out. He had come late to the game and
he knew he needed to quickly make a buy or he would be shut out altogether.
He was told to bid over, so he bid over. Then, he waited. In his parents home he waited and paced.
Jesus, Paul, why dont you sit down and relax a bit.
Paul didnt seem to hear his mother as he stared intently at his phones screen, his fingers pecking at
it.
Paul, why dont I get you something to eat.
Do whatever you want.
Paul was toggling between a dating site and the houses listing site. He frantically refreshed both
pages. The same women as last week appeared on his screen. He considered taking a jump at one of them.
He told himself shed be there next week and he couldnt deal with her and this house thing all at once. A
call from Jocelyn interrupted him.
Paul, a new buyer has emerged and has bid more.
How much more?
Five more.
He went five over me? Are you serious? I went three over ask.
I know. I know. It seems crazy. Im not sure I believe it either. I know the sellers agent and he is a
slippery guy. He might have brought in this bid.
 What do you mean brought in this bid?
In order to earn more money for his client, the seller, will ask a friend of his to make a competing
offer on the property. Hes been in the game a while. He knows the markets hot right now. Its a sellers
market; people are desperate to buy. Anyways, this is pure conjecture. I dont have any hard proof of any
connection between the sellers agent and this new bidder. I have no information about this party.
God. That asshole.
Listen, Paul. You cant get caught up in all of that. You have to focus on you. Now, when we first
spoke you told me that you really wanted this house. Is that still the case?
Yes, of course.
Ok. Good. You should go for it. You have the guts to get this house. And believe me it is going to
take guts. I cant believe this guy brought in his friends, but Ill tell you its not altogether unexpected. I
think you . . . Paul thought it unexpected that this unannounced buyer appeared out of thin air and posed a
real threat to take the house that Paul thought was his, and not only that, but take all the future monthly
rental income out of Pauls bank account. This guy was trying to take away his money. He was trying to
steal outright. And not an insignificant sum either. Paul couldnt quantify it, but he did know that this theft
was in perpetuity. I cannot believe this fucker. He was mad at Jocelyn for not warning him ahead of time
about this potential risk. He felt himself getting hot. His shirt felt tighter. His breaths came quickly.
Jocelyn. Now his words ran over hers. Jocelyn. Jocelyn. Listen, I want to go for it.
Great. We have to move fast. Im going to keep you on the line here and talk to the seller on my
office line.
Ok.
So, Paul, I think we should bid ten over.
With his voice flat, Paul said, If you think it will secure the house, go ahead and put in the bid for ten
over.
Ok. Great. Im just going to set you down for a minute while I phone the sellers agent and tell him
your new bid.
At first Paul heard some rustling, then he could make out Jocelyns voice, but not the words she was
speaking. Parts of words, bits of conversation snuck their way to his ear. He heard noises from Jocelyn, but
no words reached his ear in a distinct enough fashion for him to correctly identify any of them. He could
hear the negotiation, but not immediately influence it. The noises from Jocelyn came quickly. Her pitch was
elevated, but her tenor seemed pessimistic. The negotiations affected him. Tone mattered. Tone affected
him. He wanted to change the tone, but could not. He wanted to will the tone to change. But the harder he
pushed, the harder he tried using his will, the less the tone changed.
Paul? Are you there, Paul?
Yes, Jocelyn, Im still here. What happened?
The other buyer came back thirteen-five over.
This is incredible. I cant believe this. The edges of his hair were becoming darker and wetter. His
shirt seemed to pinch under his arms. Paul felt that this unnamed, last minute, surprise buyer was stealing
from him. Paul had already placed himself in that house. He had already placed the downstairs tenants
rent checks into his bank account. Now, this guy is swooping in and he is literally stealing from me. This is
an injustice. Im not going to let this guy steal from me. Paul felt he was losing his purchase.
Go fifteen.
Fifteen might not be enough.
Gasping, Paul coughed out, Fifteen over not enough?
Fifteen-nine would make more of a statement. It would communicate a presence. It would suggest
intimidation and assertion. Do you want this or not?
Paul said, Ok. Fifteen-nine, but wondered if Jocelyn was colluding with the sellers agent to boost
her take, one more person taking power from him.
More indecipherable sounds from Jocelyn reached Pauls ear. Now his nerves were undone. Into his
phone he went. One womans profile then another and another. Faces, bodies, skin, allusions, judgments.
Trying to recalibrate his internal scales, Paul approved of or dismissed the women who raced across his
screen. For each woman he decided if he wanted to see (rare) or dismiss her (more likely). Here he was
deciding and determining not only his own fate but others as well. Here he was in control. He wielded his
power quickly, smoothly, and defiantly. His shirt suddenly felt looser. Air came to his lungs more easily. He
breathed deep. He felt better.
Paul! Snapping him sharp as a crack his name jostled his fluid reverie.
 Paul. Great news. They accepted your bid for fifteen-nine over. Congratulation . . . A sublime
movie was playing in Pauls mind. There was the big S crossed with the two vertical, parallel lines. To the
right numbers recalibrated again and again and again. Always upwards, moving forever, deeper and deeper
into the black. The series perpetually retabulating without cessation.
---
Just because the house looked dead didnt mean that it was dead. With its loose gutters, flaking blue
paint, and moldy wood, few who stood in front of 56 Prospect when Paul and Jocelyn were standing there
would argue that it housed complex, conflicted lives.
With affected ceremony Jocelyn said, Id like to present you, Paul, with the official keys to 56
Prospect. She dropped them into his upturned palm. You are officially a home . . . After Jocelyn dropped
the keys into Pauls palm, he closed his fingers, squeezed tightly, and stared down at his white knuckles
clutching the source of his self-appraised enrichment.
Together they climbed the porch steps, walked over the threshold, and settled in the foyer. The front
door, indifferent to its new owner, remained on the porch, its side leaning against the house, its hinges
showing corrosion from the exposure to the elements.
At his back the icy wind rushed in through the bare door opening and gaping windows. A wetness
persisted in front of these openings. From the window the carpet cast a deep brown crest then relinquished.
Faded tan shag, torn and stained, covered the rest of the living room.
Jesus. Look at this place.
Jocelyn didnt know how to respond. She feared that if she commiserated with Paul she would be
seen as reinforcing what sounded like buyers remorse. Yet, the smell of mold and look of squalor was too
insisting to be ignored. She resorted to her training.
Paul, this place has amazing potential. Before long you will be able to command double your
mortgage for this space. Id like to see that check hit my account. Imagine how that moneys going to look
ringing up your account every month.
Paul no longer saw the hollow pucks of empty tuna cans. The stains disappeared. The whole rug
disappeared. Replaced by hardwood floors that gleamed like a fresh sheet of ice. The windows, glass
restored, made a satisfying sound of fine craftsmanship as they comfortably slid up and down their wooden
tracks. To Paul it sounded like a cash register ringing up a sale.
I thought you sold and bought houses in this part of town all the time.
I have been for a while now.
Youve had to have seen worse than this, right?
I have.
Paul, I do have another client to see. Out in the suburbs, Bowmansville. Its a bit of a drive as you
know. Now that you have your keys and youre in your place you dont need me anymore. Contact me if
you have any questions about the place or the contract. Again, Paul, congratulations.
Paul knew he owned the house, the walls, the doors, the windows, well the window frames, the light
fixtures, the sinks, the toilets, the shower and bathtub, but did he also own that empty tuna can? What about
the pizza boxes and hamburger wrappers? What about the tattered, frayed, and exhaust-stained clothes
empty and dead on the floors? What about the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen counter? What about
the beer cans, pop bottles, hollow cigarette packs, and rumpled brown bags everywhere in the kitchen? Did
he own the cigarette butt floating in the glass on the counter? And what about the gravy and hot sauce
stained plasticwear in the sink and on the floor?
Slowly, as Paul answered questions to himself, he began to realize that he owned all of this debris.
And was that gas he smelled? The smell didnt dominate nor was it localized to the kitchen where the gas
line ran. He thought he could smell it in the dining and living rooms as well. He was nearly sure of it. He
couldnt always pick it up. The smell would come and go. Here one minute in one spot, then gone the next
in the same spot as the wind moved in and out.
It seemed unlikely he could just set all the garbage all at the curb and hope the city takes it away. It
was hard to walk in the house without stepping on some piece of trash, a paper plate stained nearly
transparent with grease, abandoned cheese partially eaten and molding, clumps of wiry black hair and
strings of greasy dirty blonde hair littered the floor.
On each stair leading to the second floor a half moon of carpet was worn down to the plastic mesh
reinforced backing. As Paul ascended the steps, the stairs wailed and wined their tired neglect.
 Paul thought about the work that lay ahead of him and saw sweating, bleeding, and bruising. He saw
an oversized rectangular dumpster resting bulkily across the lawn and front walk nearly infringing on the
adjacent properties. He dreaded the repeated wheelbarrow trips up bowing flanks of wood. It all looked like
struggle.
While he was wading in this dreary not-too-distant future Paul sensed a movement upstairs ahead of
him. Then, a bellowing voice echoed.
Yo, its time you got outta here!
Paul stopped in mid ascent, his right foot one stair above his left. When he registered the voice as
belonging to a black man, his frame froze tight.
Paul didnt know what lay ahead of him. He did not know the layout of the rooms, where the closets
were tucked, where the light switches were, which room lead to another, which room was adjacent to
another, how the sun entered the rooms, how the shadows fell, what they hid. Paul knew the owner of the
voice knew all those tactical details.
From the stairs he called back, Listen, this is my house now. I just bought it. So, youre now
trespassing
Your house! Your house! Oh, really. You just got here. Ive been here. This is my house and I
suggest you get the fuck out of it.
Why dont you come downstairs and we can talk about this.
Paul waited. He took no reply as acquiescence.
Looking out the large voided window frame Paul felt disassociated from the house. Earlier he felt
warm and comfortable, his power aggrandizing. But, now the cold rushed in from the outside and touched
him in a newly personal way, his vulnerability flapping and snapping in the wind like tattered curtains.
Now he looked around the room and saw the food wrappers, the stained, worn clothes, the ripped
couch cushions. He saw a life lived. Not his life. Not a life he could ever imagine for himself, but a life that
has always existed beyond his purview. Sure, he heard about these people. Animals. Savages. Broken
eddies of news stories swirled in his ears. Bits of stories hed read lay here and there on his brains floor.
These were mixed with stereotyped emails and links hed been forwarded.
 Shouldnt he have heard the creaking of the stairs by now? Shouldnt he be staring at a man with
flayed clothing, untamed hair, and wary eyes? Paul heard and saw none of these. He was still alone. He
couldnt remember a time when he felt more alone. Always before, the task of confronting adults and
mitigating tension had been the responsibility of his father. Paul now was an age most considered an adult,
but he didnt see himself as one. He didnt feel like an adult. He didnt remembered crossing the threshold
into adulthood. He didnt know where it was. No one ever showed him. He didnt know who could lead
him through it.
By now Paul was beginning to realize that no one was walking down the stairs to speak with him. He
didnt really want that, but he knew he wanted that more than walking up the stairs himselfthis time all
the wayand speaking to whoever was up there. He really wanted the man upstairs to just go away. Paul
closed his eyes and wished that ideal would come true.
But this situation, like his newly purchased house, was zip codes away from ideal.
Paul decided hed have to confront the man occupying an upstairs room of his house. He wasnt
going to do so without some instrument that sent a message. When he first started his job as a medical device
sales representative his fellow reps told him to fake it until you make it. With that advice in his head Paul
tramped down the basement stairs in single pursuit of some blunt force object that told everyone he meant
business. He skipped down the stairs until he was confronted with a musky smell and a pool of laundry
covering the basement floor where waves of molding cotton stretched to the walls. Not knowing what
existed deep under the folds and the muck nor what life the laundry lived prior to its final resting place here,
Paul turned and marched back to the ground floor.
In his car Paul found the tools hed brought to drop off for future work. He found the claw hammer.
It was new, sleek, and aluminum for optimum striking swiftness. These modern hammers were engineered
to provide optimum striking force with the slightest of effort. He grabbed a solid, steel flashlight too.
Crossing the threshold Paul, with hammer gripped tightly, entered his house and climbed all the way
up to the second floor. The light was a leash that led Paul from the front. Paul forced his eyes ahead to try to
anticipate what the light would show before the beam cast its power.
Paul didnt feel the real power of the beam until he entered the front bedroom.
Hey, man, get that light outta my eyes, man. Get it off me!
 Startled, Paul cast aside the beam. In the shadows he saw a black man. Then, he moved the beam
back into the strange mans eyes relishing the power inherent in the beam.
I dont know who you arethe beam steadied Pauls voice. It gave him the confidence of being the
only one in the room of having all of his senses fully functioningbut you have to leave.
Get that damn light outta my face or I am going to come after you.
Paul moved the light. When he did he noticed there was another man next to the one he had been
speaking to.
What are we doing, man? Who are we bothering? Were just trying to be invisible. Were in here off
the streets. Were in a town the rest of America doesnt care to notice or when they do they dont care about
us. Were in the part of town pretty much forgotten about except by those of us who live here. Now, you
drop out of the sky and tell me we need to leave this place.
Looking into the darkness of the room, focusing on no point in particular, the black man shook his
head.
Again, he raised his head to speak to Paul. Let me ask you something: how long you been here?
About an hour.
An hour. Huh. How long you think we been here?
Prior to the mans question, Paul never thought about his history. Paul wondered how this man got
here. By here Paul meant to this state of being without a home. He pondered for a moment. Numbers came
to his head, but each one he tried out made him seem silly and uninformed, so he just shook his head.
Im not sure. I cant even make an intelligent guess.
Nine years. Nine years. We been here in this house nine years. This has been our home.
Nine years ago Paul was still in high school. He was breezing through some senior government class
caring only about whether Devin would have a pipe or joint when they met after school. Food? Shelter?
That all had been taken care of. It wouldnt have even occurred to eighteen year old Paul to consider the
means of his food and shelter. Twenty-seven year old Paul never considered his means of food and shelter.
Paul lowered his arm. The beam shone short and straight down at Pauls right shoe.
Into the darkness Paul stared. He heard breathing. He couldnt tell whether it was his own or the
mans.
 Suddenly from downstairs they heard crashing footfalls. Instinctively, Paul snapped his light beam
in the direction of the open door. The beam faded into the light pouring up the stairs.
Vic, we know youre in here. More than a statement of fact, a mans words from downstairs
signaled imminent threat.
Vic, come on down here. Paul was breathing audibly. If you dont, well come find you and your
boy toy, Melvin. You know our work. You dont want that.
Paul shot the beam back at the black man. In the quivering white light Paul could see the man
waving his arms.
Paul didnt know how to interpret the semaphore. Keep quiet? Get out of here? Hide? Turn that
damn light off?
Paul could here heavy footfalls downstairs. Paul felt sure there was more than one person, but he
couldnt be sure exactly how many were down there. The downstairs wasnt that large. If you were looking
for someone, there were not many places to seek him. They seemed to be going over each room a few times.
Paul thought he heard someones footsteps pound down the basement stairs. They seemed to be
methodically canvassing each room, as if someone had dropped some money and they were carefully going
over every inch of flooring to find it.
Listen, Melvin whispered to Paul. Hey kid, get over hear and listen up.
As Paul approached Melvin he could now see there was a white man, his eyes big, silently staring at
him. Paul felt an oddness come over him. He approached these men. Were these the savages his father
warned him about? Or were these the animals? This was discovery for Paul. These men were homeless
or were they? Apparently they had been living here for the past nine years. Paul thought them homeless,
but wasnt sure if that was exactly technically true. Other than ignoring their pleas on the streets as he
quickened his pace and averted his eyes, this was his first sustained encounter with the type of people he
nearly never thought about. They looked vulnerable.
Shut off that light. Now, listen. As Paul approached the men he entered a deep, thick smell of
sweat and decay.
Careful now. Over here. This side of me.
 Paul moved to the side of Melvin where he was furthest away from the white man. The white man
was moaning. He made sounds. He tried to form words and arrange them into neat, expectant sentences.
Paul strained to listen. Fragments of the sounds resembled parts of words he could recognize, but his ears
were too unfamiliar to decipher meaning.
Its alright, Vic. Its ok. Just keep your head down. Keep your head on that pillow. At a subaural
level Melvin seemed to understand what Vic needed. Paul saw that Vic had lay back down on his side.
Warmly and reassuringly Melvin was rubbing Vics shoulder and back. With the gentleness of a feather
landing on the ground, Melvins words found Vics ear. Vics convulsing shoulders slowly eased their
tremors.
Turning back now toward Paul, Melvin spoke only a bit louder, but now his words carried more
weight. Listen, kid, I dont
My names Paul.
Ok, Paul. I dont know you from anything, and you dont know me, but believe me when I tell you
that you best get out of here fast. And I mean like right now, brother.
But, this is my house.
Does it sound like those guys downstairs care whose house this is?
They dont know youre here. Its best it stay that way. Those are men whose insides are empty.
Right now they dont know it, but youre a problem for them. If they see you they will solve the problem.
As Paul listened to Melvins words his mind was partially occupied identifying different odors. Paul
thought he detected a flavor of gas more potent than before. Was there gas on the floor here? There were
too many swirling odors to say for sure.
Theres a rear balcony off the back bedroom. Youll have to jump from there, but going downstairs
is not an option.
But, this is my house. These people are trespassing in my house, on my property. I should have
them arrested.
Vic, last warning, the voice boomed from below. Come on down here so we can talk. If you make
us climb the stairs to see you, there will be talk and action, but youll be doing little of either. A deep, dull
thud resonated followed by a metal clink and a hollow metallic swishing sound of liquid.
 Paul, those guys dont care about that. Theyve been arrested before and by dinner time theyre
down the street having empanadas waving to the cops who arrested them earlier. They work for people. I
dont quite understand it myself, but these guys never go away. If in the rare occasions they ever do go away,
their replacements are on the scene the next day. Usually less tolerant then the previous version what with
trying to make a name for themselves and all.
Paul wished he was back at his parents house. His wide, warm bed, the spotless dining room, the sun
casting gleams off the polished and lacquered furniture, the spotless kitchen through which he could look
out on a backyard of a seemingly endless swatch of grass, the birds bounding across on their springy legs
all of that is just twenty miles away. But, now that seemed oceans away.
We know these guys. We know how to talk to them. Leave and come back later.
After considering for a bit, he thought it best to heed Melvins words.
Taking his claw hammer and flashlight with him, Paul left Melvin and Vic on the floor.
He retreated out of the room. He found the back bedroom. Absent a door, access to the back balcony
was nakedly and starkly outlined. Incrementally, careful not to give himself away, Paul eased his weight
onto the tar paper.
He felt diminished. He was outside on the back balcony of a house that had been abandoned for
many yearsat least for the last nine apparently. Was it dead or dying? Melvin and Vic lived here,
apparently. Does that mean the house isnt abandoned? Paul considered while the house looked
abandoned, the structure itself was occupied. Two people lived here. Or at least seemed to be trying to
make a life here. He didnt know whether or not he considered them homeless. They lived in a home, it just
wasnt theirs. Paul supposeda vibrating crash brought Paul back to the perilousness and immediacy of the
present situation. Another shaking crash caused Paul to hold onto the wood siding to steady his quaking
legs. The crashings continued each one reverberating more seriously than the previous. These were
poundings. It sounded like drywall was crumbling and wood was snapping. But there was a booming, final
quality about it.
Paul heard shouting. Then, there were muffled sounds. There seemed to be some scuffling, some
wresting. A struggle maybe. Paul didnt peak and expose himself. Besides hed only be looking into
darkness and if he did peak in he wouldnt see much of anything. He figured trying to look posed a greater
threat to himselfif Melvins words were to be believed, which it seemed from the crashing and struggle
they werethen what he could gain by seeing inside.
After a while the muffled noises ceased and the wrestling ended.
Paul heard men walking out of Melvin and Vics bedroom and back down the stairs. He waited. He
wanted to be safe. Animals. Savages. Paul thought himself wise for waiting, for not blowing his cover by
entering too soon, for avoiding the chance for those peopleAnimals. Savages.to hear him walk
across the floors.
He heard voices that seemed to wrap around from the front of the house. He heard car doors close
shut. Inching his head around a corner Paul saw a black car with black windows speed away.
He went back inside. There he found Melvin and Vic laying side by side. From their bodies, mouths,
and ears blood coalesced and pooled on the floor.
The acrid smell of smoke caught Pauls nose. Quickly he waded through the bursts of smoke rushing
upstairs. Driving down the stairs deeper into the densest smoke, Paul had to cover his nose and mouth. Not
so much from the smoke tears ran from the corners of his eyes and streaked his face. His path forward was
blocked with fire and smoke. He turned and went back upstairs.
The flashlights beam shone steady on the bloody bodies. As the fire crackled and grew downstairs
and more and more smoke filled the bedroom, Paul considered what to do. He first thought to fully heed
Melvins advice and jump from the balcony. But, he didnt act on this first urge. Paul bent down, wrapped
his arms under Melvins, and interlocked his fingers across his bloody chest. Walking backwards Paul
dragged Melvins body out of the house and onto the back balcony. He went back inside for Vics body.
The floor felt hot. The air was warm and the smoke was becoming thicker and more stifling. Paul
heard the fire downstairs, the whooshing of air being sucked into the house by the fire, the cracking wood,
and the erosion as the fires flames slowly and tirelessly lapped the framing and walls.
Now all three bodies were on the back patio. Flames had punched through the first floor windows
and were teasing the edges of the roof Paul stood on. Around his ears and neck Pauls hair glistened in the
light of the flames.
He looked and stared down. He saw a backyard, narrow and deep, covered in snow. To his left he
assumed a concrete driveway existed. To his right grass. There was maybe eight to ten inches of snow on
the ground. It was tough to say exactly how much here or there. Recently there had been a bit of a melt on,
but today had grown colder and a freeze was back on. The snow looked wet and heavy.
Paul didnt know the best way. Feet first was likely best. He picked up Melvins body, rested Melvins
backside on the black metal railing and swung over his legs. He held Melvin under his arms. He nudged his
legs over the edge of the balconys floor so they hung down. As he edged Melvins body closer and closer to
the edge Paul braced himself for when Melvins full weight would be his responsibility alone. Praying that it
would hold, he wedged his legs in the metal railing to brace himself.
With the railing holding, Paul hung down over it maintaining his hold of Melvin under his arms. He
thought it important that when he released Melvins body it was leaning forward a bit so as not to crash back
against the house. Paul wanted to try to do the least amount of damage possible. He hoped Melvins feet
would land first then his body would fall face first into the snow.
As Paul loosened his grasp, Melvin quickly slid down. In the snow his legs were splayed and his arms
rested limply at his sides.
In a similar way Paul eased Vics body over the edge, then released. Vics body crumpled onto the
snow next to and partially covering Melvins.
Paul was next. The flames had moved beyond introducing themselves and were now imposing their
presence onto the balcony. Before he leapt Paul realized for the first time that he smelled of hard sweat. He
looked at himself and noticed he had two kinds of blood on him.
He was able to use his legs to push himself off and a bit away from the house. He got up, ignored the
radiating pain in his knees, and pulled the bodies away from the house and toward the garage.
Next to the bodies Paul sat. He was wet and his clothes showed darkened stains. He watched the
flames sparkle and twist up his house. The smoke climbed high, not an unfamiliar sight in this
neighborhood. Slumped and weary Paul watched his house burn and listened for the approaching sirens.
 Fall 2017
Sarah Valeika

The Voices:

There is yelling downstairs.

Were this an apartment,
I could claim uninvolvement,
I think (because hypotheticals are a poor mans way out)

I cannot disentangle voices now from the way those voices

used to be.
Theres a short, stocky woman
voice like a Celtic drum
and I can imagine her with
choppy, frenetic gesticulations
and Celtic-drum outbursts.

I think,
sister is the Irish tin whistle
(because metaphors are a cowards coping mechanism)

Mother is a Celtic drum and sister is a tin whistle

shrill and loud,
hands upon her hips.
This tin whistle once played jigs for me,
but now acts as a fife
in an army lineup,
keeping marchers in line with the drum
the Celtic drum
which used to rumble low and soft

playing me to sleep
The Thing Without Feathers:

You never did muster that

pebble-sized hope that
you needed.
I estimated, when I thought about you,
that a pebble size would do.
If it were concentrated,
like a vitamin or pill,
a pebble-size hope should sustain
the desire
[a desire that all hearing ears,
all seeing eyes,
all feeling bodies
assumed you would possess]
a size much like that of a pebble
paltry and unassuming
dwarfed by a world of epic passions

but you said

did
asked for
nothing.
Gave nothing.
What Sweet Girls Cannot Have:

Sweet, kind girls get lonely.

Sweet, kind girls get left behind
when the whole wide world is loving
and the kisses are taken, for
nobody thinks of sweet, kind girls
when they stick their tongue
in another beings wet mouth.
Nobody thinks of sweet, kind girls
on hot Friday nights in the summertime
because
if wild youth isnt her style,
she cant be a youth like themcant.
Sweet, kind girls might like to
talk about Thomas Aquinas while eating mint ice cream,
on a slow rocking swing in the eveningtime,
talking about theology and the way God works (or doesnt)

but sweet, kind girls get left behind

by a world off living and loving.
Nothing left for them here.
 Fall 2017
Sandy Coomer

My Name is . . .

When the barista at Starbucks, poised with pen against cup,

asked me my name, I looked into his coffee-brown eyes
and said Agnes
just like that. And, just like that, he wrote it
in bold capital letters and went about brewing and pouring
while I pondered why Agnes had come out of my mouth
with no pre-thought or planning and the many times
I wanted to be someone else
but not Agnes,
though its as fine a name as any.

Once, I knew a girl named Meadow

and another named River
and I wished I had said one of those names, or maybe
chosen the name of one of my mothers high school friends
whose parents labeled all the girls after the states
they were born in Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky
strong names with a sense of where theyd been
and where they were going.

While I contemplated who I might be

the next time I ordered a Mocha Lite Frappuccino,
the barista nodded his head, said
Agnes
and the way he said it, drawn out with feeling,
sexy even, the syllables floating above the music
and conversation, made the whole shop stop
to see who this Agnes was
we all waited for Agnes to take her drink,
all of us together waited,
while the barista stared with his coffee eyes
and with a startled Oh,
I remembered it was me.
Postcard to My Father from the Mojave Desert

Im burning here. The back of my throat constricts,

and vowels come out like sand, easily scattered
but heavy when scooped and bagged. All the words
we strung on the line from home led me, sunbaked,
to this world of extremes. Hot days. Cold nights.
A silence so loud it fractures our vision until we
cant see ourselves or each other. The spines
of a barrel cactus spear my leg. I taste its flower,
the bloom of blood orange on my tongue, and spit
seeds to the wind. The creosote bush paints a shadow
for the scorpion and its poisonous claw. A diamondback,
camouflaged in pebbles, sips the air for a taste of prey.
The desert is thirsty, the sky an unbreakable blue.
Joshua trees spread stout arms upward, speaking peace
in whispers only bats can here. I look for little things
that color a world possible: a needle-splintered sun,
a pink cloud that proves nothing dies without first
folding its heart in surrender. The bats rise from the rocks
in one harmonious wave. They feast. The trees are praying,
still praying for rain.
The First Time I Ate Oysters

I found a pearl.
The smooth whiteness a rarity, an omen,
the gemstone of June,
the month of your birth.
The first time we met
led to the first time
we kissed, leaning against your car
in the cool midnight relief of a sulking summer.

The first time you bought me a cheap dinner at Applebees.

The first time you bought sweet wine
and we drank it in the car
and drove home drunk and singing.
The first time I said I love you
and didnt mean it.

The first time you met my parents.

The first time you said you saw my father in me
and it wasnt just the eyes,
which led to the first time we argued.
The first time
I felt homesick for you,
the weight of it like a boot in the gut.

The first time I said I love you

and was afraid to mean it.
All the times I admitted, if only to myself,
I wasnt sure what love was, what the big deal was, what the point was, what the excuse was
and was this love
and was I loveable
and why didnt I feel loveable.

The first time I said I had plans that didnt include you.
The first time I learned pearls arise from suffering.
The first time I said all my plans included you.
The first time I said I love you
and thought I meant it and was afraid what it meant to feel
this exposed, this vulnerable -
the way a pearl must feel
ripped
out of the oyster.
I Wont Call This a Love Poem

What is it you see in me when you steal

those glances, as if to look too long
might make you confess some secret

long gripped tight inside you?

And why is it that when you say
the word love, I see a flash of light

through the keyhole

of your sturdy, well-carved face?
For a moment I think you might

excuse yourself, leave the room

and shake out the bunched-up quiver
in your voice, but you swallow it back

and move on. To the soldier in you

who has known too much the death
of all thats fragile,

and the way any sign of weakness

can get your eye shot out,
I say, well played.

There are far too many flirtations

and love songs for any of it to mean much.
What do you say we keep hidden

our blue-bruised hearts? Well be

anomalies, not saying our valentines,
not sharing our tentative trust.

If were good enough, we can hold

this together for a lifetime, our friendship,
a shadow dance with knives,

our warmth bleeding each other dry.

 Fall 2017
Samantha Lacey

secrets

they dance between my words

they play on my lips
they wrap themselves up in my hair
they tickle my nose
these pesky secrets of mine
ABC

A long, long time ago there lived a sandwich.

Bacon, lettuce and tomato were its contents.
Cucumber was not.
Days went by and no-one ate the sandwich.
Every day, the sandwich longed to be eaten.
Fourteen days went by and still, the sandwich stood eagerly on the shelf.
Gee said a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, youve been here for ages.
Hmm said the sandwich.
Indeed I have, but I shall not get disheartened, for it is my destiny to be eaten.
Jesus said the bag of salt and vinegar crisps youre mad, no-one will ever want to eat you, youre starting to
smell!
Kissing in the corner were two grapes.
Love thought the sandwich one thing I will never know.
Midnight fell on the shop and the sandwich wondered if hed survive til morning.
Next day, the shopkeeper opened the doors and a flood of people scurried in.
Oh thought the sandwich this looks promising.
Pickled onions, yum said one man.
Quavers, yum said another.
Realising that the competition was fierce, the sandwich decided to do something hed never done before.
Speak.
Tasty! Yummy! That is me! Have a bite! You will see!
Unbelievable, said a lady in a pink tracksuit and a green ribbon in her hair a talking sandwich!
Violet is my name and I should like to eat you.
Well, said the sandwich that is all very well, but I am full of bacteria and do not wish to harm you, for you
are so very beautiful.
Xylophones, glockenspiels and violins suddenly began to play the sweetest music, as the two realised their
love for each other.
You truly are an amazing sandwich said Violet and I love you to the ends of the Earth and back, and to
show my love for you, I will eat you, as the bacteria I shall feast upon will give me a long-term illness, which
will remind me every day of the love that we shared.
Zachary, for that was the sandwiches name, cried out in ecstasy as Violet sunk her teeth in to his mouldy
flesh.
I Will Acquiesce

Sadness arrived
Furtively
She captured my body
And breathed for me

She took my mind hostage

Hijacked my vision
Confiscated my thoughts
Then threw me in prison

She took the gears to my life

Knocking everything down
Praying for disaster
Begging to drown

She was the anger in my voice

The tears in my eyes
My silence, my chaos
My delusion, my lies

Then, she abandoned me

And left me to clear up her mess
When she returns
I will acquiesce
 Fall 2017
Sacha Archer
 Fall 2017
Robert Gibbons

This Banging Refrain

Simply can't afford it is this banging

refrain knocking against skull,
not necessarily stuck here,

when Coltrane comes on

on Duke's Solitude
& you can center

yourself on
Donald Byrd's resonant
trumpet, friends in distant

touch from Naples, Palermo,

Amsterdam, Brussels, Mexico City,
all but one been to before, when getting

somewhere was affordable,

even if I slept outside
for weeks at a time,

skipped any fine

establishment,
but stayed
high alright, nonetheless,
& not sure now whether I want
to go to Naples, Palermo, Amsterdam,

Brussels, Mexico City, or stay here

with her, books, random jazz that
hints at meaning from above,

or down below.
 Fall 2017
Rich Murphy

The Nobility of Our Existence

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act
of rebellion. Albert Camus

1
The MLK Will and Testament
... I think one of the big things that happened was that when black people began to be anointed by the
trinkets of this capitalist society and began to become big time players and began to become heads of
corporations; they became players in the game of our own demise. - Harry Belafonte

Imported from Africa,

the farm animals sweated
under bullwhips and tree limbs
and bled-out bullets only
to earn trinkets awarded
by banks desperate for debtors.
Dancing at the end, where hope
once synched around a neck,
the framed face knows
more about struggle than
pale feet could imitate,
try as privilege does with might.
Up from slavery to consume
substitutes for the prize
when poor people pupils
with something to teach
in the streets wait
to meet human eyes.
2
Who the Hell is Diane Nash - RFK
What I've always been looking for: where resides the rebel heart? Harry Belafonte

Laying eye beams aside for now,

chewing nails first thing.
Room for a rebel takes stock:
Hammered home experience,
saw what, blue print read, would.
A Franciscan poverty vow
fills for the work day.
Fields for soccer, rugby, football
may not do soon.
The heart beats from inside
the chest demanding out,
and by March and a discipline
in a spring a simple Simone will
pounds at rock and timber,
on the polis door.
Should cream color on walls,
Obi-Wan through Luke,
chapter and verse,
versus the Empire.

3
The Rebel Communion
We just have to get our old coats, dust them off, stop screwing around and just chasing the good times, and
get down to business; there's some ass kicking that has to be done. Harry Belafonte

Building a church on Standing Rock,

third from the sun, the Sioux sue
to continents: Come over and help us,
Sisyphus crying out for strange love,
for formulas for optimism,
for courage and intelligence
for rainbow warriors:

Over low-intensity oppression

and couch squatters hiding from activism,
through theoretical equality that conceals
great factual inequalities,
around murderers transformed into judges
to assure that no martyrdom occurs,
to where the future is the only kind of property
that the masters willingly concede to the slaves,

to indigenous, indigenous, indigenous

and global innocence responds with outrage.

This Sad Time We must Obey

[S]pells are all broken William Shakespeare

[T]he society everywhere is a living myth of significance of human life, a defiant creation of meaning.
Ernest Becker

The Black female protagonist and narrator

wakes alone in a fallow field.
A Caucasian woman sitting in a ditch
along the roadside continues
to gather facial expression toward composure.

Dusty, Mr. White strides up ahead

while a hobbling minor character,
a servant, attempts to catch up.

Over a river bank nine judges broke

the backbone in the great American novel:
Bound chapters, torn, fluttered
about the days in the prison;
the Berlin Wall embedded
along the Mexican border;
and pages drifted upon an Indian
reservation, predicted accumulation, tribe deep.
A bald bird sails above crying out: Fiat, fiat.

Once upon yet another exception

murderers and thieves in churches arrived
on the wind with promises to inhabitants.
Instead, enterprise = freedom= intruder weed
and crab grass from sea to sea.
4

Read? No need! The business plan.

Pop eyeballs slide into hypno-reenactment

via sandwich boards and consumer roles
for canned laughter and a chief demoralization officer.

If the mob cant gun down time

in broad daylight and before bed,
then why own it?

Besides, the mic used by Cronkite got lost,

and the slope into airwaves with anything as news
was forecasted and ignored under foot.

The game show Desublimation for the Precariat 24/7

possessed during work and at home too.
Alternate facts and unreason and incivility
sit at the controls in studios.
Truth lies in Limbo
having survived the electric chair.

A charade took over the 9/11 and Wall Street

Fear Department before an appetite
could whet for revenge against the puppeteers.
The stew sickened
while the rise for the rest looked
to Main Street as though a sinkhole triggered.

Lost among the user-illusions,

the computer despair men
and every other hominid
occupying a continent in protest
reach for banisters and tools without handles.
7

Performing holy hand stands,

the totalitarian democracy sect
preys on and on: The money honey.

So unless a graffiti artist starts swinging

back and forth a school bell
with all the elementary supplies
for contingency, the death knell
resides in tweets, twerks, and just do it.
Title and epigraphs

Last lines from King Lear; The Tempest. From Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

Outline of American fiction with Flannery OConnor in mind.

Citizens United court decision. The end of the American Dream illusion. Trumps wall, Standing Rock and
bald eagle / spread eagle. Reminder of the relation of debt and fiat in banks.

Reference to Exceptionalism (American, British, Roman, etc.) The invasion of the Western Hemisphere by
religious fanatics at expense of the indigenous population. The pretense or error that free enterprise is
freedom.

The business communitys lack of responsibility for their role in perpetuating ignorance and illiteracy. (The
business student notorious for being poor readers and writers.)

Reference to Brave New World. Why have time if you cant kill it. The function of hypnotism and role-
playing in advertisements.

The demise of network news. Herbert Marcuses repressive desublimation concept. Zygmunt Baumans
precariat concept. Trump administrations notorious lying that assists in destabilizing the American
national mythology.

Reference to the function that 9/11 and the Patriot Act played and led up to 2008 banking crisis. Fareed
Zakarias book The Rise of the Rest. Reference to fictions structure around plot.

Reference to Daniel Dennetts user-illusion concept and poet-Trump protests.

7

Reference to Sheldon Wolins inverted totalitarianism. Graffiti artist as contemporary or future American
novelist. Reference to Northrop Fryes three bells of literature.
 Fall 2017
Rebecca Rodriguez

It had been seven months since he showed up on my doorstep with a duffle bag over his shoulder
and the warm greeting of: Hey, Im your kid.
How old are you? I asked. The idea of me having a kid (or more) out there wasnt a surprise.
17.
Hmm. I crossed my arms in front of my chest and gave a good look at him. You Lisa Norwickss
kid?
No.
Mary Sauconys?
No.
Sara Rosenb
Kate Engleman's, he said. Are you letting me in or what?
Oh, shit, I said. Yeah, Late Kate. I didnt mean to smile. Thats what they called her back in the
day. How many brothers and sisters you got now? I laughed, and then opened the door wider to let him in.
He didnt answer my question. You got a spare bed?
Just a couch.
 I didnt doubt he was my kid, not one bit. He was handsome and he was smart. He signed himself up
for school, and Id seen him reading books a few times. He played guitar toothat, he didnt get from me
and he didnt talk much. It worked.
About a month in, he started bringing girls over. I never saw them, but I could hear them moan. Yeah,
he was my kid, alright.
They werent always the same girl, I could tell. But one was over a lot more often than the others. See,
there were some who made those quick, classic little whimpers, another who sounded like she was birthing a
baby elephant, but this one, boy, she wouldnt make a sound. In fact, she had him moaning. Their sex was
nearly silent, but if I listened really closely, when she finished, there was this deep exhalation of her breath. I
couldnt fall asleep until I heard it.

So you, uh, going back home for Thanksgiving, or yous staying here?
Im not going back to Egg Harbor, he answered. And you cant make me, I heard, but I never wanted
him to go.

Do you cook? he asked Thanksgiving morning, or got a sisters house or somewhere to go?
Nah, kid, I said. Sorry.
Its cool, he answered. Ive got a friend who might come over. Shell cook for us.

She was short and dark. Maybe Indian. I didnt catch her name.
Hey, tell her we like our turkey with cranberry, not curry, I whispered to him while she cooked
alone in the kitchen.
Funny, he said, but he didnt smile.
We watched the game. Within minutes, my one-bedroom apartment had become a sauna. I opened
the window, but was still sweating. I needed another cold beer.
Ready? I asked him, lifting up my empty bottle.
Sure, he said.
 I walked in the kitchen and grabbed two more beers from the fridge. I jumped when I saw her. I had
forgotten she was there. She was chopping peppers. Id never seen anyone chop so fast. She didnt even
breathe. I stood there, watching her. She could feel it. She stopped and met my eyes.
Impressive, I said.
She deeply exhaled. Thanks, I think she whispered.
I hastened out of the kitchen. She kept on chopping.
Here, I said as I put both beers in front of him. I headed toward my bedroom.
Where are you going? he asked.
Just call me when its ready, I said.
I could see my pit stains in the mirror. I sat on my bed and ran my hands through my hair. I tried to
understand what I was doing. Why am I in here and not watching the game?These wall are extremely thin
What if she moves in here? It might be very crampedHow many kids did Kate Engelman have by now?I should
change my shirt.
He knocked on the door. Its ready.

We served ourselves from the kitchen. She sat next to me on the couch in front of the coffee table,
and he pulled up a metal folding chair across from her. We started eating. She took tiny bites.
Its good, right? he asked, looking at me to agree.
I found a hair in my stuffing. Yes, I answered. I kept eating. I hadnt noticed how long her hair was
before. She was nearly sitting on it.
We finished in silence. I need to grab something, he said. Ill be right back. He got up and walked
into my bedroom where he kept some of his things.
Here we were, she and I, alone on their couchmy couch.
Youre very quiet, arent you? I asked her. I swallowed. My mouth felt dry.
She acknowledged that I spoke by nodding, but she didnt answer. She was not the curly-haired
blonde I had imagined when I heard him moaning through the walls, but I knew it was her; I could feel it. I
took a deep breath. She looked at me. I wanted to hear her breathe again. I wanted to do what my sonif
thats what I would call himcouldnt. I wanted to make her make noise.
 He walked back in with a tiny box and handed it to her.
She smiled and opened it. It was a pink guitar pick with an A on it.
If you teach me how to cook, Ill teach you how to play, he said.
She stood and gave him a quick kiss.

His eyes watered when I told him to leave. I blamed it on the guitar. He said he wouldnt it play in the
house, I said he had to go.
She helped him pack. They sat on the couch together until he had to catch his bus. He didnt say
goodbye. From the window, I watched them walk as far I could see. They held hands in the snow.
She left her glove. I ran it out to her. He snatched it and turned away. The bus pulled up. He let go
and slipped the glove over her cold hand. I love you, he said. He got on the bus. She watched the bus until
it was too far to be seen.
She turned and looked at me still standing there. No! she shouted, and ran away.
Her voice was beautiful.
 Fall 2017
R. S. Stewart

CRITICAL BACKUP

Word has leaked out that backup is not

critical as once announced some time back.
Backdrop is more so, since scenes should play out
first and then replay only if the burden of the past
is not lost. Neither is observing in much current demand
for a true tabulation of needed outside help to drift in.
Estimates of even a hundred versions are postponed nowadays.
Few know the reason. Our only reliance so far is rumor,
until hope supplies a platform studier and better. Meanwhile,
persnickety individuals can begin to initiate a turning toward
a lightly radical ascension as long as its blueprinted
and pressured for some iota of perfection. Isnt perfection
what this is all about? If not, what plausible substitute
is out there to call for help at this late date?
Arent we on the edge of extremity? Could analysis
be drawn in as part of our perusal? Analysis, like
alleviation, has a shaky background. Its easy now to get
stuck in the midst of most anything, including supreme
solutions. I dont like last resorts, so lets make this stick.
HIGH END

The high end of most constructs

is measured at the front,
usually low enough for carpenters
not to have to stoop

or stretch to reach for tape,

pencils, or specialty glue
should any arch or sketchy side
begin to show the residue of age.

Construction is considerable
on high end projections, stationed
for viewing and using. Repairs,
less rigorous in the beginning, become

consistent with high ends continuity,

assurance that however high they rise
they dont go lower than is feasible
if even one end has to be tipped up to be seen again.
GETTING THE PICTURE

In the attempt to touch

what we can only reach
through the roped-off area,
here comes that vexing notion
again that any artistic surface
stirs enough in us to become
a stark blank subject,
as one oblique image uncovers
another. In this respect
we view ourselves as no one does
piece by piece until the focus
blends with the beauty assumed
by the walls another museum fills.
FOREFRONT

People in the know

encourage being in the forefront
a whole life through.
They are that blunt

in their force of feeling,

saying with a small shove
forward that at no other place
in life does success outdo love

in its demands on the fabric

of fortune and fracture. How
those two combine their stitches
is only one reason why now

is not a good time to seek

the shelter of forefronts.
Is any hour or whats just after?
There are too many grunts

involved in arrival and settling in

for the long haul. Prominence
was once a picnic
but someone with better sense

has traveled to and fro

including into the bowels of enough
forefronts to report back seeing platforms
high and clean enough to jump off.
COMES A DAY, COMES A NIGHT

Pinpointing the exactness of eruption

is futile, so in the long stretch
of doing and going and trying,
its best to encompass this sphere as a stitch

not so finely done that another one

couldnt replace it, not as disguise
but satisfaction. A pause more often
than needed, followed by sighs

remarkably silent, does more to achieve

whatever the sphere is veering toward
than a staggering surplus of stitches.
The inexactness of the whole is marred

temporarily by roomy veneers of time,

their shadowy statements that one eruption
equals another, but no more marred
than parts of it peaking, one

behind another, one in front of another,

or segments together, apart, absorbing
all of a stitched emptiness
sooner than it is happening.
THE BIG STORY

The big story wants to be

bigger, wants to puncture the nucleus
of the smallest story. The big story
has trouble doing this,

for the smaller the story,

the more it desires to spread
its low signals of increase
into the lengthening threads

of narration, causing listeners

to pause more after their preference
for stories big and bold.
Time is what opens the contents

of such a meager story, once

laid away without leverage
or an appealing chapter of interest.
Besides a final flamboyance, message

is also missing.
Unfolding relies upon lack
of incident, details gone dead
in the pond, allowing a crack

to expand on the surface

and function as a brighter water.
Both teller and listener know this,
and it is only later and later

that stories of exacting sizes

lose accruements of the pen
that scribble the plain instruction
of why any story should begin.
 Fall 2017
R. Keith
 Fall 2017
P. K. Pierson

Dandelion

The girls dress flared as she twirled.

Her cheeks bloomed into rose petals.
Light seeped through the trees.
Off she went to somewhere

She wished upon a dandelion.

Puffs flurried and flew,
She fell, she flocked, she followed.
White seeds drifted down,

Falling to the ground, laughing

the utmost beautiful.
The seeds hit the soil,
Preparing to harm other plants,

Fatal to their surroundings.

Malicious, yet so beautiful;
deadly, yet so tempting.
 Fall 2017
Melissa Reynolds

Ugly Words

She started with the easy words. Coarse words that burn the ears of children and erupt forth in anger. She

wrote with small, careful strokes gripping the pen tightly, pressing downward with more force than needed.

They came quickly as though she had stubbed her toe, promising relief by their utterance but instead

stealing her breath.

Next came the smaller words. Simple, straightforward, the choice of schoolyard bullies. Loser. Fat. Ugly.

Stupid. Dumb. Fake. She warmed to her task and was not as careful with her pen. The words grew in size,

pulsing beneath her fingers, filling the space and cementing the base words in place. These words did not

make false promises to her. They stood in judgement over her, sentencing her with other peoples opinions.

She gripped the pen tighter. New words rose to the surface, cultured, refined, acceptable in polite

company. Undesirable. Repugnant. Unwanted. Unlovable. Detestable. She used them as she would a paring

knife. Concise, cutting her deeply. Phrases bled from the deep wounds, oozing down over the sides. Should

have been an abortion. Want to go to sleep and never wake up. Unworthy of love.

She dropped the pen, drained. She turned her body this way and that in front of the mirror, inspecting her

work. The words, thick, black, angry on her skin, snaked around her ribs, her navel, and down her thighs.
They came alive in the harsh light, squeezing the life from her, draining her of joy and hope. Welts rose from

where she had pushed too hard with the pen.

She studied her body and every last word emblazed there. And she believed them. She believed she was

fat and ugly and lazy and unworthy of love. But she did more than believe. She knew the words revealed the

truth. Her truth. She had no defense against it. She turned her stare to the razor lying on the counter. Her

nails dug into the skin of her palm and it eased some of her pain. The cheerful pink razor could take away

even more pain.

Her knees buckled and she fell to the floor. How had she gotten here? How had she lost herself so

completely?

She was silent, waiting for an answer. And it came. A small voice, so much like her own but yet not. The

inked words on her skin shouted, screamed for attention, hissing when they couldnt drown out the voice.

Tears dripped onto her thighs and smudged the words. She took up a tube of red lipstick and began

writing over the black. Precious. Worthy. Loved. Echoes from her childhood, from when she was young,

pure, innocent, carefree and happy.

The small voice whispered, I am here. I am listening. You are not alone. I am with you. I will strengthen you

and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Peace did not steal over her. The words did not erase themselves. The black ones moaned, promising that

they couldnt be forgotten, that they were still true, her truth couldnt be changed. She squeezed her eyes

closed and after a moment pushed herself up. She did not access some hidden strength. There was no beam

of light. She simply did. Simply was.

 She stepped into the shower and scrubbed her skin until it was clean. No grand rebirth, no loud

proclamations of new found faith, just the quiet whisper of her towel and the silencing of ugly words.
 Fall 2017
Maya D. Mason & Thomas Fink

Thomas Fink

SUBPRIME MORTGAGE BARGAIN LOT 6

Some meetings
scheduled today. A
great meeting.
Was I late?
We are very
close. One
of my ideas
was the next last
narrow path, winding
to vote on the vote.
Its a toughyou
know, worked
white majorities
& couldnt
smart skaters,
tough
shakers,
ended up
giving away
the state they
owned. One of
the greatest
deals in
the history
ofits a brutal
in all fairness. You
think you have & then
you lose because you
 gave. & she could not
getvery capablean
easy crack. Grandstanders
are statistically dangerous.
Bad for them ifthis is
something the people.
Theyve been promised.
Reform cuts a windfall
for the brackets, all
of them. Ive always
thought oflong
before. You couldnt
believe how much I
know about because of
the importance. The one note
Ill play about myself,
whatever they called at
the time, a super-duper,
OK, much more
than normal,
never a bad hour with
a bank. Tougher
& tougher to
think. Because
you are basically
saying from the
moment to either
get done or not get
donesomething
were doing a
fine job of.
Shows the spirit.
Statistically you want
to bet on. All day long.
They are all key. Who are
really sort of all good solids.
We dont have bad soldiers. Be
lieve me, do I know bad. But I
think were gonna see OK. If
down the tubes? We blame the
center. Planes over our heads.
Thousands hear dinner. More
interesting than any would under
stand. The grid, the way they work,
the spokes. Even beyond. Nothing
secretive about where were going on
the list. Which holds, this has to
be this really long table.
 Thomas Fink

QUESTIONING (PENTINA) 5

Was Oeds
first crime excessive force? Who isnt blind
to fate?
Why guilt?
Is it rational

to shout parricide? Could rational

disputation help Oed
wear guilt
solely for conscious intentions? Are we blind
in crying fate?

Can fate
serve a rational
approach? Must it blind
us to cause & effect? Could Oed
ever access an original maternal image? Actual guilt

vs. phony guilt:

are they separable? Does fate-
babble soil the mind? Was Oed
being rational
when he chose to blind

himself with his motherwifes phallus? Did Joc, blind

to all but anonymous political romance, later mix up guilt
& retrospective revulsion? Is it rational
to write a portion of fate
with a dagger? Should Poly have told Oed

of his adoption? Was Oed framed by Lais blind

superstition about fate?
When is guilt productive? Is the sacrifice rational?
 Thomas Fink and Maya D. Mason

SUZIE HOMEMAKER

Too lazy to do it.

The dog makes many artistic

contributions; we hope
he discovers minimalism.
Do some folks spend 10 hours licking

the linoleum spotless?

Scrubbing toiletson the to-
do list every four
months. No barbecues, please:

the grille takes

a full sitcom
to clean.
Only the finest
paper plates from Paris.
Just learned to turn on his own

oven. After seven years.

 Thomas Fink and Maya D. Mason

POST-MORTEM DEPRESSION

Sometimes they make a mistake. Four or five

weeks ago, thats what happened.
I was there: I told them I wasnt
dead. Why should I kill myself? And then
we had to stumble through the thing again.

What are you going to do with the body? I dont

even know how the box opens.
 Fall 2017
matthew harris

Human Fluid Dynamics Befuddles A Zealous Yankee

Tis thru unsuspected perusal of observation sans animals and small children,
how erratic movements accentuate self propelled locomotion
when ambulatory creatures other than human lamb kin
hood winks, ponders locus, thence hurriedly darts hither and yonder,
to and fro with no evinced premeditation viz expenditure erratic energy
even chilly reaching the vector of fatigue and famished fate accompli
point of exhaustion (or incurring fatal collision),
yet if oblivious artful dodger safely achieves spontaneous reconnaissance
asper reaching destination, thence resupplying renewable resources
to wren door hypothetical specimen to resume (once again...ad infinitum)
haphazard random zigzag engine aired flapdoodle previous
un-choreographed motions, and/or spurious en hex pick able darting,
kickstarting, or oscillating arrhythmically might not register as purposelessness
not conceived as a reckless, mindless, or foolish van hail 'n impression
though, to a sensate Homo Sapien (such as myself),
this bing bong, harried styled, illustration of convincingly
being inebriated, gripped or possessed by a deem man
unbeknownst as this non intrusive behavioralist
silently observes, how much inefficiency did ban
did vis a vis sans indeed erratic buzz-feeding, high-lighting,
or net-resulting calories this grand Poobah calculates,
and tires merely watching oscillating, quaking, skittering,
concluding that twittering, snap chatting, reddit ting
tote tills up to enough vim and metaphorical vinegar
expended clan dust stand lee allowing, enabling, providing
avast capitalone major resultant calculus
that what appears as dubious, erroneous, frivolous, et cetera
such random motion might actually contribute exemplary survival phenomena
adding years exceeding google times ten to keenly studied subject.
 Fall 2017
Mark Young

A crepuscule for Nellie?

What chance is there

for? Or, maybe the

lavender lies dying

in the twilight. Un-

settling but not un-

broken. Therefore

walk backwards,
following the foot-

prints. Ways out

were once ways

in. Frogs chorus at

the vestiges of rain.
Baedeker, S.A.

Nothing makes sense

anymore. Everything
does. I bind my camel
to a smokestack
at the edge of an anti-
climax & set the
guidebook alight to give
me light to better
read it by. The hidden
pattern in the last
flicker of a hologram
tells me Im
in Machu Picchu
where I shouldnt
be. Entropy arrives
to peck out my I-
balls. Equilibrium. Its
a eunuch experience.
Vol canine

Fields of,
sea of,

magma.
Too hot

to swim,
to wander,

in. Nowhere
to grow.
Four variations for John Cage

1'
One is not
one. One is.

2'
One is. One
is. Is two.

3'
Two is one.
One is too.

4'
33".
apparatus

between a
turned up & posed a
will focus on the s of

too many

is an

Home of the

Think when
retiring those
large amounts of capital

What analogy comes up

what pictures do you see?
fright
night

trem-
or, or
the wind-
ow caught
by the wind
or trem-
ble as
the wind-
up soldiers
come alive
without
being
wound
up & I a-
live trem-
bling wind
up wound-
dead
Meanwhile, in Fayetteville

Solid aluminium
is more than a
regional cuisine,
was used to build
a gay men's social
network in Arkansas
that, though still
not out & about,

has undoubtedly
impacted the busi-
ness landscape for
the better. Come &
explore altered books
in this creative club.
 Fall 2017
Mark DuCharme

Migratory Laughter
In the dream we pull back
Mangoes & orchids
From the tongue in a state
Of rebirth. It is all
Ongoing, & I flower
In tune with your hair
Which you have more abundantly
Than I. If you shiver
Forget about dental work
For I am the source of all
Mirth. If I flower
In breath of your flowing
Chalk it up to the weather
That Ill never pull back.
Or if I do, be wary
Of occidental footfalls
More living than left
In this accidental pasture.
So what does this mean, asks
Captain Beefheart in a song
You should know but dont
Answer. You just
Stand there quivering
In a valley til noon
When you break out in calm.
A Center
Await what you fear
In the weather not being
Somewhere youd mentioned
But here in the shimmers
Of the day flowering
Amid dishrag apotheoses
& Hushed suggestions
Whether here or narrowed
To the corner of a mention
With apocryphal pop songs &
Blazing disaster motifs
Ascribed to being, with great
Animal-curved cuneiform shells
Which just slip out of tune
Like so much poise. If you take it
To where you would wander, if
Youd rather be here
In the agility of an hour
Where we go without meaning
To fuse corkscrew suggestions
To the locus of a center
We take part in but dont
Derive from. Thats nice, but
What does it mean means
There is still some mystery
Left on my tongue.
Sonnets in Meditation
I.

Heart heavy, still forgetting

Lost hours variously forged
Where the air is bright & full of
Stunned passages, complaints
About the sun. The sun is

Near in all our hearts

Our hearts all fear what cant be spoken
Yet we still go on
Acquainted with the strange
Passage of the days unspoken

Betokened in the artful ruin

Where the air is still as voices
Meditating on the swerve
Of frangible sweetness in the rain
 II.

While the wind is lost in song

& The air folds sweetness in nights measure
Sing, if you are useful
In your jutting arrival
Composed of dusk & other lost detritus

Held useless until now when old

Songs clank & tangle with the strange
Smell of dusk if you are versed in
Flora or the hinterland angers
In which we dont partake

When we take part in anything

Very much alive
Yet still we fear
Except, perhaps, when you are near
 III.

To have still not bitten off the rainfall

With the dire moons attention
Looking at what was supposed to have fled
Until the cold moon aches
Under the weight of storytelling

Like windows lost in song

You cannot feel
Until you do
In the weight of forced suggestion
With all skies vanished

& The unrehearsed

Gleaning all our prayers
Our finite psalms
Our bare marquees
To Those Who May Not Be
In the dream you werent here
& Ive forgotten already
How to say the name of the
Poet not me
Who didnt read &
Would soon go away

In the space of what we didnt say

& Barely understood
With silence blaring &
The broken mentions
Of the wind when you arent
Here under wrong neon &
Held down with bones
& Everything racing
All round all around
The ears

No one mentions
The dream
In the part of
What burns us no
One being dreamed
Or burned can name
The dream in the burning or
What sings in the ghost
In the light
In the light no one sees

Past departing
Burnt futures dreamt
In the ghost
Of a name in the
Light that
Parts when you dont
Sing & every-
thing teems
Teems in the born

New day
 Fall 2017
Marc Carver

ANON

I went for a walk

in the sun
looked down on the path.

Kids had been writing in chalk

and had drawn a hopscotch grid.

I bent down picked up the chalk

and wrote some poems on the path.

It was going to be hot for the week so

maybe a few hundred people would see the words before
the rain would surely come
and both mine and the kids words would be gone
and no one would ever know who wrote them
and that of course
is how it always should be.
HAVE TO

I can't quite leave it

whether I want to or not
something keeps pulling at me.

Dragging at my soul
Like those times you see
beauty in something or someone
sometimes you have to look hard
but you see it,
and you know it is real.

You have to give what you can

if nothing else
you can't keep it to yourself
and pretend you hate everyone
because whatever has happened
it cannot happen again.
It can never be any worse.
 Fall 2017
Linda Worden

Air Power

Grandma knows paprika could not stop NATO

because this is Panevo, 1999,
and red dust is not in the exhaust
of rusted assembly lines, she pushes
the pedal, chokes on air
but who choked you?
did you kill yourself on
the assembly line? The horizon,
littered with Brutalist palaces
raw with liquid venom,
just folded by fire.

God bless America! Decimating

three factories, injecting air
with cancerous kisses. It holds
her in the night. Gently caressing her
lungs, for years it sits loyal. Her tumour
is love, I promise, it is love for democracy
the rest is a rumour
to shatter the magic and wonder
of being a tragedy. Look, DAPL
was a story. Dont we all
wish to be stories?

Grandmas neighbourhood was

moustached Magyars: a milk minority
among milk majority.
God, bless the Magyars
to forget. The Serb
teacher held my mothers tongue
until the red dust disappeared. He
was hostile and hungry
for her shrinking borders.

You would think the injured

have less hate unfounded,
and yet I must tell Grandma:
Soros is just a man
and the Syrians did not bomb you.
We know like our own names:
civilians lived in Panevo,
Clinton did not know them.
As we become stories,
we must narrate
the root of injustice: it grows
from games by the same
star-spangled banner.
 Fall 2017
Kevin Ryan

Being Well - An Ode to Mama Ruth

The insides cut when I can't help,

I hope, pray, that someday, we find a way,
when only health is our greatest wealth,
where goodness glows gold & grins are what we
hold.

If millions were within this grasp,

it'd be millions in which you'd already have.

Until that time, this heart of mine,

will be true to you, as much to I.
As tears flow, in times of woe,
the hears I fear are only yelp.

 yesterday's dream, today's reality
and i had this dream last night...

needing a taste of an embrace, I flew back to a familiar face from yesterday. my

first love, trisha, provided the warmth and love i so desperately desired again.
we danced and yesterday's emotions took control of me. knowing how yesterday
ended, i needed the possibility of an unknown today. i needed to leave
yesterday.

i arrived at the airport surrounded by chaos and ran with urgency. every turn
felt like a wrong one. i was lost in yesterday and sensed that time was running
out to find my departure towards today. the thought of being stuck in yesterday
created pure panic. what gate? who could i ask? i became accepting to return to
a lonely today, that ensured i would leave yesterday behind. i hoped and i
prayed for a lonely today. please let me find my way home to today.

i heard my name billowing through out the airport and instruction to pick up
any telephone. i looked up and knew i recognized nothing familiar. i needed help,
i saw a telephone.

i picked up the phone with desperation. time ticked. "kevin, you are at the wrong
gate. turn to your left and enter the next one, then you will be on your way home
towards today" Heidi's voice was soft, sleepy and relaxed as it always was in the
brief moments i heard her speak. the burdens of angels would lift for her. this
was the voice that i have always admired in its hazy, lazy flutter. calm, coolness
washed away my worried urgency. i was going back home guided by Heidi's
heavenly call. leaving yesterday, i ascended and awoke in today's reality. oh
what a dream!

imagery still strong, i knew today began like no others.

another valentines day alone, but i do not care. exactly one year ago, a fire
burned in the building i work. this year, who knows, at least i have the vividness
of that dream within.

only outside an hour of the work day, the telephone rings and it is Heidi! Is this
a cruel trick a dream and reality are playing on me? this year my heart burns
versus the building on saint valentines day.

she requests the services in which i can provide. i oblige with the urgency of a
man lost in an airport trying to leave yesterday. i call to inform her that the
request is complete. oh that soft gentle voice with a hint of melancholy makes
me burn. i am so curious about her. she tells me the woes of her ankle. we speak
as friends versus our professions. her voice is all that matters this moment. that
voice. speaking only minutes, this moment is timeless. i am burning inside, it is a
day dream reality, this is glory.

this day is different, i need to do different. wonder is falling from the sky. today
anything is possible. in the spirit of valentine's day, i deliver a sweet treat to her.
a surprise for her and for me by my efforts. the burning inside melts away the
ice surrounding my heart. it was frozen for years, but a dream and today, it
begins to melt away escaping as tears.

filled with possibility, coincidence, fate, chance, wonder and hope, that is all i
needed this day. the risk and a possibility of reward. hearing heaven and
reacting with my nervous joy. She writes digitally to close this day to thank me,
she is appreciative by my efforts in her trying week.

i am filled with feeling again.

it may be temporary, but it is today.
it was a dream, but it is today.
it was a chance that i took today.
she helped me escape from yesterday.

thank you Heidi

 Fall 2017
Kelle Grace Gaddis

An Uncertain Light

Sleep is a type of dying we enter each night. If lucky, we rise from our rest in peace, our pillowed tombs, to see another
day, there are miracles all around me, thought Amari the morning of his trial. As yet unable to imagine the jury
would convict him.
The prosecutor vigorously shook hands with the grieving families for whom he was a hero.
Amaris attorney smoothed her skirt, picked a piece of lint off its edge and flicked it aside. She
regretted taking the case in the first place. In her mind, Amari was probably guilty. Originally, shed wanted
it for its high profile but soon regretted the case as she was portrayed as a villain by the media.
The judge felt he might topple over at any minute. His home AC unit was out, causing heat-induced
insomnia, all he wanted was a nap.
The jurors, conversely, were edgy from an excess of coffee and having spent hours under scrutiny
from the families that lost people in the explosion. Once dismissed, they bustled into the lobby like hungry
chickens into a feeding yard, clucking at one another, the media, and their families. Giddiness aside, some
were already feeling uncertain of Amaris guilt. They wanted to know how their decision was playing on TV.
Their families assured them that they did the right thing. Everyone wanted justice for the victims - someone
had to pay.
The foreman, an angry gray-haired man, had no doubts about Amaris guilt. He knew the evidence
was thin but he felt that the mosque Amari attended was evidence enough to link him to the crime. He
repeatedly asked his fellow jurors, What was Amari doing in this country anyway?
 Amari stood quietly, wondering how this could happen. He hadnt reacted to the word guilty. And,
when the bailiff approached him after the trial hed extended his wrists for cuffing without resistance. Some
mistook Amaris resolve as admission of guilt, but that was not the case, Faten Amari was an innocent man.

On the way to his cell, walking past the peach colored walls and steel bars, Amaris mind drifted back
to the day his uncle told his eight-year-old self the story of the thief.
A thief, his uncle said, ran through the fruit market in Dammam whipping items off carts and
tables.
His uncle threw his entire body into the tale, running in place while grabbing imaginary apples,
nectarines, and figs from invisible merchants. His arms shot left and right over a dozen times to demonstrate
how many vendors the thief had robbed.
Faten laughed, How could a thief carry so much fruit while running?
The thief had a sling fashioned across his white thawb to conceal the stolen fruit, his uncle said
impatiently.
Didnt he look lumpy? Faten asked.
Lumpy or not lumpy, doesnt matter Faten, you must listen to understand.
Sorry Uncle, what happened next?
Soon, another man was running along the same path as the first but at a slower pace. The second
mans arms were also loaded with fruit, but he had no sling across his thawb to manage the bulk. When a
tourist stepped backward into the path, he tripped the second man, sending him to the ground. Nearby
vendors, having heard people shouting Thief! beyond their view, were on alert and ready to pounce on the
man responsible for the robbery.
The tourist, oblivious to any crime, apologized to the downed man scrambling for his goods. The
man in the dust looked up and said, It was an accident giving the tourist permission to go. The gap the
tourist left quickly filled with angry shoppers that had begun to point and murmur Thief at the man on his
knees gathering fruit.
 Just as the discombobulated man reclaimed the last fallen nectarine from the path, and placed it atop
all the other precariously arranged fruit between the crook of his arm and his chest, a righteous man stepped
forward assessing the mans dirty thawb and array of fruit and snorted, Youre a thief!
The man carefully stood up so as not to drop anything, Sir, youre mistaken.
The old man ordered his sons to grab the sullied mans arms sending all the fruit back onto the path. While
in their grips the robbed vendors caught up and saw a captured thief. One vendor spat at him. Another
clucked her tongue in disapproval. The crowd began to chant, Thief! Thief! Thief! until the eldest son felt
emboldened to act before the authority arrived, dragging the man to a nearby chopping block. He swung the
blocks ax upward and proclaimed, Youll not steal again! before bringing it down and severing the mans
hand from its wrist. The crowd, feeling a mix of satisfaction and discomfort quickly dispersed.
The captive screamed in horror and pain, Im innocent!
The old man hissed at the maimed man writhing on the ground, Justice is served.
The innocent man was left alone to his tragic fate.
Faten wailed, Uncle, its so unfair!
Good Faten, good, his uncle said, you understand the story.

Faten Amari didnt want to rot in a cell until his death sentence was carried out. After the lights
dimmed, a cue for the prisoners to go to bed, he lay on his bunk wide-awake. When the guard left the
corridor to relieve himself, Amari quickly took off his orange jumpsuit and lay it on the floor as if it were a
prayer mat.
He prayed with the boldness of an older man, someone showered in the light of hope when all hope
is lost, until the guard returned and Amari began to feign illness. The guard unlocked the cell and stepped
inside. Amari grabbed the mans legs, screaming, Justice! Justice! Justice! And the guard beat him until
Amaris head was struck one too many times and his spirit broke free, soaring away in search of miracles in
the mystery of a deeper sleep.
 Fall 2017
Katie Howes

Reference Point

So you think youve accomplished the lines, the cross-hatching,

the parallelism, the waves, the wellbeing of the paper, the tooth.
The electrolytes, the lithium, the spinning yarn atop the machines
in the mending store.

How did you get this far?

Im a catch me if you can
and yes you want to
kind of gal.
I saw what the levels overhead were doing.
Never mind how they got there.
I mean its flat, very flat terrain. Thats a plane here.
They hovered in a parade, their balloons meant for heaven.

Getting on was the goal but not everyone could, not everyone stayed.
Leaving the plane hurts.
I know youre thinking that one can make a ladder or a net
to catch fallers, but Im not talking about body pain.

Ive never experienced this.

I know I dread it.
Stay With This

A blue and white plaid material suspended over the ceiling,

another version of the suspended dining room set,
and every one of us rising until we bump our heads.
Thats not how I wanted itno one said that,
we knew wed ease back down.

This couldnt happen anywhere.

My mothers ceiling fan
would never hang from my own ceiling.

Her young maples, one on either side of the walkway,

ready for staying, ready for replanting if her sister wants it.
I wanted to add somethingheres a stone sign
I found off the road up north. Its a stone made into a sign
when I hurt my thumb and bled. Take it.
Ive read about thistake it.

Here we are, together, you wish to say.

Close your eyes, hold each others hands for a moment.
Think only of what youre holding.
Ekphrastic

This is a wall, this is a blanket this is a stick

maybe for walking.
This is some blue grey this is gray
this is the length of silhouettes created by distance and time of day.
These are part black part mulberry.
The sky is sea mint then pale blue then at the horizon robins egg.
The bricks are orange pink egg-white and brown.
I really am satisfied with the red clay effect.
CheckCheck-up

Call the doctor, call the dame, call the man who got her there.
Call the baby 20 years later and call the babys lovers. Did you know this life would kill a stranger by
accident? Did you know this life would be so boring? Did you know this life was going to become a poor
example as a leader? Did you know this life will be pretty but contrite? Did you know this life will write a
prize winning first book and write nothing thereafter? Did you know this life will live to be 111? Did you know
this life will become a high school Spanish teacher? Did you know this life was going to take so much time?
so much money? did you know this life that you want to save, you wont care about after full term?
Go Ahead

After the gas station, I ran

home as discretely as I could
and fell asleep in the bushes.
I awoke to see my cat looking down
at me from behind the window.

I heard a kids voice singing one note

over and over, getting louder.
I knew that if I stood up, Id see the kid
waddling by, because thats
the way the note sounds,
and shed be holding
the hand of someone tall.

The sun will set soon.

If I went around to the backyard,
I'd see pink between the ash trees.
In the morning, I'll be on the other side
of the door, sleeping,
and the sun will be rising.
 Fall 2017
Justin Rogers

The Body is a Literary Form

The man I sleep with

Is beautiful because he's a poem
Made up of cleats running the earth
The sun kissing his skin all over
Giving him this supple bronze color
When I make love to him
I make love to all the things
I could never be
Because I can never be
A poem about the golden sun
Or conquests, or reaching for the stars
Like he is

But the world loves poems like him

Nothing is wasted in him
Every part perfectly proportioned
Chiseled like a god out of marble
He is made of a form easier to read
Much more appealing to take in

I, on the other hand

Am a big, fat, novel
Not some flimsy copy of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
But a full-blown
Don Quixote
What could be said succinctly
Takes me two hundred words
And where a poem inspires people
I feel like I am yelling at windmills
Because I have so much to say
So few people who bother to read me
And even less who understand

But if you flip through my pages

And there are many
You will find they are written
In experiences

Nights spent in bottles of tequila

Trying to make sense of a world
That gives your five-year-old brother
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
And forces you to watch him
Wither away week after week
Until there is nothing left of him
Or brings an incredible woman into your life
Years after you have already figured out
That you are gay
What are you supposed to do with that?

If I could
I would be a sonnet
A poem with more class
Written with a formula in mind
I have met people who are sonnets
They drift coolly into a room
Glass of champagne in their hands
Always in rare form
Like the first spring rain
That always makes you look up
In awe and gratitude
Just happy to see the drops
Fall down all around you and
If you are lucky
All over you
When You Get It Wrong

You're kissing him

And he's kissing you
And you're not kissing me
And I don't smoke
But right now I'm a chimney
Coughing all the while
And the champagne is flowing

Everyone should kiss someone on New Year's Eve

And I think of the twenty-dollar cover fee I paid
The loud music I endured
The time I invested in you
And there you are letting me see you kissing him, ruining it all
I suddenly understand how crimes of passion get committed
Maybe there was something
Maybe there was nothing

It's hard to know what another person feels

Right now I don't want to feel anything
Let champagne and smoke numb me
On the drive home I glare at the back of both your heads
I sleep in the room beside yours
Where I can hear you two fumbling around with each other
I get in my car and drive home
Drunk, I take up two parking spaces
Then lay in a ball in the shower till morning
Here We Go Again

I don't actually like sex.

So how am I always finding myself in this position?
On my back, legs in the air, hands on the back of my thighs--
Just before the knee
On the other side of me,
Doing something I can barely see but definitely feel
Is some other guy thrusting himself between my cheeks.

Mostly he's just looking down at his work

Sometimes he looks at me, my face I mean.
Once he asks how I'm feeling,
But his vacant expression tells me he doesn't really care.
I'm just some new cavity to stick himself in,
Like an eel that finds a vacant cave,
Without having to worry about friends or parents or his girlfriend finding out.

I bring my legs just a little closer together,

Push my trunk a bit higher so he can't see my fading erection.
At the appropriate times I tell him to go faster or harder--
Never so much that the finds out I'm not enjoying it,
That he just can't penetrate my jaded body enough
To get a reaction out of it.
He probably thinks hes the master of any pair of spread legs.
I wonder if maybe his equipment is just too small?
If it's smaller than my own?

Why am I letting myself get nailed by a guy with a piece smaller than mine?
There is a nail file on the nightstand beside me.
I wonder if I could file my nails while I'm just laying here?
He would probably notice.

I tell him to go all out--

The pace and force start to pick up.
I feel something poking a little further in.
He's panting now,
Holding onto and partly leaning on the legs I'm holding up.
He shoots, scores, and flops over on his side exhausted.
I sit up, look him over, chest heaving,
Sweat glistening off his soft white skin, lips parted.

I'd like to know what his lips taste like,

But I lick his other head clean instead.
It's all I'm allowed to do.
I stand up and walk to the shower
I hope he'll be gone before I get his smell off.
Void

There is a hole in the center of us all

Call it joylessness helplessness loneliness
Or plainly what it is: desire
This hole creates these pangs in my heart that make me feel wretched
I try to fill it with things
Like the Mayans throwing precious gold into Xibalba
A place of fear in us
That dark cold silent place
An abyss always threatening to swallow us

So I try to fill the hole like the Mayans

I sacrifice parts of myself to fill my hole
I curb my loneliness by seeking out a new sweetheart
In its most rabid form a person works in a frenzy
Going from person to person, all in a struggle to find fulfillment
But there is no filling this hole
I can try, I can obsess over it
But ultimately the hole is bottomless
It greedily gobbles what is given and demands more

This is why one lover is never enough

And why that one night and all the things done in it
Only leads to wanting more nights with more people
And never toward true satisfaction

I keep searching for some answer

Some cure
But that would just be one more thing for the pit
The real tragedy is knowing the truth of what I am doing
But being too weak to do anything about it

So I get caught up and dragged down by the whirlpool of wanting

A new day a new person another position a different caress
Going down deeper than ever before
And maybe that will make all the difference

I am trapped in a prison
The only nice thing is I can't see the bars.
Queering Cultures

I want to learn Spanish

But not too much
Enough to tell him
"De quiero"
But not enough to know
What he means when he says
"Me encanta estar dentro de ti"

In those moments
When I ride him
My big body undulating up and down
On his tight body in a wave
That keeps going, and going, and going
Back and forth

I sweat, he sweats
He pinches my nipples
I lean forward, dip my head down
Like a deer to water
And lick up his chest, kiss his lips
Then sit up straight, raise my hands over my head
And continue to rise and fall on his pole

His chest heaves, heart beating faster

He throbs, I can feel it inside me
Grabbing my hips, he pushes me back
Down onto blue sheets, looking up at the ceiling
He grunts and I pay attention to him
Nostrils flaring from concentration and labor

I look at his nipples

His flat stomach
That cherubic face
And wonder what turns me on so much
Because, by now, sex is more of the same
I look him over again while he spears me
And I realize
His skin is copper colored
He is Victorious Youth made flesh
His face has no pink cheeks
He doesn't blend in with all the other
Pale bodies I've been under
He stands out
And that excites me

I bite my lip, signal him

He smiles, goes faster, goes deeper
My hands clutch sheets
I've been missing out my whole life
He pushes in and out, in and out, and I can't hold on anymore
He fucks the white out of me
And into me too
 Fall 2017
Joseph E. Lerner

Other People's Houses

I knew the property I recently purchased was distressed, but not that squatters and drug addicts had taken it
over.
"The police try rousting them," my realtor, Jackie, said over the phone. "But they keep coming back. The
place has become a 24/7 crack house. And they're ripping out floorboards, plumbing, and copper wiring for their
resale value."
"What do you suggest?" I asked.
She paused. "Take extralegal measures. Hire private security, a firm not averse to"
"Okay," I said. "I get it. Do what you have to."
Weeks later I attended the open house. Other neighborhoods had succumbed to gentrification, but on this
block residents galvanized to resist. Nonetheless, at least a dozen people defied the demonstrators and crossed their
picket line.
Jackie greeted visitors in the foyer, distributing glossy brochures and asking guests to remove their shoes
before entering the rest of the house. Several young men flanked her, thickly tattooed beneath muscle shirtslocal
gang members, obviously, hired by that security firm.
The large Italianate residence, built in the 1920s, had been home to a famous movie director, though the
neighborhood had been in decline for decades. Jackie oversaw the house's restoration, and I neither interfered nor
stopped by to observe her progress. I managed many business interests, and while I'd never worked with Jackie, her
reputation was stellar.
 Tragedy and scandal marred the film director's short if brilliant career. Tried and convicted of statutory
rape, he slit his wrists in his bathtub rather than go to prison. None of this Jackie mentioned in her brochure, but
every guest lingered in the master bathroom as if hoping to glimpse bloodstains.
These people, I thought, were gawkers and curiosity seekers. And so it surprised me when, after the tour
ended, Jackie showed me several visitors' bids which matched or exceeded our asking price.
To celebrate I invited her to dinner.
We ate at an upscale restaurant on the waterfront. I ordered Alaskan King crab legs, Kuomoto oysters, and
champagne, while Jackie stuck mostly to her lemon quinoa salad and carbonated water.
I asked how she knew the open house would be so successful. She replied evasively, alluding to "proprietary
algorithms" and "a private client list." I pressed no further but determined to revisit the subject with her later.
I then asked Jackie how her auditions were going. Like many young people, she'd come to the city to pursue
a film career. She twirled her salad fork, frowning at the shred of lettuce that drooped from its tines like a limp flag.
"Remember the 1930s Buzz Berkeley musicals?" she said. "The kaleidoscopic dance numbers and
synchronized swimming? There's a new TV program, a musical comedy, I tried out for that's partly an homage to
Buzz Berkeley. They asked me back for a second audition, but I'm not sure I'll go."
Jackie had been a competitive swimmer and studied dance and music at Juilliard. "Why not?" I said. "The
show sounds perfect for you."
"I fell into real estate as a sideline, more lucrative, say, than waiting tables or driving for Uber. But it's been
ten years since I moved to the city, and even if I got the role, how many more will there be for a performer over
thirty?"
She was right. The film industry's "sell-by date" was brutal and unforgiving. At least she'd found a career to
fall back on.
"If you're interested," I said, "I've another property to show you."
The house where I'd been staying was built atop a canyon rim with soaring views of the city, mountains, and
ocean. Mostly glass and stone, it rose on slender girders to jut into the sky. But recent heavy rains and an earthquake
had dislodged many nearby homes and threatened to slide mine into the canyon too.
I hired a contractor to shore up the foundation and support beams, but work hadn't yet begun. And, despite
city inspectors' warningsthey'd strung yellow "do not cross" tape throughout the houseI didn't vacate. My
contractor assured me the second levelmaster bedroom, deck, swimming poolwas still safe, though he
suggested I drain the pool, which I couldn't bear to do.
I grabbed a bottle of wine from the kitchen and led Jackie through the master bedroom and outside. I sat in a
deck chair while Jackie walked toward the pool. It was large, if not Olympic-sized, teardrop-shaped with a three-
meter-high diving board near the deep end. She stepped lightly, not warily as if testing the deck boards, but like a
trained athlete or dancer, with assurance and poise.
She stepped round the yellow tape that festooned the diving board and mounted the first rung.
Jackie wore a sports bra and denim shorts. I suggested she might want a bathing costume, of which I had
several that might fit.
"It's warm enough," she said. "My clothes will dry."
"Suit yourself."
She kicked off her sandals and climbed several more rungs. Then, suddenly, a jolt and rumble in the earth
sent shock waves racing across the pool's surface. Jackie turned to me.
"A 4.0, I guess," I said, "depending on the epicenter."
"How many"
"Once or twice daily, though they're usually smaller. Don't you get them in the Valley?" She lived in Glendale
thirty miles away.
"Probably. Not that I'd notice." She clambered to the top rung, "But then I don't usually climb a high-board
teetering near the edge of a cliff."
Then Jackie surprised meand perhaps herself. She sprang into a hand-stand and leaped into the air,
somersaulting twice, jackknifing once, and then plunging into the water, barely making a splash.
Moments passed. I jumped to my feet and craned my neck, fearing that nine feet of water might not be
enough. Then Jackie burst to the surface, gasping for breath.
She got out, trotted over, and sat beside me, soaked and trembling. I got up to retrieve a bathrobe from the
house. Returning, I wrapped it around her. But the air had turned cool, with fog swirling from the canyon and the
sun vanishing behind clouds, and so we returned inside the house.
In the kitchen I made an omelet, thinking she was hungry. As Jackie sat at the table, plates and silverware
began rattling.
 "Another 4.0?" she asked.
I nodded. "You're getting good."
She frowned. "I don't think I can sell the house. Even retrofitted, how many years can it last?"
"In Japan, houses last twenty, thirty years tops. Think of the views here. Think of the disposable wealth many
people have."
"And you don't fear for their safety?"
"Caveat emptor. Besides, didn't you forcefully evicteven terrorizesquatters and homeless at the other
house?"
"You're right," Jackie said. "What am I doing with my life?" She sobbed and lowered her head in her arms.
Though I'd hoped she'd spend the night, Jackie left before sunset. I consoled myself. The city was full of
people on the make, especially young women. I made another omelet and took it outside onto the deck.
The fog retreated into the box and side canyons below, while the moon rose over the ocean. Lights flared in
other people's houses. But they seemed like fireflies, ephemeral and distant.
I braced myself, feeling a tremor. But it was only the deck, buffeted by the breeze, swaying and creaking.
The pool glinted, steam rising. (I'd turned on the heater.) I peeled off my clothes and, naked, rushed over
and plunged in the deep end.
<<<<>>>>
 Fall 2017
John Paul King

Creature in the Sky

We had a party one night where the cops came and started busting kids who were underage. This was
October, I guess, but it wasnt Halloween. Out in the side yard, they busted this girl I saw the whole thing
happen who kept claiming she was twenty-one. They asked her how old she was and she said she was
twenty-one, but then when they asked for her ID she handed them something from somewhere like New
Jersey or Pennsylvania that was expired and that claimed she was twenty-five. From there, the conversation
went downhill until she was being escorted out to the cop car.

My little brother was a freshman then too and he was at the party that night. I tried not to get too drunk.
Anyway, I usually tried not to get too drunk when we had parties because usually the cops came and wanted
to talk to one of the residents. My little brother, Jack, got really drunk that night. My housemates had fun
getting him drunk just purely for the fact that he was my brother. And one time this was later in the year
at the Christmas party they got him drunk and had him lick the plunger, I guess because he was my little
brother.

At the beginning of the year, I had given Jack my ID which meant I had to go to the DMV and tell them I had
lost mine and pay twenty bucks for a new one. So then, on that night I started telling about, I went to find
Jack so I could hold the ID while things played out with the cops. By the time I found him, the cops were
probably already gone. It took forever to find him. It turned out he was inside, upstairs in Doms room,
passed out on the futon while some girl sat there, neatly dressed, looking prim and proper with her knees
together. She was petting Jack like a dog and crooning at him. Girls liked Jack. I asked her if Jack was alright.
Hes just really drunk.
Why do you say that?
Hes passed out.
Maybe he was sleepy.
Right before he passed out he was telling me that mermaids are real and then when I tried to correct
him he started crying.
Do you see his wallet there?
Only one of his back pockets was accessible because of the position in which he had passed out. She started
to check that pocket for his wallet and then stopped. Hey, who are you anyway? she said.
His brother.
What do you need with Jacks wallet?
I just want to make surewait, who the hell are you even?
Im Jacks friend. She seemed to be going out of her way to say his name.
Listen Im not trying to steal from him. I just want to make sure he doesnt have my ID on him. The
cops are down there.
Oh, are you Jacks brother?
I thought thats what I had already been saying.
Ohhhhh, she said. That makes sense then.
Listen, I said. I kept checking out in the hallway. Can you check his other pocket there for his
wallet?
That ID is already gone.
What?
Jack doesnt have that ID anymore.
Why not?
Someone took it.
Who took it? I said. Who are you?
 Im Jacks friend.
Wheres that ID?
Are you mad at Jack?
Id like to find that ID.
I know who took it.

She told me that some kid in Jacks and her dorm with similar hair to Jack to me technically, I guess
had stolen the ID. Im sure she was covering for him. Im sure he sold it or got himself in a fix some way or
another and just offered it up. But it bothered me just then to know that some random kid was benefiting off
of my likeness. It made me feel violated or something. I asked her to try to pin down the kid. She said there
were actually technically two of them. Shed text them to see where they were. Theyll text me back for sure.
The one is trying to get in my pants.
The one that looks like me?
Like you?
Okay, like Jack then.
Oh, he looks nothing like Jack. He just has similar hair. Jack is way cuter than this kid.
Who is this kid?
This kid is a real d-bag. He has been trying so hard to get in my pants.

They were at Side, which was a twenty-one and up bar. I might need you to come with me to point them
out.
What about Jack?
What about him?
I dont want to just leave him here.
This is my house. He will be fine.
But look at him.
I looked at him. You must like him pretty good.
Hes just a sweetheart.
 One time I chucked a cue ball at him. It missed and went through the drywall.
She ran her hand threw his hair and looked down at him lovingly. Poor little Jack, she said. He
looks so peaceful.
Help me find these two kids, will you?

My house was only two blocks from Side, which was one of the main reasons it was a great party house. You
could come to our house, get fucked-up, head uptown, and by the time you would normally realize you
should be slowing down, youd already have a drink in your hand at Side. She had to go to the bathroom
before we left. She came out of the bathroom next to Doms room saying how disgusting it was, which I
thought was funny because most girls had already become desensitized to that stuff. She went back into
Doms room to grab her purse off of the futon where Jack was passed out. It took her several misses to get the
strap over her shoulder, which was the first time I could sense that she might have been even slightly drunk.
Most people were already hammered by this time of night. Take Jack, for instance. This girl was tall and she
had this leather skirt on. She was good-looking. She went down the stairs before me, unsteady in her high
shoes, her hand on the wall to guide her. It was a steep, narrow staircase with small steps. The party was
cleared out by then, the cops gone. The night was alive, drunk kids who were just slightly less drunk than
Jack were hooting and calling from every direction. So are you Jacks girl? I asked.
Am I Jacks girl?
Sure.
Who talks like that anymore?
What year are you?
Youre nothing like Jack at all.
Did you have fun at the party?
Im a freshman, she said sharply. I live in Jacks dorm remember.
Oh right.
If you try to make a move on me Im going to take off my shoe and stick it in your eye.
I just want to find my ID.
She stopped to fix something on her shoe and then she re-slung her purse strap over her shoulder.
 Whats your name anyway? I asked her.
Jackie.
Alright.
Whats so funny about that?
Nothing. Nothing.
He is a sweetheart, you know? Your brother is.
Christ. Yes. I realize.
We walked on a ways. Im just saying, she muttered.

We had to wait in line at Side. We didnt really talk, we just looked around. Then I remembered she was a
freshman. This is twenty-one and up, you know?
Ive got an ID.
Alright.
We stood just inside, away from the crowd, while she texted these two kids to track them down. Side
was a converted bowling alley. It had the same type of floor as youll see at any hardware store. There was
not a single decoration in the place except for the neon Bud Light sign behind the bar. This place was
proofed so that kids could get extremely drunk and do absolutely no damage except to themselves and to
each other. No property damage.

I was a twenty-two year old standing in a twenty-one and up bar with a bunch of eighteen and nineteen year
olds. I felt old. My whole senior year I felt old whenever I went to a bar, like I was trying to live a life that was
already gone.

When these kids came, the one gave Jackie a huge hug that she wanted no part in. These kids did look like a
piece of shit. D-bags, like Jackie said. I guess I was already on edge, probably because I had been around a
bunch of drunk kids at my house all night while I had stayed pretty sober. Being sober around a bunch of
drunk underclassmen will put anyone one edge. I was just standing there; Jackie had to really usher these
kids toward me. They wanted nothing to do with me. They were all caught up in Jackie. They probably
hadnt even noticed me. Jackie said, This is Jack Loftons brother. Do you still have Jacks ID?
Yo, what up, dude? said this kid who had given Jackie the big hug. I hated him. He was the one with
hair like Jack and me.
Did you take an ID from Jack?
Im Connor, he said. The other kid just stood back.
Okay.
Bro, chill. Im just being polite.
Jackie stepped in and said: You guys can figure this out. Im going to go check on Jack.
Jack is fine, I said. Why are you so worried about Jack?
I might just go home.
Do you want a drink or anything? I felt like I owed her.
I think Im just going to head home.
Okay.
She left. Bro, this kid Connor said to me as Jackie walked off. He got real close. You know that
girl?
Shes friends with my little brother.
Jack, sure. But do you know her.
No.
Bro, this kid leaned in real close. You know that girl got raped?
What?
Yep. First weekend. How about that for shitty luck?
How do you even know something like that?
It got around, bro. You know the way things get around.
Howd it happen?
She was at some party, passed out in some kids room. Somewhere off campus. Wrong place wrong
time and, boom, raped.
You probably shouldnt be going around just talking about that shit.
 You were with her. I figured Id tell you.
Listen, I said. Do you have my ID?
Nah, man.
Howd you get in here then?
I have my own ID, bro. You think you have the only ID on campus?
Let me see it.
Bro, he said.
If you call me bro one more time Ill punch your face.
Chill, dog. He back-hand tapped my chest. I shoved him. He fell into the other kid he was with and
they both went into a group of freshmen girls huddled just inside the door. The bouncer looked up right
away. He stepped toward me. Im fucking leaving, I told the bouncer.

I went and got a piece of pizza and was going to go eat it down by the pond, but as I was walking I ran into
Nathan Jenson and his girlfriend. They were heading away from uptown. I acted calm and polite, as if I
hadnt just been kicked out of Side. Nathans girlfriend loved me. She came up and gave me a hug. Hi, Bud,
she said. She rested her head on my chest. She was hammered. Aw, Nathan, its Bud, she said.
Nathan said: Dude, Jack was fucked up tonight. I was cracking up.
Yeah, hes passed out on Doms futon right about now.
Nathan laughed. His girlfriend I honestly cant remember her name said, Awwwwwww.
You guys heading home? I asked.
That pizza looks amazing, said Nathans girlfriend.
Here you want it?
Can I have a bite?
Here. Take it. I got it for you.
Awwwwwww. Bud.
I gave her the pizza. Nathan said: You want to come sneak into the baseball field with us?
What?
Were going to go sneak into the baseball field.
We walked down toward the baseball diamond while Nathans girlfriend worked on my piece of pizza. She
even gave Nathan a bite. Is this something you guys do? Break into the baseball field.
You know how many times weve banged in the outfield? said Nathans girlfriend, gnawing on the
pizza crust. I like the feel of the cool grass on my back.
I dont want to intrude on something here.
Nah, said Nathan. We raid the dugouts is what we do. Theyve got these huge jugs of bubble gum
and sunflower seeds.
I like the Ranch, said his girlfriend.

This corner of campus was quiet. We were away from uptown. We got in through a secret door in the
outfield wall. It was disguised to look like just another panel in the wall. Once you knew where the door was,
it was as easy as pushing it open and walking right in. The moon was up and the air smelled sweet like
rotting leaves and then smoky like a bonfire. I never played baseball growing up but as we walked across the
outfield that night, I fell in love with the game.

They went to one dugout and I went to the other. I wound up just sitting on the bench, listening to Nathan
and his girlfriend. They were excited about something. Nathan, his voice giddy with laughter, called: Bud!
Check this out! His girlfriend was laughing. Her laughter was small on the night air. Anyway, they must
have found something outside of just their normal bubblegum and sunflower seeds. They were good,
Nathan and his girlfriend. You could tell just purely based on the fact that they were still laughing at this
time of night, not fighting. I didnt go check it out, whatever it was they had found in the other dugout. I sat
there listening to Nathans girlfriends laughter. It was really lovely to hear just then.

Next I knew, they were gone and all was quiet. I had been a long ways away and, when I came back, it
occurred to me that Nathan and his girlfriend might never have been there at all. A long time had passed. It
must have been four in the morning by then. I left the dugout and walked across the infield into the outfield
grass. I lay down, face to face with a quiet October moon. It was a creature up there. It knew I was watching.
I couldnt believe I had never done this before. I thought of all the nights I had gotten too drunk and done
stupid shit instead of coming to this baseball diamond and lying in the outfield grass and watching the
moon. I resolved right then to do this every single Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night for the rest of my
college life.

I could feel the moonlight soft and cool on my skin as I rushed away from the core of the earth. The
moonlight spilled over me. As I lay there, I remember, I was amazed absolutely profoundly amazed
that this same moon was in the sky before I was ever around and would be there a long time after Im gone.
Think of how many people it had glowed upon, spilled over this way. Every night the moon comes up and
every morning that we wake, we get another chance to improve upon whatever we did the day before. But
its false, this whole idea of getting to start anew each day. Days make up our lives, and we dont get another
chance at those.

I was twenty-two then. Now Im twenty-five. After I graduated, I got a job where I now sit at a desk in a cube
under florescent lighting. You can feel the hum of it on your skin. It feels like little invisible ants crawling on
you. Ill sit scribbling these thoughts on a legal pad and then put them in the trashcan at my desk. I just
scribble this stuff, as if Im scratching at something that has meaning for my life but that, the more I scratch
at it, the more it shies into a hole. It has something to do with the disparity between the florescent lighting
and the moonlight. It has something to do with Nathans girlfriends laughter from the other dugout. It has
something to do with that girl, Jackie. She would be a senior now. Jack is a senior now. Hes got a nice
girlfriend, a little painter- photographer girl who he met at a concert two summers ago. She wears too-big tee
shirts and has a nose ring but is really smart. Shes really self-assured. She talks in a low, almost hoarse voice,
and I like that about her. She never talks about what a sweetheart Jack is, but I guess she probably thinks he
is one. A Sweetheart. They dont even go to the same school. Theyve been together almost two years.

After I throw my scribbled thoughts into the trashcan at my desk, the janitor, Koburi, comes through at night
and picks them out. He flattens out the paper and leaves it on my desk for me to deal with in the morning. I
guess he thinks its funny. Or else, he sees the meaning where I dont. Either way, hes not supposed to be
going through our trash like that.

When I got back that night I went to Doms room to check on Jack. I flicked on the light. Dom was in his bed,
naked, with some girl, naked, sprawled half-across him. Then there was Jack, still on the futon. He had
changed positions just slightly. That girl, Jackie, was right. He did look peaceful.
 Fall 2017
John Meyers

Black Hole

Rotting plywood boards cover the windows of an abandoned building.

Wayward plastic grocery bags catch on a rusty fire escape and flutter in the wind.
A fifth floor window has lost its plywood shield in a recent fire,
revealing a charred black hole.
Every day thousands of cars pass the building,
their drivers see the black hole and think of nothing.

Roll back the years and children are running up and down the fire escape.
Their laughter reaches the room that will become the black hole.
Afternoon sunshine warms the room, lovely beams of dust-particle light
settle on the hardwood floor in golden pools.
A mother spoon-feeds an eager baby in a high chair.
A man calls from the next room, reminding his son
they must leave for the game or theyll be late.
The mother looks out the window,
squints into the sunshine and smiles.

In time this family is gone, replaced by a new family

whose members also live peaceful, comfortable lives
filled with experiences only they will know about.
The cycle repeats until the day sheets of plywood shut out the light.
The city has plans for the building but there are other priorities.
The black hole appears.

There is no record of events that occurred in and around this building.

Birthday parties, card games, family dinners, fireflies chased at twilight.
All of it gone.
Left behind is a crumbling structure thousands of cars pass each day.
This is a single empty building in a struggling city.
How many more are there in this city, in the world.
How many millions of moments and memories lost to time,
replaced by grim silence.
 Fall 2017
Jennit Glass

Feelings of possessiveness might occur.

You are standing in the vestibule of a museum.

You strike a pose in front of one of his more intense abstracts.

Youre ensconced in a buttery soft afternoon light.

One small victory.

Your head is rolling a little.

You kept your new jacket from the clutches

of that uncharitable person at the coat check
stand that wanted to take it from you.

She said that these feelings

of possessiveness are completely normal.

Supple surroundings becomes a part of you.

In almost no time theyve been matched.

Interior is given equal attention.

A silky feeling of disacquaintance.

In one of the inside zippered pockets, you keep a notebook

to jot down your impressions of the Max Ernst exhibition,
which youre perusing now.

Jenna, whos perusing you, asks if she can touch your jacket.
Youre on your own now.
 Fall 2017
Jennifer K Dick & Travis Cebula

PHYSICS

Im having issues, she said.

The wires, test tubes entangled

a ball of yarnAriadne-esque
complexities. Fractalesque
crystallography of the labyrinth-
ine scope of mechanic-mysteries.

She notes:

It is a core discipline within

the orbital dynamics of systems.

Solid line inked as in an array

of coalescing interstitial sites
in close packed lattices.
Could be the explanation
for inner turbulence. Last night,

under the influence of gravity

It was(nt) the pull of pooling

crushed
notions

The need to move on vs.

inertianot unlike
Batman vs. Superman (a sequel?)
Such are the basics of spaceflight broken
into conic sections

iconoclastic
nomenclature
her / love / a

Circle. Ellipse. Parabola.

Six orbital elements.

Grabbing another coffee, going out

for stars, the cool hum of the central-
ized air controlled inner sanctum
of her start-up laboratory.

Notes.

define: Semi-Major Axis. define: Eccentricity. define:

Inclination. define: Argument of Periapsis. define: Time
of Periapsis Passage. define: Longitude of Ascending Node.

These issues, she said,

carefully arranging the box
cutter by the spectrometer by
the microscope cleaning supplies
by a grain of glitter, a memory,
night
discarded

defining: Speleology. defining: Hearbreak. defining:

A More Realistic Framework for Dynamic Non-
Linear Systems. defining: KAM Theory. defining:
Parameters for the Evolution of Physical Systems.
Redefining: Fixity
(in) (out of)
Motion.

Issues / Euphemisms / Misguided Trajectories

yet to
define:
her.
OPTICS

To extend out into the qualitative change

coming to be into existence:
generation.

A gesture implies a body. And into a room

filled with blood and flashing lights one
comes, one goes.

This infant obstructs

The corruption of passing

away into nothingness

The mother succumbs. The similarity

can only be observed objectively, if then.

if dead, then dead. If dead, then

no longer existinga sensory

experience, scintillating.

How the world must be when first we see it.

Blood and strobes and a vague notion
of our mothers face

is that you when youre old?

Impetus: motive power: to away with this inclination

I dont want to watch the last, the pending,

the momentum shift from pendulum to stillness.
Away with this inclination of her head. Away
with this inclination of the intravenous tube
and away with this inclination to walk outside
and never come back.

To never come back.

All (e)motion tends toward form /

magnitude of acceleration.
 Acceleration varies directly with age.
The more time we are given, the faster
we climb. Eventually we all escape
our orbits.

Natural declination: theorizing

permanent non-natural motion.
Violence of a projectile.
At the moment of death we become both
Unpredictable and tangentialcapable of altitude,
of maiming or pulling laughter in the slipstream
of our exit. Denying our birth would be

denying the existence of such levity.

PASSAGES 1 and 2

A wave cascades over a beach.

Can you imagine anything more reckless
than a boulder hovering mid-descent?
What would Newton say about
observation?
To see the boulder fall and know,
therefore, it can never halt
strap slipped off-shoulder, her
halter-top shivers the cresting sea
once seen it cannot be unseen.
Someone stops in a doorway. Leans in.
Closer, he says, voice molasses. And
to imagine

it could have been anyone until

she turned her head,
until (called
back) the glance hers (reversal)
tossed him down (Orpheus) while
she (Eurydice) stepped out into the
Sunlight.
Shadows no more but heat.

Now everyone stares

past the floodlight-spotlight up-
wards: alit onstage / screen note-drift-
wood-baiting the air with mayflies. She places
the freedom of an expiration date on
her facealoft,

this message
scribbled post mid-night, hefted off-bow
bottled at the surface
the surface it
refuses to read backwards
asked:
Is that you, when youre older? Tiny
hand tinier still in the tinny darkness.
*

Fixed /
in a broken line
and blinking
movement or
crystalline fract-
ure frag-
mented
ordonnance for
an ellipse ballistic
there to
there
but not back again.
Ping (control) pong
Blip. Blink.
between the
(sea) (see)
there is:
a someone.
I would like to live in a world determined
By my dog. By doggerel. By a dug-outside-
the-line lisp, border (line) (collie) (simplicity)

The sea seems

palatable until /
calamity
within
the opened
parentheses
Mark:
(What gets whispered
in between
spaces is the truth.)
Or part-
ially a marker of
mimed messages
he hands her
over.
Here. This future is for you.
Scene seen or unseen
 little creatures saw through
(possibilities)
exemplify
the
extemporaneous
voiced charted
chiaroscuro
fixed /
with / in
a pinhole camera
recto / verso / bright / dark
this dotted mapline leads us
by our optic nerves
into crippled / this
/ crystalline / sea
 Fall 2017
Janet Mason

Cliff Dwellers

They were going to see George tomorrow evening. He was throwing a small party to celebrate the
completion of his painting, Nude With A Parrot. He had worked on it for years and said that it was much
more complex than any of his boxing paintings, which of all his work had received the most acclaim. Nan
couldn't wait to see it.
She first knew of George as an artist, then as her teacher and then as her friend. When she still lived in
New York City, she went to the Art Students League on Fifty Seventh Street. She had intended on signing
up for his class. But George's classes in the City were always full. So she started taking art classes with
George when she and Wilna moved to Bearsville near the town of Woodstock in the Catskills where he
taught in the summer. He was taking on new students and as it turned out he liked her work. She couldn't
believe her luck!
She knew of his work from her days in the City. She had gone to a group show of the Ash Can artists at
a gallery in the Village. There, she had fallen in love with his Cliff Dwellers. She was enthralled by the large
painting of overcrowded Lower East Side tenements with a street between them. A huddled mass of people
filled the bottom of the canvass. Children played on the pavement in the foreground. Wearing white, their
mothers bent over them. The mothers were young women harried beyond their years with too many
children and even more worries. Four clotheslines were strung above the crowd between the tenement fire
escapes. The thickly slanted brushstrokes brought the scene to life. On the left hand side of the canvass, a
black man wearing a brimmed hat tipped his head forward. On the right, a white man sat on the railing next
to a set of stairs that led from the tenement into the crowded street.
The people looked as if they had spilled out of the tenements and into the street between them. There
were other figures on the stairs. Heads protruded from open windows. A woman stood on a fire escape as
she reached out to hang laundry.
At first, Nan barely noticed the trolley in the background. Then she looked closer. Tiny faces stared out
of the trolley's square windows. A tenement rose behind the trolley. Miniature people sat on crowded fire
escapes, looking down.
She remembered the small patch of light at the top of the painting. At first she thought it was the sky.
But when she looked closer, she saw that white smoke had swirled up from the chimney of a lower building
in front of a skyscraper. The people who lived in the tenements were walled into their surroundings. This
fact had resonated with a pang in her stomach. Her father had made sure that she always had what she
needed. They weren't wealthy but she had enough. While she had been living her life, others were living in
overcrowded, disease ridden circumstances. She had heard of this before. When she lived in the city, she
would often stand at the back of the crowd listening to stump speeches given by socialists. Their words were
somehow remote. The painting suddenly made everything real.
When she read the plaque on the gallery wall next to the painting, Nan learned that nearly two-thirds of
the population of New York City lived in tenement housing by 1900. This was when the more affluent
people who lived in the Lower East side began to move further north. The immigrants -- many fleeing
famines and wars -- moved into the single-family dwellings that had been converted into multiple apartment
tenements or into new housing that had been constructed as tenements.
The painting made her feel more deeply. It made her want to learn more. Nan longed to be this kind of
painter. She wanted to confront society and make them see things they were afraid to look at in real life. She
wanted to be the kind of painter who challenged herself. And she did. She saw things so keenly that she had
to paint -- even if it was a river and not a tenement. When an image crystallized in front of her, when it was
so beautiful that it was painful, she knew that she had to paint it.
She painted one of her first oils under George's tutelage when she took a class with him in Woodstock.
She titled it, Along the Hudson: River Landscape. Tall wintry trees on the banks of the river framed the sides of
the painting. The blue grey Hudson swirled behind them. In the river, a window-shaped square of yellow
light brightened a tiny tug boat. Puffs of whitish grey trailed from its smokestack. It was dusk. The patch of
yellow light reflected in the murky river. Art imitated life. Nan had painted a wide white swath down the
middle of the river. The thickness of the oil paint gave the canvass texture. The white streak that she made
with the paint brush looked like the patch of floating ice that it was.
 Fall 2017
Jade Homa

now shes f r e e
and Im just free falling

remember when you used to

be the one to catch me?
and now Im just the girl who will
break her neck on the window

let us take note of how

terribly different things
can become
in just four months

so maybe youre the bird,

or maybe its me
either way, the wings
are clipped

swan dive
sometimes I think too much
at night, and I wonder what
would have happened to my veins
and capillaries and skin if I
had never made that promise

I kiss you softly but with feeling

theres a fervor here because I
know what is to come
my fingers and your hair and your
heartbeat soon mine will be gone

the guilt is not buried in my

throat like acid the way I always
pictured it would
it is too easy to let go, my
smile coming so fast

I run my tongue up your lips, then

slowly, into your mouth, up against
your teeth and I pull the material
on your shirt
until your ribs are against mine
this is saying goodbye
my sharp mouth, taking the
most it can get out of yours
before it is too late
before I am gone

how it would have ended if you never made me promise not to kill myself
Its just that I take five minute showers
and yours last an hour.
I guess what Im saying is
we would even out the water bill.

balancing act
This is how I want to explain it to everyone right now.

She is the only one who would get my coffee order right out of everyone I know. She is the light and the dark
and the shadows flickering in a hallway. She is the taste of peach gummies from the local convenience store
at 3:28 pm in her bedroom underneath the covers. She is that feeling when you go over a loop on a roller
coaster and your stomach does a flip just because she smiled at you yesterday. She is two arms holding you
tight and forehead kisses and warm sweatshirts and chocolate colored eyes.

She is tangled up hair in a ponytail you want to run your fingers through. She is solid, real, an oak tree of
solidarity. She is taller, her hands are bigger, her fingers longer. She wraps herself around you, and the
world disappears. She is bruised knuckles and a sharp mouth and hickey marks and fireworks that look
pretty just before they implode. She is Pop Rocks in your mouth every time you taste her, and most nights
you can still smell the essence she left behind - woods and dirt and soot.

She is the feeling when youre kissing someone and they smile against your lips. She is a pair of Doc
Martens. She is words stumbling over each other in excitement. She is the goddamn sun. She is the safest I
have ever felt in my entire life.

Once my favorite poet said, She does not remind me of anything; everything reminds me of her.

She is you.

she is
 Fall 2017
J. Mulcahy-King

Excerpts from Euryphion, Raze

i.
squick pat
mux tryst
beg for oranges

ii.
aporiac skittles
asemic tome
swift bris

iii.
mississippian stammer
coping sapio strut
all the lost

iv.
cernunnos byplay
silfra-new
soggy grave
v.
fragging dom
bit-burnt
seminyak

vi.
lissom slick
paunch quem
quivers

vii.
mulk-well
disulphides
hinge binge

viii.
oromo pop
soma sabot
frigid fuselage

ix.
televisual youthfulness
origami arms bud
useful dead loves

x.
ontico-
ontological
still
 Fall 2017
Irene Koronas

apparel

queeny nuisance
petticoat oblique

crinkle under spill

hypodermic rivets
a suit

a giant squat
curdles
yellow wail
zigzag

collide reel
couples
a detail savor

traffic
mix blow
purple cursory

nails
tinsel sheen
snatch

lip robe
sprang ample

hip
ridden taut

obfuscates
nudes

and
gauche
[sic]

devices ream
conform

stucco polarity

red circuit
vapors

sienna pockets

iron and silica

dug from dull yellow

manganese
sand or opaque
revelations

paper blankets
retard sulphides

paraorange dye
lamp black

in tubes
bison

ram dung
scorches
the belua vasta

rut arboreal

raw succor
tart carcass
messiahs

baroque retort
boar
trims pitchwork

pelts
a cow
frag

palisade
fungus refts
a clot

brunt buckle
folds a crater

ask draft
for a resin cut

of bulk

jocularity
or smear
 Fall 2017
hiromi suzuki

purification

thinking of sinking into the puddle.

the surface reflects gloomy face.

two immies drop from the sky onto my childhood.

muddy eyes are washed up in a sunny place.

floating and shining on the puddle.
 Fall 2017
Marianela Valverde Varela; translated by Erin Riddle

From the Other Side

He picked up his things and looked at his watch, then turned towards the place where he had felt

safe, probably because it had always been there for him: his room.

He said goodbye to the walls that held so many memories: his dreams, his ideas, his emotions, and

now his feelings of homesickness. The walls were fashioned with multicolored graffiti, with figures and

forms that only he could see, that only he could read, that only he could understand.

He also said farewell to the windows that had carpeted his solitary face on sunny afternoons with the

greatest array of harmonies and had announced each morning the waking hours arrival. He said farewell to

his bed and his pillow, intimate friends who knew his secrets and fantasies of love found and lost in memory.

And before leaving he said a prayer before the crucifix, then kissed it and remembered his life-long

companion and that solitude was sometimes necessary (but not always) to find ones own heart. He looked at

the crucifix again and then grabbed it and dropped it in his bag.

He went out, closing the door behind him, and tossed the match. He did not look back, continuing to

walk as he felt the heat on his back Tears welled up in his eyes and were drawn out by the brutal wind that

blew as it did every December.

 The silver moon followed him, illuminating the passageways overflowing with shadows that came to

life and revived the adventures of childhood memories and wounded youthFrom time to time he stopped,

his sight hindered by a cloud as a gust of wind once again parched his grief-stricken face mourning the

necessary departurenecessary to work, necessary to live, necessary to be happy, necessary to change his

life, necessary to experience freedom, necessary to live in peace, necessary to find companionship, necessary

to eat and have decent housing

At the end of the street he met the one who would help him change his life on the other side. He

climbed into the truck at his own pace and met eyes and faces much like his own: strained, heartbroken, and

scared of leaving that place they loved so much. Their faces exhibited the same immense hope that things

might change so they would not have to leave.

It was quite late. They had been waiting such a long time for this!

The greater the distance, the more his heart clung to his homeland. At one point he even felt like

throwing himself to the ground, but he simply looked towards the hill hed lived on and saw his hut as it was

slowly consumed by the fire, along with his hope

Meanwhile, the news headlines from the other side announced: Government leaders will meet to

propose measures to deal with the immigration issue, They have built a wall on the border, The

newly passed immigration law will bring, Most immigrants come because, We must take strong

action on immigration

While listening to the newspaper vendors announcing these headlines, he could only think, What

do they know? They are from the other side.

Originally published at http://www.servicioskoinonia.org/cuentoscortos/articulo.php?num=062

 Fall 2017
Erik Fuhrer

[the eyes are wider than the mouth]

but the mouth

is the width of a moth standing on a coinpurse
because the mouth
is angry
and is itself pursed and
a breath of greymatter just escaped the brain and went to a party hosted by the great gatsby
(who actually turned out to just be ok
but) had great scarves the color of lemon ice or orange Julius
or a baboon's buttocks
which is so red that it deserves its own color zipcode: 1111RED
where you will find the anthropologist scratching
his head
at the way his hands
have become shovels
and his legs
become stars
because he has found
the key
to a world
where objects are not quite
what they seem in car mirrors but instead
are smaller
than pins buried in haystacks
where little boy blue
gets higher than a kite on Ambien
[stagger into
the horses body]

where god is but a shell swaying

on an esophagus of neighing
don't worry no horses were harmed in this poem
only embodied
only recognized as a body
worth being a body
that is not just for the whip
or for labor
but for pleasure
for understanding for spiritual growth
read a fucking handbook whydontchya
and you will understand
that these hooves are made for walking
in that the horses in Connemara are more beautiful
than your stupid soul can ever be because
it is soaked in the dust that god created you from
how did god create the horse from light
from cloth
from the sun
from clay from NEIGHboring
worlds
you know those in which you are an
alien
and those little green men
are just plain people laughing at
your stupid looking head and your
strange little bodies which can't even
break the speed of sweat
[wolves wrestling shovels]

from their mouths

moths flustering flickers of dogstooth
jammed
against the transmission of that thing called love
which you caress every yesterday with a pair of hands borrowed
from the shelf of a priest who lopped off a limb
every Tuesday for contrition
for ammunition for a day
when he could walk on water without any feet
and multiply fishes using only his tongue
which is in a glass jar next to his teeth
next to his piano forte
continously playing bach's brandenburg concerto number 3

I only play on the left side of the piano

because I have blacklung
and I am a flitter in the ashtray
a whimper in a glass
a hollow stutter in the windowpane
a gutted body of a fish
a swift swipe of light on the subfloor
with its large crack in the foundation
make sure you put on some rouge
so at least the disaster
is a beautiful disaster
a volcano exploding
with glistening lips
[shroom destructioom]

a tree felled
in the fellshroon
couple of swoons with an oiled
tune-
cluck uck ck k k k
__ __ __

throat is cuzzy
huzzy
k
k
k
__

mushwoom in the thicket

mudbloom
ashmush breathing through
the silo with a sigh
low
cuffing fit

darlingguzzleleanintomyglut

theres no escaping these mudclots in the bloodsplean

 Fall 2017
Emmitt Conklin

Negimprognation

being of petals and guests

your lettered fail-stamp
my label proved to receive, held
and even shored in sonic some
would mask the goal to mask less

as in the funeral process,

weve walked on pennies shedding,
forgotten who died

and on, prenatal other,

going on to prints
and cool justing, if only
to gratify basic needs,
and aspirate the all for one conception:

sputter. I remember
the failing drop, but us.
From where to where? and
acting up could only trace
the often given tools. Plan?

Our gel is resisting creation. Took. Please hold,

being, it is weakening your birthday,

being, it is making you temperate
in each of these crayons.
I love you just as you stop.
Low Earth Orbit

too much on the fringes

you will find yourself
locked in the horrid
center of something

where you once thought

of sifting through
deep hidden sewer
systems running
with melted sky
frost on the eyes
of the man who
never read his own
name you find yourself
broke to the thought
of it flailing to place
a lid on a soft drink
in the pat world
where you work

why cant sunspots

learn to live with
other sunspots

no use drowning
your useless ducks
the ducks are for
drowning the drowning
is aforementioned
it smokes a joint
with other wishes
acting out without
pattern

what a co-worker
sings to is none
of your business
what a bank (!)
builds over begs
to be rarefied
in songs it cant

sustain and that

is the difference
when money is
green paper
on cardboard

a real breath is just

the softer of all
chest pains
 Fall 2017
Dian Parker

The Art of Falling

Lying on coarse white sheets in an unfamiliar whitewashed room she thinks of his
body. White. Impossibly strong. And once again she can barely contain herself.
They rushed her to Santa Maria Nuovo Hospital where she is tended by a young
Italian doctor. When he leans over the hospital bed, he smells of Noxzema from her
childhood and his glossy dark eyes remind her of something equally strong; she just cant
remember what. He is speaking but the room swirls wildly, so she focuses on the single black
curl falling over his forehead.
I have asked the Galleria to post danger signs countless times. And now here you
my fourth case in one month.
Earlier this morning, when shed first looked up at the marble form, so mighty and tall,
she recognized the feeling. Her knees went soft and her head seemed to swell. She often got
that way with Julian but that was to be expected with a flesh-and-blood man. Her five-feet-
four had always been drawn to things larger. Julian was six-four. She liked looking up. She
liked being overcome.
The doctor, whom she thought was probably the same age as her father and just as
insistent continues, They faint at Botticellis Birth of Venus. They faint at Adoration of a Magi
by our great Leonardo. Most problem hundred patients in four years David Syndrome.
The doctor sits down next to the bed and proceeds to rub his head back and forth in the
palms of his hands. She watches his silky black curls flatten and spring back until she has to
close her eyes. She cannot stop yearning.
Id like to ask you a few questions, Signorina, if I may please. We are doing a study.
She will not open her eyes just yet. She is still consumed by how far she had to look up
to find the Giants eyes. The arched backbend it required.
Do you feel any anguish?
Anguish? Anguish from ecstasy?
He tries again. Have you been feeling insecure?
She knows where this is going. These are questions for sick people and she is not sick.
She is well aware how intensely she feels, but she hadnt expected the David to so completely
undo her. But anguish and insecurity? Ridiculous.
Signorina, per favore, a little patience. Tourists are often agitated by Firenze. We are
trying to understand.
Understand? Understand an epiphany? Walden Pond was an epiphany. St. Paul on the
way to Damascus was an epiphany. For Marissa, finding Julian was an epiphany. Ineffable
things. She turns away from him and sighs.
Lying in the Florence hospital, weariness overtakes her and she surrenders. She will
not call Julian or her parents or the American Embassy. It would be worth it to die in a moldy
hospital from an overdose of splendor the Italian doctor labels her case an overdose
crisis. But for her, there can never be enough. Marissa wants saturation, baptismal fire, and
explosions.
 She had fainted at the base of Michelangelos David in the Galleria dellAccademia.
She had waited until the last tour group left the area so she could be alone with him. Once
she started down the long hall towards the statue, the magnetic pull intensified, drawing her
closer into his marbled field. At that point, like all the other times, she had no choice.
Once, when she was four, in ballet class, her teacher had put on Korsakovs Flight of the
Bumble Bee. The little girls in class were to stand still and listen to the music. When they felt
the urge, they could let themselves go and dance like the wind. The music played and the
other girls twirled and leapt, but not Marissa. She stood in the center of the dance floor not
moving, her eyes closed, trembling from head to foot.
That was the first time rapture revealed itself to her. Years later it happened again on a
Snowcoach through Yellowstone. The sleigh was gliding along through the dusk when three
bison ambled across the road. The coach stopped and Marissa stuck her head out the open
roof with the snow falling through. She could have touched the huge lolling head and black
eyes, deep as a whales; she was that close. When he turned his mammoth head and stared at
her, his humble majesty entered her spirit. A molten quiver.
And again, the first time the sun bled through the blue stained-glass window Julian
had made for her. She hung it in the East window so the light from the sunrise would strike
the sleeping figure in the glass. Wake up, the figure cried, giving her a luscious moment of
dizziness. That deeper place inside of her fit only for the stars, for babies, for love.
The David now, he was there too, in her collection of crucial moments. Along with the
flash of green at sunset, the rose-laced stone of Petra, waiting for the night blooming cereus
to open or all of Beethoven. She never wanted to lose any of them, but each time the moment
would dissipate, as if sheer beauty was impossible to sustain.
The doctor leans over her with a stethoscope. Come va?
 She knows her heartbeat is normal again, unfortunately.
We doctors have observed that it is a unique visitor that establishes a strong bond
with our David. Usually travels alone. You admired too much, vero? May I suggest you start
taking the pills I give you?
He takes her pulse, listens to her now listless heartbeat, gives her more water and
another pill. After he leaves, she will again spit it out, grinding it between her fingernails
until it is dust she can blow away.
May I ask if you had hallucinations?
Marissa wants more hallucinations: shafts of light, bird song, riding bareback and bare-
chested through hot desert wind.
Now she craves a two-ton block of Cararra marble and a chisel. Julian understands
and contributes whenever he can.
Im so tired, doctor.
The David Syndrome does that to everyone. Rest. The doctor softly closes the door
behind him.
It is the beauty of Firenze, and the rainforest, and the Karakorum and every
thundering river she dared to cross. She is undone by the thousands of miles a monarch
must fly before winter. The death defying leaps between trees of the gray squirrels out past
her window. With Julian, playing chess by candlelight when he looks at her with his cobalt
blue eyes. Love could be too much.
Julian told her before she left for Italy, Its best you go. If we have many more days of
this, Ill dissolve into who knows what. They often stayed in bed together for days. The
doctor seemed convinced that too much of a good thing was a malady. Sure, the malady of
joy.
 Maybe the key was not to react. The first time she saw the statue in the distance, her
heart beginning to pump, she should have taken long deep breaths and closed her eyes for a
moment. And waited. Instead, she flung herself forward into the wind tunnel without time to
breathe. She flew towards the David. Wanted to lay her cheek next to his. Stroke his curls,
kiss his lips.
The Giant was too magnificent. Her knees gave in and would no longer support her.
She began to slip away from him and reached with all her might for his brave furled fist. But,
as usual, she succumbed to the thrill of being overcome and fainted. Now the moment was
lost forever. Wasted.
This was what made her tired. How could she explain?
The doctor comes back the next morning, asks about her parents, if they had abused
her. Marissa would rather talk about the light beaming through the window. But she was shy
with the language, and anyway, she didnt want light to be caught up in yet another
condition. She thinks about Matisses Red Studio. The window there, the soft red walls, the
high-backed chair, his paintings stacked against the wall. How she longed to discuss light
with Matisse.
Instead she said, Dottore, ho la nausea.
The doctor shakes his head up and down, his curls bouncing. Si, si si, he says and
leaves the room. A few minutes later he comes back, smiling, and hands her a book. Its cover
is worn and yellowing Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio by Marie-Henri
Beyle.
If you please, Signorina, open to page one hundred one six and read to me.
She begins at the top of the page. Absorbed in the contemplations of sublime beauty,
I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations. Everything spoke so vividly to
my soul. I had palpitations of the heart, which in Berlin they call nerves. Life was drained
from me. I walked with the fear of falling.
Marissa looks up at the doctor who is still smiling. She knows now that he thinks the
whole thing amusing.
Per favore, Signorina, we call it tourista disease. I know you are unhappy. Maybe time
to go home. He pats her hand, bows slightly at the waist, and backs out of the room.
So its time to go. Marissa gets out of bed and tries to dress quickly but her hands
shake, making it hard to button her blouse. She shoves her long hair into a blue wool beret
and looks down at the book on the bed. She considers taking it just for spite, then turns her
back to it. Still dizzy, she leaves the room, walks down the hall and out the door. No one tries
to stop her.
In the milky twilight the streets are already wild with the night. Motorbikes buzz
about, smutting black soot. Young boys dance in the street. Tourists walk by, holding hands,
taking pictures with their phones. She walks now with the fear of falling, her heartbeat again
rapid but not from euphoria. The city is vulgar now. In all the noise and chaos, she regrets
leaving the hospital and her narrow bed.
She sits down on stone steps. It is night. She envisions Michelangelo in the night, his
paper hat dotted with candles, searching the towering stone for Disegno, the true art. What
lay hidden in that stone, inside the block of marble buried and cold for centuries? Would it
be man or beast? What was hidden in Michelangelos soul? What is in hers?
The night is damp and she is cold, and suddenly hungry. When was the last time she
had eaten a simple repast of bread, fennel soup, one herring and a glass of wine
Michelangelos meal?
 She closes her eyes. Soon the traffic noise recedes and she is alone once more with the
David, his block of stone emitting a musky loveliness. She watches as Michelangelo hunches
over the two-ton marble. Divining. The seventeen-foot David is in the stone, waiting. Marissa
too will wait.
Michelangelo will find it. Marissa will have it.
She leans her cheek against the Giants bent thigh. She touches the cool surface of his
marble knee. Placing her hand there, she looks up into his vanilla eyes.
With the magma of her will, she breathes life into his broad white chest. In turn, he
will breathe life into her.
His great thigh rises up. His chest swells. Her heart leaps.
They are breathing together now. Their lives are dependent on one another.
She breathes with the creator. She breathes with the creation.
She will stay with it this time. Right here. Sustaining the ecstasy.
 Fall 2017
David Wyman

RE: Fishing

Colleagues: It has begun and it is exciting! The white curve just now making sharp electrical connections
quickens. Certain of a spiraling future, our eyes get fixed to a shiny opulence.

Tired of owning junk? Insert trendy electronica here. Heed the commodification of our f***ing souls. As
what we started with dissolves in unless otherwise specified. Where each hour adds surface texture pulsing
on roads leading to where a broken neon light

brightly speaking in clichsits fiery century erupts, resets, trees black and frozen, these daysWe need to
stop being the walking dead. Oligarchy, anyone?

You hafta know how the weather affects the water from the point of view of the fish. Which can see out of the
water better than you could see in. All it has to do is wait. So you have to cast down passed it and bring it up
on the side so it doesnt have time to react and itll hafta take a shotIs this food? I better

get it, the fish says to himself, and strikes. Re: fishing. I sat with my back to the hot sun, against my ruin, and
read in my devotional that we are here to serve not question. Leadership is about making groups more
effective. Low-level radiation from flat screen TVs helps ossify public opinion in accord with benevolent
commercial interests.

Today, they have underwater cameras that literally go down and find the fish, get em on filmand what do
you hafta do after that?
 3

Unbendable lines, linguistic shifters

in a cavernous ballroom. A mad pursuit

of the reader of antagonistic glances. The film packed

with heavy-hitters
that boasts some inspired visuals where

all events occur simultaneously but the best you can get from the earpiece is a homophonic translation
substituting word for word, line for line.

A binary like foxglove, its purified

chemicals referred to as digitoxin.

Creating new exciting worlds cleaves

our consensus,
the lyrics loud enough to diffuse darkness.

The imagined life opulent and serene but

losing its cohesiveness. This in a time of havoc

and deception when the exhausted sun takes up his cycle.

Hints that prayer points a way,
markers of a lost or last crossing.

Crystallizing stunningly obdurate blocks

of polysemic texts, official

court documents. Liberating dreams

to invent new uses for the yet unprocessed.

Where there is no other way to interface,

lyric intimacys inexorable anacoluthon
Kolinahr

Ventriloquy, channeling as synonyms. Index a perfect self partly seen banging on a piano. Or curse as the
word discipline has unhappy connotations. Like falling in a purple text, jagged handwriting as negative
voice, eyes mask as wind or whir. Wait another day, then the nothing gold. The set consists of a mini-hihat,
mini-snare, and a triangular unit with three skins.

Yes, Im still getting it and even a couple years ago I saw he died and I still get mail from him.

Youre never more alone than when you improvise. The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the
organized habits and opinions of the masses, according to Bernays, is an important element in democratic
society.

Be mindful. Remember what you look like. Said they would soon change the method from the written to the
spoken.

Here the blue heron lightly steps looking in dark water for movement.

As in the mental discipline whereby this state was maintained, Kolinahr.

Saudade

Including large contributors whose names

appear on public buildings,
we too wonder what it will be, this substituting

fresh adjectives for our displaced

lyric selves literally changing
how the days turn out for us the way

syntax choreographs thinking. Turns out

that Mallarme quote, Speech is no more
than a commercial approach to reality, says it all.

Nomadic here is defined by a Bedouin,

his face covered, in a violent sandstorm
moving horizontally away and

drifting like textually aborted

vectors at a time of copulative semantics
and huge displacements

seen as on a screen suspended, made of light.

Will the mysterious shadow planet Nibiru
obliterate Earth in October?

Theres a bourgeoisie of poets too. They

diagram sentences talking in their sleep, sotto
voce and all at once, like a chorus.

Yet at least two of us dreamt of the Roman fasces

representing our fear of the future,
in a time of spiritual reckoning

but in our virtual sunsets on red beaches,

wee the people, we will be free.
Here let me quote the greatest movie of all time:

as the dread pirate Roberts from

The Princess Bride said Life is pain, highness.
Anyone who says differently is selling something.
That is, because the commodification of the self
requires strict scrutiny,
a constant rebranding. This allows their energy

to flow easily after externals

as their inner lives arent calling for attention.
After breakfast then, a demonstration sabotaged

by the presidents goons. Tanks

rolling down Fifth Avenue at high noon.
Streets on fire tonight at eleven.

Hierarchies of angels sing thee to thy sleep.

(See notes in blue pen)
First things likens unrelentingly ersatz futures.
First Things

It's like dark matter, it's hard to see it but it's messing with the gravity of things. This is that title line
expressing a luxurious gloom, our melancholic nostalgia for what has

not yet happened, its colors the colors of Edvard Munch. To promote for us a new formula for being, experts
in national security couldnt fail to notice that 43 percent of respondents had an actual defined view on
bombing a place in a cartoon. Next then the burning

of books, a process for pressuring anyone to do anything.

Ideas go unchallenged. First things likens

unrelentingly ersatz futures. Just knowing how your debts will be treated after youre gone signifieswhat?
That to a people who had a special love of faith, freedom and peace, who tried to inoculate the Indians by
means of blankets, a divine plan. Label that language sculpture. A huge whirling storm of possible events,
wobbly timelines, a future trying to crystallize out of the streaming present. Someone like Jesus might
convince them. Dont hesitate to pick up small objects, such as a tennis ball, and throw them at coyotes.
Lennon said, The only thing they dont know how to handle is non-violence and humor. Pretend we all
think the same. Your transaction ID for this payment is: 5PM611573D574571K.
Murk Plectrum

Grab your free When guns are outlawed,

Ill be an outlaw T-shirt today!
This is on my bucket list too. Awesome pic!
Taking full responsibility in a handwritten statement
makes it all the more authentic.

Instinctively all the windows reflect towers

but whos really calling the shots?
A helicopter could zoom in and out of frame
and we may never know, but the bay
would remain still in a photograph.

A wall projects or delineates a space in open air.

At night it sounds like a splicing of lives
till all the definitions adjust to new settings.
Then that quote from the pope
commenting on the fate of disposable people

The earth will literally crack open

and would we know if the pattern we followed
is instinct or just borrowed
even as we glide into a new day where
everything cycles endlessly, indelible as graffiti?
 Fall 2017
David Rushmer

ERASED MATTER

we have taken to the air.

no matter.

object, or body

a book of skin
where it flows

to slowly wend its way

an umbilical between worlds

with both ends burning

the vessels are nothing

whiteness is an ideal
rather be the flame
wanting the skin
to become
this subtle fluid
in memory only

the ignition,
in the blood

the spoke
becomes
another form in aural space

we are already dissolved

in the voice.
 an annihilation of space
enlightened
of elements
the unseen
focus
opening
this hole
in which I am floating

the message
of the body
seen
as interior space

the sky
you spoke

to remain fluid
in a kind of music
a matter of memory:
to penetrate the literal absent

nothing remains
around the meat
with their perfume
between my lips
this hole, this torn
black sky open
from somewhere else
folded

breathing flows
 FORMING PRINCIPLES

forming
principles of
sublimation

burst to give light

moments us

oozing
discourse

crepuscular
guttering
To drain the blood

air
into flame
a vanishing sequence
instead of being
a skin
over surface
withdraws his fingers
to the touch
into film
a vision
in which vision
reflects
the disappearance
of the real world

viscous universe
consuming
substances
of beauty
that gathered
fragrances
to inhale the skull
 Fall 2017
Dani Blackpool

Feelings of possessiveness might occur.

You are standing in the vestibule of a museum.

You strike a pose in front of one of his more intense abstracts.

Youre ensconced in a buttery soft afternoon light.

One small victory.

Your head is rolling a little.

You kept your new jacket from the clutches

of that uncharitable person at the coat check
stand that wanted to take it from you.

She said that these feelings

of possessiveness are completely normal.

Supple surroundings becomes a part of you.

In almost no time theyve been matched.

Interior is given equal attention.

A silky feeling of disacquaintance.

In one of the inside zippered pockets, you keep a notebook

to jot down your impressions of the Max Ernst exhibition,
which youre perusing now.

Jenna, whos perusing you, asks if she can touch your jacket.
Youre on your own now.
 Fall 2017
Daevid Glass

HIGH INTENSITY

Cognitive behavioural therapy workers had been trained,

and over 600,000 people targeted.
By 31 March 2011: suite of documents supporting No health
without the cross-Government. From 2011, the programme's focus
has broadened, Two important published 'stock takes' on progress
were Realising the Benefits to vulnerable groups.
The original Implementation Plan of approach can save the
NHS up to 272million and the wider public suffering from
depression and anxiety disorders. This initiated a stand-alone
programme for children and young people: a four-year plan of
action, over 120,000 moved to a realistic and routine first-line
treatment, combined where appropriate with medication a learning
and support tool.
142 of the 151 Primary Care Trusts in England had a
service: unexplained symptoms and severe mental illness will be
developed. Evidence shows mental illness will be developed.

(based on now-removed content from the British National Health

Service's 'Improving Access to Psychological Therapies' website)
 Fall 2017
Courtney Prather

Spider Suicides

In the dank basement,

clumps of spider carcasses,
charred in dusty silk,
decorate the corners
of my childhood memory
like Christmas baubles
i have run out of ways to tell you

i have run out of ways to tell you

how i thirst for You
though i havent drunk You
in ages.
when You last flew away
it meant nothing to me,

but now i collect every petal

of every blossom,
all the branches and
twigs
fallen
from
cherry
trees
and
make
elaborate

formations
with these small things
along the dark earth
like a lovesick crab
scuttling shell gifts
across sandy floors
to woo a lady crab.

i go about my day
as if You dont exist
i put on my makeup
speak ragtime to strangers
everyone is a stranger to me
when I am certain
that You are the butterfly half of myself
without You I cannot fly

but,
beneath the cobwebs of the day,
beneath leagues of salt and wind and blue
You are my buried treasure.

i need to see You

need to know
if the reasons
You appear in my dreams
are true.

You live and breathe

eat breakfast
read the news
on the fingertips of one land
at the lips of an ocean
and i
at the hem of another

only the night

overhears
when i whisper Your Name

and only
the stars
the crickets
the raccoons
know i am living
between moonlight
and the half light
of morning
for you
Boston

You have not been kind to me.

(your winters have robbed me clean)

You nearly killed me.

(dozens of times)

But,
(in spite of all this)

I would kiss every brick upon your streets,

(sleep in your green bellied salt bed)
(swallow the spire of every skyscraper)

Forever,
until your topsy turvy streets crack like a spine
crooked as a question mark, and gape,
envelope me in knowledge
Kelan

your name
is a constant hum
between my thighs.

surrendering-
they want to take flight,
like a birds wings.
wide and full of promise
plunging into your skies
At the Crossing of Boylston and Tremont

Sunset peaks over the state house.

Common leaves brush my hair from my face.
Sunlight dawns on my nebulous mind.

Charcoal breath,
sweet flowers of whispers,
City sounds muffled
by the smoldering Charles

Beacon sky raises its blue chest.

Electric neon ignites the eye.
Greenery drapes like a shawl.

The trudge to enlightenment is paved by a bed of grass

and a tired street
as the sore feet of traveling Bostonians
clap on and on and on.
 Fall 2017
Clive Gresswell

Burger Bar

& steve the short order chef flipped a burger. silly bugger he muttered as he often did. & carl cool dude

paraded into the joint like the card he was. silently sitting at a stool your finest burger he drawled. & just

then demon angel showed up all dressed in black & waved to carl cool dude. & i havent seen you in here for

a while he offered a smoke. the demon angel always gave out cigarettes. it was his angle. if you wanted one

just go & see him. carl cool dude stuck it in the corner of his mouth & drawled thanks. steve the short order

chef joined in & they all started to blow. & they took up a shanty song from the old times to the tune of salty

sea dog & who should come in then but sea dog steve. he wore his sailors outfit & whistled a tune no-one

understood while rasping for breath. seadog steve & carl cool dude started up a game of three-card brag in

the corner. the burger joint was along barton bay & everyone who was anybody went there. he walked in &

said his hellos before accepting a joint from demon angel. & steve made burgers all round & they all merrily

tucked into them. & the joint was always jumping & demon angel went & put some alice cooper on the juke

box. even simon sheriff came in & mixed with the lunchtime crowd. he sure did love his burgers from the

one-stop caf entrance for many a nefarious soul into the portals of hell.
which was guarded by vivian vinegar & the brothel queens who were always coming upstairs & eating the

burgers made by steve the short order chef. & they mixed with the customers & the other two were known as

salt & pepper. to be blunt they were the human meat of the joint or the joint of human meat. & they will

drag you down to their level & laugh in your face as you pass them coins & cutlery & share with them the

combination to the safes. & all around town they danced the fandango to the tune of an accordion. &

returning late & shinning up a drainpipe & back down into the dark dampness of the dungeons where they

sleep.

here below its all guns & garters & the film stars all hang around the wishing well by the back door & that

leads to the passage where the more potent burgers are flipped by acid head alan. & the further down you go

the worse it gets until you reach the very last & this is reserved for the super rotting flesh & its torn off in

strips from the body corporeal. simon sheriff knows all the wise guys from top to bottom of the caf & he

keeps his beady eye on the powder keg business & a cork lid on it so that when he wants he can put his finger

in the dyke of it. & he can say i have pulled out a plum what a good boy am i. & above steve the short order

chef takes all the calls for those below & relays the messages & takes the money & sends down the burgers.

nobody else can read his writing except dan the doctor & he hands out the prescriptions on level four. dark

angel pops down for a snack & comes back with only one arm. & its the price i had to pay he tells carl cool

dude.

vile vince comes in & farts in the face of the present company. & he orders the biggest meanest

motherfucker of a burger available in the joint & the order goes downstairs for administration by dan whose

eyes glisten at such a pleasing order & he writes out the script in his spidery writing & laughs out loud to

himself before sending it down the chute to the chemists & vile vince nods at sheriff & you know the two
men have a mutual respect & an enmity. & in minutes vince gets his burger & eats it in seconds. he walks

over to sheriff & nods. & its how you doing sheriff & what goes on & any trouble in the neighbourhood just

let vince know ok. & its keep the peace man good for business.

& the smoke & smog of it is filling up the room & steve the short order chef says bugger it silly bugger which

he very often does. & paula puberty walks in & says to everybody who is anybody come out the back & ill

show you something & she has a green carnation pinned to her jacket. & outside the wind is blowing & the

hogs howling as sam superior waltzes in calling on carl cool dude to read the bible with him outback & he

says the angels of mercy are coming to save them all. & dark angel just laughs & puts sympathy for the devil

on the jukebox & the whole damn lot of them start dancing like maniacs. well by now sam superior is getting

pretty cross & hes a big man & when he goes & pulls the plug out of the juke box nobody who is nobody

dares to move. & he is the only one & he fixes the juke box & just then paula petulant rides in on a pig & says

give me some ham on rye & the short order chef winks & sends down to the doctor for some of his special

tonic.

& simon sheriff climbs down the stairs to the basement & petitions wendy whore & they make it in her

bedroom & they are filmed by the hidden cameras that pete the pimp keeps just in case. & everyone in the

place is indebted somehow to pete the pimp who has his fingers in all the sockets.

& out of the cake in the laundry room the monroe look-alike jumps out & blows a kiss at all the hoods. &

their vicious eyes twinkle as they throw firecrackers at the queens dancing in the hall.

& j edgar hoover known as harry the hoover brings over his home movies to show on the giant screen

starring all the good old boys & girls who sucked up the corruption and the stink of it lingers around their

clothes and bodies. & napoleon sneaks past shouting up the english & laughing like a maniac comes crashing
through the screen during a french kiss & all the audience shouts at him to get out of the way but hes also

ian impervious & takes no notice.

& upstairs larry landlord waltzes in to collect his dues with a peg over his nose. & steve the short order chef

distracts his attention while he grabs a baseball bat from behind the counter. its a blow for liberty he tells

himself as he brings it down with considerable force on larry landlords head. the skull is smashed open &

blood seeps out all over the dance floor. vile vince & simon sherrif haul the body to the swamp outside

muttering this is bad for business & all the others just ignore the goo and grime of the remnants and dance

around it as before etc. freddie the frog is doing the hop with lithesome lucy whose been after his business

for ages. she reckons shed be a big hit on the betting front & cucumber wouldnt melt in her mouth since

she got out of the espionage business & started driving trucks for a living.

carl cool dude & some of his mates from back at the shack venture outside into the darkness. its getting

close to midnight when bernie benefactor will come down & hand out his gifts to those who have been good.

gold & iron ore & amulets & valerie vulgar, stephanie sugar & pamela pervert will make their appearance as

the three witches. they normally exact a terrible price for the mirth of it but little do they know that tonight

simon sherrif is in especially bad mood over the killing of larry landlord & annoyed that he will definitely

have to make some arrests. after quick talks with vile vince and steve the short order chef its decided that

freddy fry should take the rap & so outside under cover of the stars simon sherrif reads him his rights and

puts him in the wagon & leaves

in the next scene the baker brothers are counting out the gold & this one goes on forever never coming to a

conclusion. they just go on counting and counting & the gold is passed continuously day and night down the

chute to their level & the figures are passed on to alison accountant who puts them all in columns. the
columns too never end in the great ledger which was watched over by larry landlord until his sudden death.

it is a bitter blow to the burger kings around these parts but there were always replacements & another larry

landlord would be found in visage & in gate exactly as the first & he would not be the last either.

& the big snake from downstairs slithers its way up to the bar and hissing at the feet of steve short order chef

its big eyes whirling in hypnotic fashion says come on now and eat the apple with me. & steve is kicking at its

heels & telling it to go back to hell. & the snake laughs and belly-wriggles across the bar looking for other

victims. & demon angel grabs it by the tail & says by god i remember you when you were but a wee worm. &

in a fit of pique he bit off his head. & he spits out the goo all over the floor & the sherrifs deputy darren

deputy turns up & wants to know from everyone all the details & all innocence abroad can say is that she did

not see or hear anything. & all the others too state that they never saw anything. & darren roars out but a

man is dead godamn it & tom tomato bursts his skin laughing. no one ever said there is any justice in this

place he tells darren deputy. tina temptress pops up from the shadows below and puts her arms around

darren deputy & kisses him full on the mouth. no harm done she whispers in his ear as she leads him

downstairs & hes never seen again.

& the china figurines enter wearing their japanese clothes & go round to everyone offering incense and

virtue. they slip inside their kimonos the cash from the farm hands & the lorry drivers & blow them kisses &

giggle into their hands & fan out in line each waiting for an inspection & they introduce mike magician who

reads the tarot & he deals in future & other misdemeanours & on stage with him is his carefree parrot which

says what the cards all mean. & its all a stacked deck & the trick is on the house.

& from the terror of below come the angels of darkness with their colours and special codes & they pick on

shabby simon who everyone else always leaves alone. & they tear him from top to bottom with a butchers
knife & even vile vince is powerless to stop the carnage. & they have the alsations and the chants & the

chains & the machettes & the will to destroy. bleeding of death shabby simon gets up and with one huge

rattle scares the shit out of them & the angels of darkness wonder what sort of sorcery goes on. & the new

larry the landlord walks in & hes just the very model of the last & he calls for a free burger & his ledger & the

column inches written about him increases.

& he spies banned barry who comes in and shits on the floor and all the gypsies & fairies dance around the

turd & its a heigh ho and a heigh ho & the violins play & the crowd claps and sings in time with an

accordion. meathead matthew and shallow sidney whirl around & around until reaching the ladder they

climb onto the roof with drunken dave & there they meet asking for trouble who lends them a trombone

each & says blow from the heavens blow for your lives. & the ace of hearts walks in & all the heartstrings of

the women pound away & fiona flush takes her pick saying any card while darren dude throws up in the

corner & several actors bundle in with signs saying eat me quick.

on the third floor peter painter & peter poet exchange art & bodily fluids & they are filmed by men and

women dressed as cowboys & cowgirls. & billy bible is on his soap box in the middle of the room saying its

all unnatural. & the others are shouting youre a redneck youre a redneck as they drink down the vodka &

peter painter paints a penis & peter poet writes a poem about one. just then derek dancer waltzes in carrying

a tray of chinese food which he hands around shouting out who among us is not immortal.

& good god groucho marx is in the garden with gorgeous gertrude & they are mimicking a wedding

complete with vows and promises on the back of a broken wagon. along comes kiss me kate and her carnival

of carnivorous clichs & they surround the wagon & slaying the bride feed off her carcass & afterwards the

clichs stand in front of a wall while kiss me kate throws her knives at them & some get hit & fall to the floor
while those that remain start a gruesome dance around the fallen. just then timmy tax walks into the festival

disguised as hieronymous bosch disguised as sexy susan & he says i want whats rightfully mine. & the girls

giggle and offer up the dead & timmy tax takes his fill & then goes lower underground into the bowels of the

burger bar demanding one and all pay up. & its revenue for the government he says & its good for business

& we slip into your dreams late at night.

& steve short order chef flips another burger for little bo-peep whos going down to the torture room with

mike the spike & theyre going to split it with french fries and tomato sauce & the home workers who operate

the machinery will open the sachets & distribute the liquid across the floors & down the stairs & around the

walls to the tune of a pig on heat.

& anton angel leader of the angels from below asks for a leg & steve the short order chef complies with a

smile on his lips. & he cuts up the hips & distributes them to all the hipsters in the bar.

hairy hogg & tramp tommy trip over a samba in the light fantastic electronic ballroom & the ears are

bleeding & the caged baboons take out their machine guns & shoot up the whole damn place & demand

protection. & the sheriffs back in town blowing on a harmonica & says he knows nothing about any murder

& sometimes he goes downstairs himself to sample the goods. & flash gordon is flashing his money around

offering tea and sympathy to queenie & her dogs of war who one day will just have to be released.

wendy waitress complete with bandana is taking the orders for the fourth floor where the crap games being

played & theres dice & blackjack & roulette wheels & wendys waiting for her tip & barry bandnose says

ours first my lovely and then youll get yours.running the gambling hall is granny gertrude who must be 110

if shes a day & has been around forever. some say she was born there on a wild & windy night.
upstairs gary gourmet is ordering his second burger to be followed by four helpings of ice cream washed

down with bourbon. steve the short order chef flips it & says silly bugger which he often did. hes just about

taken a spoonful when charlie chain and his gang saunter in & giving everyone vicious stares orders free

drinks on the house for everyone. & downstairs they are still counting out the money but larry landlord says

its not enough &they just need to use their imaginations and get more. gipsy gill and lucky heather bless the

place for a coin & join the ladies downstairs to make a bob or two.

mike the spike has his way with little bo-peep & then casts her aside all cuts & bruises & she goes looking for

vile vince & the sheriff but they just laugh at her & she rushes out of the joint screaming about justice & vile

vince & simon sheriff shrug & exchange a glance which says something like & another one bites the dust.

theres a commotion in the hall where shirley temple is throwing a hissy fit & demanding a better dressing

room & she wants one with a star on the door but pamela producer is saying theres no stars in here love

were all in the same boat.wait until payday youll feel better. but payday never really comes to the illusion

of barton bay.though plenty are paid off.

Pervert politician hides his pistol behind a newspaper & whispers to desmond private dick that this is not

the place to be seen. alley al & all the other homeless come in for warmth & shelter & they bring in their

crazy dreams of drawings & of poetry. & some of them have been olympic sportsmen & others university

professors. celluloid clint was once a famous movie star until the mcarthy era. & uncle bulgaria rides in on a

unicycle declaring that the war is over but no one takes any notice & anyway hes drunk on lager & whisky.

fallen angel asks to what war he is referring & he says he doesnt know king john of jute just asked him to

deliver the message. & dont shoot the messenger he pleads. hannah hallucination trips over him & bursts

out laughing while the rain lashes down outside.

crazy horse & his minions are holding a pow-wow in the cemetery out back where all the cupid & chocolate

lovers end up after the electrocutions. & he says the joint is just being taken over by west indians & the truce

with the pale skins is under threat. they have all that jazz music & all that jitterbug & jive & all those honking

horns. & its not our kind of music complain the truckers & the builders & the engineers. larry landlord says

they have to keep the customers satisfied but steve short order chef knows its impossible to keep them all

happy all of the time except for sex & death.

& the saints downstairs in the hallway all catch colds while reciting the lords prayer through chattering lips.

they are pushed for time & have no one to convert in this den of thieves and actresses.

& sometimes jesus h christ sticks his snout into the trough for the scent of it & he vacuums up all the harlots,

whores, saints, sinners & lepers & says come over to my party its much cooler. & just as they are about to

depart who should show up but sebastian satan complete with entourage & electric guitars & says that cat

may be clean but he sure aint got no drugs & would you want to have sex with that?

wheres your mary magdeline now he taunts him & what good has all your bellyaching done over the years?

leave my kind to themselves and stick to your own. convert, convert, convert, thats all you wanna do while i

look after my people.

jesus h christ stormed out of the diner urging anyone who had the nerve to go with him but they all laughed

& watched him go & then it was full on again with the merriment & the haymaking & the lovemaking.

al capone came out of the bathroom having thrown up & with him was mickey moose they got the lowdown

there had been a commotion with the lords name taken in vain. anyone upsets my man is a dead man dead

meat understand says al before returning to his crap game

upstairs steve the short order chef is preparing burgers for laurel and hardy & countless other silent screen

stars & everyones drunk as larry & falling over just like in their silver screen routines.

i guess we all become what we do says someone from behind a chairleg & someone else puts stairway to

heaven on the jukebox.

grim gerry jokes with steve short order chef: thats gonna compete with american pie all night yes siree

mark my words.

& demented dali and the daleks dance like dervishes in their floorshow on entrapment level a. lenny bruce is

talking to some cops about the future price of coffee & puppet brains has some interesting analysis to offer

on that score.

& the cowboys raid the place looking up calamity kate whose taut body is still rotting in the fridge. & they

muss the place up a bit with their firecrackers & rootin tootin guns.

& the drinkers and drug addicts scurry down to see the ants & actresses who staring into a mirror realise at

last their fading beauty.

 Fall 2017
Clarice Sometimes

Three from The Comment Section

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Thanks for that clarification....that's why that statement works.. ;)

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Hurricane

It is always difficult to start writing a new poem.

You never quite know what it is that is ready
To burst forth from your mind. The bad ideas
Swirl around and you feel overwhelmed, inadequate

You smoke, drink whisky in the morning, flick the bean

Eat cake for lunch and then with nothing written
Clean up, go out and get cocktails as you flounce over
The creative spirit you hope to grab, pluck out, dance.

But this new poem is under protest. Not really, only it feels cold
With these people running things. Too much happens each day
To account for the crazy moments occurring. Where are we,
who are we now? I wonder about the change,

and now John Ashbery has died.

Something special has left the world. The candle of his poems
flicker, but will never go out. The whole world is a hurricane.

The whole fucking world is a poem

about hurricanes flooding
our streets with the waters of change.
 Fall 2017
Christopher S. Bell

High Speed Junk

Tuesday and its rain again. They say itll clear up by tomorrow, but it never does. Folks dont lug

their electronics out in a downpour or at the least the sane ones dont. First sap of the day looks like he spent

the night pulling his hair out, cept there aint much left to begin with. Zipping up my slicker, I follow to his

minivan; forcing a giggle when he says his convertibles in the shop.

We carry the television wrapped in garbage bags inside, nearly dropping it twice before the big

reveal: an old box cabinet. So do you think youll be able to fix it? he asks. Because if its busted, we might

just get one of those big screens for the den.

Ill give it a look. Maybe its just a loose tube.

He tries to hide a sense of relief, before I jot down his info. Dragging the cabinet to the back, I check

my progress. One done with three moving right along. Sometimes they sound like a symphony, but usually I

get a headache trying to remember where all the pieces fit. The morning passes with some old biddys clock

radio and a screw driver. Frank picks up his VCR and doesnt even notice the white spot where I accidently

banged the drywall. He asks if theres anything new in the back. I scribble down a few titles that didnt sell so

well and slide it across the counter like were spies.

 The same ploy works for Billy an hour later while Im chewing chicken fat. He says Bloodsports

tracking went after the first half. I say its probably the machine, before giving him half off on Round and

Raw. Hes always liked the bigger ones, and hell I cant blame him. Ill just have to re-dupe a few action flicks

when theres time. Wendy shoots over on her lunch break reeking of cigarettes and pastries. Vick, I need

something for the kids and something for me, but nothing like that last one.

I may have crossed a line with her, but had to see if she was a freak like they all say. The thought of

her alone with one of my tapes does it for me sometimes, except Im afraid of knowing who she really is,

whether its all some game to sling a man, or better yet a father for her two girls. Were always civil with one

another, and sometimes I do offer her more deals than the rest, but at the end of the day, Im only providing

a service. Wendy doesnt owe me anything, not now or ever.

I dont see another soul until three. One chain ends before a quick switch in titles so nothing gets too

worn. I play the radio and start yesterdays crossword when this weirdo walks in. He could use a shave and

some new shoes, browsing my racks like I need his business. Eventually I break the silence. Hey buddy, can

I help ya?

He approaches slowly, like a kid who shit his pants on the bus. I heard from a reliable source that

this is the place to go for certain things?

What are you looking for?

My buddy, Kenny, said you got the box here?

And what box would that be? I let him sweat a moment, before smiling. Nah, I know what youre

talking about, although I didnt expect Kenny to tell my secret.

I got it out of him after a few beers. The names Marv, he says.
 We shake hands before I dip into the back and throw one into a plastic bag. Its a hundred.

Really? I heard fifty.

Kenny still gives me a lot of business. I cant say the same for you, Marv.

So thisll give me everything?

One through ninety-nine on your basic set.

And theres no way the cable company can track it?

Just dont call if they offer you a free T-shirt.

What does that mean? he asks.

You look like a smart one. Youll figure it out.

Ill just ask Kenny.

I roll my eyes and ring him up. Its maybe ten minutes then before they all start coming in, one right

after another. Somethings broken, but they dont want to hear the reasons why. I just have to fix it, make it

all better so they can continue their stupid, little lives. Their friends recommended me. Im their guy,

because I work cheap, and actually know what the hell Im talking about. Just so long as it doesnt break

again, although these parts are built replaceable.

When I get a breath, its another round. Change all the tapes, label the dupes and start new ones. A

certain level of anticipation comes with every new release, whether some asshole will ask me and avoid the

lines at Blue Video or Dills Market. Ill make it worth their while, but so many folks dont want to be

enlightened. They never understood why Beta was better, or why Im not just another poor schmuck trying

to make some extra scratch. I was put on this earth to help, except most dont know how to accept it.
 I reheat the deer stew a little after six; needs more salt, but Im out of packets. A bite here while Im

unscrewing a panel, then another changing screwdrivers and wires; antennas, tubes, and batteries. The black

under my fingernails never goes away, no matter how often I rinse it down the drain. Dad used to say men

learn to live with their dirty hands. He was better at hiding it, always keeping one under the table cloth while

the other shoveled her cooking without so much as a thank you.

At eight, my best customers enter five minutes apart. They know the routine, orders already lined up

and labeled. Black plastic bags and a few bucks later, were all smiles. I dont ask, and they rarely tell. Most

are men, unafraid of where their paychecks eventually end up. Some smell like the fried chicken buckets

waiting passengers side for their return. I never feel bad taking their money, if only because were from

similar stock. They see in me the same flaws I cant shake, but eventually everyone gets past the point of

appeasement.

Kennys last tonight, a little before ten. All the tapes have finished when he moseys in with a six pack

of pounders under his arm. You wanna drink one of these with me? he asks.

Yeah sure. Just flip the sign. Were close enough. I used to argue with Kenny about us drinking in

the back room, but now I just accept it. He cracks one and hands it to me, before scanning another day of

blanks.

So you know what all of these are? he asks.

Yeah, its mostly Disney crap. A few trashier things.

Well whats new on the trashier side? Kenny suppresses a toothy grin.

I dont know man.

 Actually, hold on. I forgot the goods in my car. He rushes out as I collapse into the green and blue

folding chair, swigging some beer. Kenny then returns with a clear cassette case, setting it on the closest

VCR. Surprise me with this one, if you could. Show me something my wife would never do.

Yeah, Ill have to see what Ive got.

She still wants me to pay for her credit cards. Can you believe that bitch?

Theyre put on this earth to suck you dry.

Amen.

He finishes his can, then drinks another, blabbing about all the assholes we know and cant seem to

forget. I humor Kenny best I can, every day except Sunday when theres peace, quiet and nothing on TV.

Thats the problem with the box; once youve seen it, there aint much point watching all over again. They all

end the same way. Guy saves the day, get the girls, or maybe she dies after running off with another piece of

shit. Either way, everyone learns a valuable lesson. Nothing changes anywhere.

When Kenny finally leaves, I glance at the tape he left, white sticker spots in the center where a label

once slept. I pop it in and wait past the static. Sure enough, its his wedding video, the bride smiling with her

mother moments from walking down the aisle. Im not sure how to feel, uncertain if their expressions are

genuine or merely forced for the camera. All of these people got to know them as a couple from that day on,

except now Im the one dealing with it, and I wasnt even invited. I watch the whole tape, before hitting the

lights and driving home; my wife sprawled out on our couch in her pink robe and panties. We dont even

have to speak. She already knows why I work so hard.

 Fall 2017
Bushra Khan

Ugly Truth

world is full of ugly truths,

living with ignorance
is way to survive,
only way to be sane
not scared to die
just horrified by honest lie.
enough! can't take it no more
truth is what?
collection of some words
yet so brutal,
don't let them slide
or shut down and hide.
choose whatever battle
keep an open mind
push all boundaries
it won't take long
resisting them is futile
so embrace it with smile
because in the end
these ugly truths
will go on and on and
on....
 Fall 2017
Brittany Stenfors

The Way

Confidence, slowly pacing ambition

Conspire, blazing through the fire.
American way, love to hate, yet hate to lose
A ruse, so amusing.
Manors at bay, smile to face
A race, ism, surely you lose.
Love to laugh, laugh at love
Promises fail, words become trivial.
Honor in men, no, honor in thieves
Deceive, please, no hierarchy.
Anarchy become becomes the way,
Today we play, no work we're paid.
Forgave
The Meaning

She sat in the mid-winter cold, frozen and confused,

yet blood boiled, while she squirmed to understand the meaning

Why me? How can I?

She cried inside, but not a tear dropped,
she yearned to be free, and dreamed,
which sometimes helped her to understand the meaning.

The breeze dwindled down and silence,

so much silence, encompassed her being,
while the smoke and flames, blazed, she felt dismay,
finallya vision to the meaning.

Being and seeing, a figment so fleeting,

she squinted and pondered a reason for being,
and still she could not find the meaning.

She just kept on believing.

 Fall 2017
Brianna M. Fenty

The Almost-Land

My minds an orchard, chock full of memories,

ripe, waiting to be picked and thought about.
But Im blue, blue, navy like the night unstarred,
and the peaches dont bloom in the darkness.

My trees are bare,

Ive only gardens of despair,
Hollow, empty: vines intimidated by heights beckoning;
flowers scared to bloom.
Unambitious and afraid, they die:
Dead garden.

Theres none but smoke and

fog that lurk in my fields,
snaking through the crab grass,
Swirling, choking, miasma in the valley.

Im an enemy,
My own,
 An arsonist, thats me;
I burned down that orchard inside me
My sorrow: the matchstick
My frustration: the flame

That desperation gone unanswered,

that ache for love, lost before discovered;
these things, theyre the hand that let go,
That set aflame my garden of Eden turned Hell,
My Holy Land.

Inferno, unleashed:
My No-More Land.
Memories, still there but burnt, charred,
blistering to the touch and even worse to taste,
Hot and bitter, molasses without the sugar
and a side of thorns.

Im an enemy, my own,
All because Im blue, blue
Not blue, not cerulean,
Im a sad azure motherfucker,
Cyan dancing on the horizon, waiting for the sunrise.

I need my reds and yellows,

My oranges, my pinks.
I need that light in my life,
The color to fill the blue,
 To chase the smoke away.
The brightness,
The warmth.

So blue, ever blue, indigo to the fullest,

So light me up.
Im sitting in my Holy Land,
my Almost Land;
my nest of ashes and of flame,
Waiting, waiting,
Waiting for the one to find the
sweetness hidden in these burnt fruits of mine.
 The Brothers East

From the east he does crawl,

Silent but grand does he rise above the fields,
Land leeched of color shall be replenished,
The sky will dance.

The haze and gnat clouds, penetrated might they be,

And up he sweeps in golden wings;
His earthen love, in a warming embrace of life
I yearn to revel within.

Back to the trees I slink,

To the concealing canopies of branch and leaf do I retreat;
For my eyes cannot bear the caress of light nor good,
For my spirit be a plagued one, and before light nor good will
I stand.

With haste does he flee to the western skies

Carrying with him his cape of gold.
When he will set, I will return;
your eyes be spared, I bid you farewell.

I rise with the night, this time of peril,

In the face of the fallen, the empire shall collapse,
The day weakens still; your light is a mere sputter,
And to mine glory will you ever bow,
Despite the love and longing I have for you.
 When he will set, I will return;
for, from the east, hell never crawl again.
I will blot him out.
 Silvertongue

My tongue is slitted, steel-plated, and slated with silver ions

That will
Sever your soul and
Slice and dice your mediocre spirit, Ill
Weave the hungry ivy that will slink into your brain
Ill reclaim
What you thought was your indomitable fortress, Ill
Sway the sultry hips of verbatim and slang and
Crack open sweet flesh between punctuation thighs and
Quench dry pores with words that will move you
Beat you
Love you
Hate you
Date you
Words that will make you
Feel like an
Illiterate logical fallacy with feet, spun round
Unwound
Until you realize that my poison-tipped speech
Has forced your slack knees to the ground, now
Soldier pick up your jaw and
Please, turn around.
Because after all,
I was only teasing, of course.
 Fall 2017
Bert Barry

ASTOUNDING MESSENGER

Because he could not hear

the mocking laughter
nor see the simpering smiles of
damning derision
the brilliant boy
offered undimmed
his boundless intuitions:
escapes from
the toils
his parents spared him
--ignorance eschewed
protection providing
a future for hope
and his father rejoiced
laughed with
his predecessor
who also knew
the liberation
his son could bring
denigration deceit vanquished
benison leaping beyond belief.
LEADING ON AWAY

The fallen leaves

bleached by
wind snow
occasional bursts of sunlight
breaking through the winter pall
flow in every direction
so thick
most fear
to venture across them
but the woman
ever impelled by curiosity
who traversed
the nearly endless expanse
came upon
a lake so imposing
no shore was visible
and the frozen waters
cast a sapphire light:
beckoning beacon for the daring.
 Fall 2017
B.J. Best

the funeral

i have bedrocks
of the baster. piano. the lamentations
of authors for their wife, line-rains spout
my thunderstorm.

they world knows every might down, my clown and back.

spectacular against columns in the net.

the island of the careful, lessing as maybe most.

let their breath. the roost names,

a moment, her seaside mash-out too is a winter.

your hands, but if i tongue that say,

the light serpents. right us, i said, for a lead
in windows, saddles still graved.
mead lake, misremembered

on our day i say,

you are pop-tornado with no wind,
it is like a third of the seeds,
i have dined in the branches and the flower,

whipped against the sunset

and soon it was glass.
the crows they are time-bright in the branches,
the grass and bills.

i was a glass
and shifted like the wind-birds of certain warm words
to mead lake.

they are popcorn by the grass,

they would be carved by a comma,
i should be fire. put your sparrow:
smoke its feathered sun.

mead lake, things hang like a river.

and the feathers, our silvery cutlassing about the moon,
while their house of fish
is a fancy something. maybe im wings,
demanding the wind from the shelling boat, songs to hell
and storm-moss moon, stars of your hands,
and the words like a tin
that left like a pierce.

in distant be the sun,

the crickets point and go smoke.
the pier numbers

spelled in our leaves, the bulls of the wind

in the forest sung by bands
thread time, until hands
of the water cooked like a pier,
said their take with its flowers,

your lake.
south of what is not in the paint
starts like the edge.
i said my grass that was the grommet
hangs like a pier.

the rains
hang
and i said the snow
and the shape of the sunflower
at the fire away talk,
steno pads of water--

its not the words

of the well.

this paint might be perfect, and i tour-boat knowing

its ferment still on the same day, the air
your birds of the words drink
and the air was coming as a river.

the still bottle everywhere are the preseasons of hell,

i was coppering the pasts in grade.

if i say your tongue be a fire for a sunset,

and drank about how she saddle to spike,
you are parting, birds in the tip of side.
i didnt thought to master like a dead from the slide,
it's pointed where the fish are below,
where you painted the air sere to said night.

ill sung in the wind,

the painting the pier numbers in.
departure

it looks and says, soon be its place of her shower:

some good like a change, some soft
to be a check of company,
and some shes love be stung
of the children, and pink in the fall,
the wrists black can roost stretched
like the breaks in the trees
and first vine still recast,
the carpenter who saws anew
as the sent-for words
of pear and far and the lake.

i said the wind like ports, her breath

like soon the sounds,
the flake of liquid, she and parting its take.
the gray she sounds

i body, you knows

things will tell, the sent
wig of the wind as our bowl of stars
with who made the butter.
the would said a pink are the park.
the didn't volt learned like a breast of blood.
but not a children what all that sounds
and i would no grounding.

im heart, sleeps those air. i stars of light, he tape,

you're tried like the wind
in the still course from the sand.
how the night is the fast glacier,
the moonlow that was man, life, and
damned a ring, the northing, the deck, and my heart.
i was soon on leaves
even its with my name, you and hand.

someone swerves, and sometimes are the pray,

tornado
the tires while a prow, the puzzle winding
with the way of a sesology.
the gray she sounds to me.
i have lost the shoes in dissipations of the wind,
an auction on to god, his cut the sun
showing air.

so the weather is weak on the wind, and limbs.

i lovely strings,

and i could be a little for your eyes, and arches.

i seep the corns. its like this equation

on the ball as a fire which dappled kind:

the lake that we water large.
how the spying and an altar still scald
are her accepted good an emptying
and someone goes broken to sing out,
nows of a blue, until the man should
someone starts hammering.
 Fall 2017
Anna Kapungu

THE RIVER

The river is the same conceited

Proceeds with its own eloquence
Open in its clarity and influence
Dark is its colour it has influence
Its licence to hold what it knows
Its prerogative it hides what it holds
Each stream and current it commands
Its dominance captures energy that human eyes wonders
The beginning on no account reveals
Waterfalls, sinkholes, tangents and tributaries
Maintains humanity in the palm of its hands
Arise like the tree with its roots on the riverbanks
Ripples and churns a force of dominance
Persuasiveness in all its magnificence
Destination known smoothly it drifts
Into the sea where it reveals its secrets
DIAMOND SUNLIGHT

Diamond starlights on the rippling water

The colour of emerald is the river
Steady smoothly on marbled stones
Rainbow coloured waterfalls
Purple tree lined river banks
Red and yellow tree covered mountains
Racing wild horses
Shadows of the starks
The colour of emerald is the river
Diamond starlights on the rippling water
ROOTS TO WATER

Destination anywhere
Powerless to the elements
A leaf in the windstorm
Humour my emptiness
Woe is my condition
Meltdown ,try to hold the waterfalls
On the edge of exhaustion
Fraility in my nucleaus
Buoyant I am in the wind
Water without roots
Defeat myself effortlessly
Hours into days, days into weeks
Gasping can hardly breathe
The hours
Delight not in myself
The picture of me I loathe
WATER SEEPING AFTER THE RAINSTORM

There to be raked over is the past

It hides sinister secrets
Emotions dormant
Revealed to the surface
Shed tears as though living in the past
But time still remains
Thoughts of forgiveness
Bleeds blood like water seeping after the rainstorms
Like dry brittle earth, the hardness inside crumbles
Burnt memories
Have no tale to tell, hushed like ashes
Lamentation and sadness
Submerged to the bottom of the ocean
FODDER FOR PREY

Fodder for prey

Scent for the wolves
Light of day
No place is immune
Freedom from security
As if I was discredited
Sentiments on the threshold
Dress my heart on a sleeve
Conceal my image
Close to insanity
Retrain my breathing
Comprehend my vulnerability
Evident, I have no freedom from amnesty
Resilience to unseen society
Under the microscope is my humanity
 Fall 2017
Ana Shaw

Not the First Time

The worm
tosses out again
towards a sun blistering
the concrete,
jerking her
pink body, ripe
for emaciation.

She squirms
and jabs
the tough flat of sidewalk,
knowing her plump
will evaporate
into vicious heat
until she scorches
brittle.

Pulsing towards the

radiance, her very shell
constricts, squeezes
her organs so dry
she crackles
in the shine.

When she writhes

from burn
and lashes herself into
knots, black blood
spews from her
split skin.
Dew splashes from cavern
mouth of sod,
plunging to soften her.
But she wont stop
thrashing, thinking
how beautiful:
to crumple
in splinters,
refract that glare,
to shimmer translucent.
Ars Poetica

At the end of a farmers backroad,

the mosquitoes sing praises
into rubbed anger as I pick and pray.
Blue succulence drips
off claws daggered towards me,
the freshest berries curdling into
June air, bursting like my own skin
plunged through bramble-bush.

I eat the branches whole, plead

for poetrythat snap and
sugarto bathe every crevice
of tongue. But my mouth burns,
red welts rupture the split skin.
I suck and spew, spit back
twig after bloody twig.

On vine a single blossom rises.

It hums with the promise of
bite, dizzying sunlight dancing
between crisp skin. My teeth
cup softly a bulged juice.
I howl back blessings
 Fall 2017
Alicia Cadena

[Tide To You]

The ocean and I are one in the same

Hopelessly awaiting your return.
We host visitors who litter our bodies
Frantically fleeting to catch their next wave.

All eager to plunge our currents

And nobody willing to stay.

With great depths and uncharted waters

Drowning in our own sweet solitude.
Masked by sunsets and salty air
But we will never be free.

With so many fish in the neighboring sea

Why must I crash each night at your feet?

- A girl who loved a girl

 Fall 2017
Alan Isaacs

ECHOES AND PARAPHERNALIA

what would it be like

to have a head clearer than necessary
to sing on a morning a melody
one word over and overenough

rather than translating messages

received over archaic transoms
like erecting turnstiles to measure the radiation
that permeates the vast surround

try turning off listening

drive until the highway collapses into its components
asphalt, soft in the heat, aroma of lava
spy a quivering named rabbit, white tail, under sagebrush

some roads I walked on down

when roads were roads
were golden or sold to hegemonic orders
but this sidewalkor any
FLIGHTS OF MINNOWS

swift cold rising belongs in water dreams

silver babes in the clear clean lake

born attentive to the shadows of trolling hawks

against whom, what paltry vigilance

imagine, first and last flight

over the inscrutable blanket of pines

what is so much green and gasping

drowning in air

every needle an eye

dear mother egg what water was

what a loss is life

O diaphanous wing

help one who looks for home

precipitate

time to stopwrithing
and give myself to you
MY HEART HURTED

I think thats why she said

good morning to the orchids

and organized the wrinkles on her smock.

After I came over and into her, the sweet night

fermented, soured down into evidence.

I was sick with longing, redolent with dread,

but small, a shoestring around an acorn.

I adored a mobile, rotating stars and bears.

The hills have imperceptively conceded

to insistent erosion, comparable to ones private pain.

Squared away, resilient, yet fleeting;

grass was ocean and ocean, grass.

Whats the difference?

Will you lead me down until

my mind also erodes to a pale offering?

I sat looking up and sun in my eyes and said

my heart hurted like the sun

IT OVER

in the morning before the morning

has had time enough and time
to collapse and open

and all I have is all I have

I want to leave
rises like a deadly origin

or change the change

and orderly the exodus
the tall swart strange

comes riding slowly up

and the townsfolk hide
and now hes going to kill

the killing, he is
else sit simply amid amid
and weaponless weep

all the all the all the all

you were stranger in the dream
my soft and warm

where didst thou go

you were here, time ago
when wander sailed wonder

and the world adapted

your hair spread thick on the pillowcase
the windows open so the cool air bathing

it over
A BRUISED MEADOW, INDISTINCT

there once was a creature let out to feed

in a bruised meadow, indistinct
as a blind mans card

be careful not to breathe

forget to read the gauges
forget to interpret the data

when, after all, did I meet you

in a twisting, portraitured hallway
too dim to distinguish the names of the ancestors

the wood panel muted by dust

eternal in its symbiotic aspirations
practicing the matrimony of habit

imagine instead the oracle fell down, drowned in her pool

the caged witnesses fled, stunned
looking for weapons in a glare of sunlight

they turned up under the shed

a steely sheen to the encumbrance
screwed clockwise into the box

I had not to stop, a clicking wheel

penultimate lullaby, lyrically unhinged
sedated

no wonder to accomplish today

read out a list of tasks
feed the sparrow

adjust the sphincters that measure in the light

tighten the string around the tiny leg
cold beyond the window and look
creature surfaces, tracing a syntax of footfalls
an observer on the margin, chagrined
disintegrates
 Fall 2017
Acta Biographia

Alan Isaacs

I grew up on a potato farm in Idaho and earned a Ph.D. in English from Stanford, where my focus was on
postmodern theory. Currently I work at a high tech job in San Francisco. My writing draws from that varied
background as well as sojourns in France and Mexico and two years teaching high school via the Peace
Corps in Burkina Faso, West Africa. My work has appeared in Connotation Press and Hawaii Pacific
Review.

Alicia Cadena

Ana Shaw

Ana Shaw is a student of creative writing at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. Her work has previously
been awarded multiple gold keys in the Regional Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and she is Editor-in-
Chief of lan Literary Magazine.

Anna Kapungu

Anna Kapungu is a Canadian citizen who graduated from Southbank University London. with a Bachelor of
Arts (Hons) Degree in Hotel Management. A diploma in Public Relations, Sales Management and Marketing
from Commercial Careers College. The author has h written two books, Water falling between words, and
Feet on Unstable waters; to be released by Pegasus ,Vanguard. She is currently waiting on publishing her
third poetry collection.

Publishing credits include Pegasus, One persons trash Magazine, Adelaide Literary, Aadun Journal, Austin
Macauley ,United Press UK ,Eber and Wein Publishers USA, Forward poetry UK, The Sentinel Journal
Magazine and The Eustere Journal .
B.J. Best

B.J. Best is the author of three books and four chapbooks of poetry, most recently Yes (Parallel Press,
2014). He lives in Wisconsin. Torch-rnn is created by Justin Johnson, based on work by Andrej Karpathy. It
lives on GitHub.

Bert Barry

Bert Barry is the Program Director in the Office of International Services at Saint Louis University. In this
role, he is able to discuss literature with people from throughout the world. He earned a B.A. degree in
German and a M.A. degree in English from Washington University. He also earned a Ph.D. in English from
Saint Louis University. He is devoted to the lyric poem, in all its countless variations.

Bushra Khan

Brianna M. Fenty

Brianna Fenty is a state maritime academy alumna hailing from New York's wonderfully weird Long Island
area. After spending a few months learning highland voodoo from Scotland's resident fairies (AKA taking a
gap year), she now keeps busy at home begrudgingly searching for a day job, writing strange stories, and
forcing her very moody cat to read them. Brianna specializes in bizarre speculative fiction, including horror,
sci-fi, and dark fantasy, with occasional dabble into the world of poetry. Her work can be followed on her
blog, https://briannafenty.wordpress.com/, her official Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/bmfenty/,
and on Twitter @fentyscribbles.

Brittany Stenfors

I am a born and raised Floridian (I actually like living here!) I do my best to make the most out of life, by
trying various activities and learning new subjects. I am currently a certified behavior analyst and real estate
agent, and I have a Bachelors of Science degree in human services and health administration. Although I
enjoy variety in many areas of life (After all it is the spice of life) I have always had a passion for writing. For
many years I did various works in writing for supplementary income, some of which included, writing
creative content for websites, writing history articles, writing research articles, as well as journalism.
However, I have always enjoyed creative writing, especially poetry. I find poetry to be a way to express
desires, feelings, subconscious thoughts, or to just have fun and let loose. Another reason I am fond of poetry
is because it is subjective to everyone, and like most art, it is interpreted differently from person to person.
How a photograph is to a memory is how poetry is to a thought or feeling.

Christopher S. Bell

Christopher S. Bell has been writing and releasing literary and musical works through My Idea of Fun since
2008. His sound projects include Emmett and Mary, Technological Epidemic, C. Scott and the Beltones and
Fine Wives. My Idea of Fun is an art and music archive focused on digital preservation with roots in
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. (www.myideaoffun.org <http://www.myideaoffun.org/> ). Christophers work has
recently been published in Linden Avenue, Metatron Omega, Heavy Athletics, Queens Mob Teahouse, Crab Fat
Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Lime Hawk and Talking Book among others. He has also contributed to Entropy
and Fogged Clarity.
Twitter: @CScottBell

Clarice Sometimes

Sometimes is a first time contributor. She is the author of 3 books of poetry that are published in Heaven.
Born and raised in New York she has a keen interest in taxicabs and hopes to write poems as a Lyft driver.
She is currently studying for her Ph.D in comparative literature with a focus on American detective novels of
the 1940s and 50s.

Clive Gresswell

Clive Gresswell is an innovative writer and poet living in Luton, UK, and reading in London and has recently
had poetry published in BlazeVOX. His debut book of poetry, Jargon Busters, was recently published by
Knives, Forks and Spoons Press and in mid-September he was a guest reader at the renowned Tears In The
Fence Poetry Festival.

Courtney Prather

Courtney Prather lives in Southern California. Her essay on Virginia Woolfs To the Lighthouse earned
second place in the Marjorie Frost Memorial Award. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Entropy,
Digital Americana, 805, and her work has been nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. She has also
collaborated with composer Jeffrey Derus of the Choral Arts Initiative in Orange County, marrying poetry
and music in live performance.
David Rushmer

David Rushmer lives and works in Cambridge, UK, and has published artworks and poetry in Angel Exhaust,
Archive of the Now, Epizootics, E.ratio, Great Works, Molly Bloom, and, Shearsman. His most recent published
pamphlets are The Family of Ghosts (Arehouse, Cambridge, 2005) and Blanchots Ghost (Oystercatcher Press,
2008). He is currently putting together his first full length collection of poetry entitled, Remains to be Seen.

David Wyman

David Wymans first collection of poems, Proletariat Sunrise, was published by Kelsay Books in January 2017.
His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Aurorean, A Certain Slant, The Wallace Stevens
Journal, Old Crow Review, Spout and Green Hills Literary Lantern among others.

Daevid Glass

Daevid reverse-engineers morsels of reality and extracts their meaning, injecting this concentrate into
carefully assembled words and hoping for a positive outcome. This process began when, as a child in Essex,
England, a school teacher asked him to write a poem about a rocket launch. He hasn't stopped writing since.
He lives in Oxfordshire on the isle of Albion and is working on his novel, Resuscitating God.

Dian Parker

Dian Parker is a freelance writer for a number of publications; the White River Herald, Vermont Art Guide,
Kolaj, Art New England, NatureWriting, Mountainview Publishers, and OpEdNews. She is the gallery
director for White River Gallery <https://balevt.org/white-river-gallery/> in Vermont. Her short stories have
been published in Artificium, Peacock Journal, and the James Franco Review. She has recently completed a
short story collection titled, Art To Lie For and Other Stories.

Emmitt Conklin

Emmitt Conklin works as a bookseller in Venice, California. His writing has been published or is
forthcoming in 3 AM Magazine, Lotus Eater Magazine (as a Pushcart nominee), Burningword Literary
Journal, great weather for MEDIA's 2017 anthology, and others.
Erin Riddle

Erin Riddle studied German and Spanish languages and literature as an undergraduate at Ithaca College
before moving on to complete a doctoral program in translation studies at Binghamton University. She
currently teaches academic writing at Elmira College, conducts research in translation theory, and works on
other translations of literature from Latin America and Germany. Riddle also enjoys gardening and hiking.
She grew up on a dairy farm south of Buffalo in Salamanca, and now lives with her husband and cat in
Owego, NY.

Erik Fuhrer

Erik Fuhrer is a PhD and MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame where he writes poetry and
studies human animal interactions. He lives in Indiana with his wife Kim and dog Moops. His work can
be found in online venues such as The Shotglass Journal and the Long Island Quarterly, among others.

hiromi suzuki

hiromi suzuki is an illustrator, poet, artist living in Tokyo, Japan. A contributor to the Japanese poetry
magazine "gui" (run by members of the Japanese "VOU" group of poets, founded by the late Kitasono Katue).
Author of Ms. cried, 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1). Her works
are published internationally in Otoliths, BlazeVOX, Empty Mirror, Experiment-O, M58, DATABLEED,
Black Market Re-View, Burning House Press, h&, BRAVE NEW WORD magazine, DODGING THE RAIN,
Jazz Cigarette, TAPE HISS zine, The Arsonist Magazine, Coldfront Magazine, 3:AM Magazine and
NationalPoetryMonth.ca 2015 / 2017 amongst other places.
web site: hiromisuzukimicrojournal.tumblr.com

Irene Koronas

Irene Koronas is the author of 9 collections of poetry and collaborative writing including ninth iota (The
Knives Forks and Spoons Press, forthcoming 2017), Codify (ditions du Cygne, forthcoming 2017), heshe
egregore (with Daniel Y. Harris, ditions du Cygne, 2016), Turtle Grass (Muddy River Books, 2014) and Emily
Dickinson (Propaganda Press, 2010). Some of her poetry, experimental writing and visual arts have been
published in Clarion, Counterexample Poetics, Divine Dirt, Eratio, experiential-experimental-literature,
The Licentiam, Lynx, Lummox, Of\with, Pop Art, Right Hand Pointing, Presa, The Seventh Quarry
Magazine, Spreadhead, Stride and The Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art. She is an internationally
acclaimed visual and digital artist, having exhibited her visual art at the Tokyo Art Museum Japan, the Henri
IV Gallery, the Ponce Art Gallery, Gallery at Bentley College and the M & M Gallery. She is the Managing
Editor and Co-Founder of X-Peri and Co-Editor of the X-Peri Series.
J. Mulcahy-King

Jonathan Mulcahy-King is author of Euryphion (Ed du Cygne; X-Peri Series, 2017). He is Editor-in-Chief and
Founder of The Licentiam and Assistant Editor of X-Peri. He has an MA in Social Justice from the University
of South Wales, UK. His recent publications include, Harbinger Asylum, The Licentiam, In The Red Magazine,
Short, Fast, & Deadly, Stride Magazine, Subliminal Interiors, The Wardrobe and X-Peri. He lives in Newport,
South Wales, where he works with asylum-seekers and homeless young people. He is currently working on
two collaborative works; one with Daniel Y. Harris, Licentiam, a work of hyper-erotic poetry exploring new
horizons in the philosophy of transgression, and another with the painter Martin Abrahams, Onaliths, a
hybrid work of concrete and post-language poetry exploring posthuman asemics in various forms of
technological enhancement.

Jade Homa

Jade is a passionate dog lover, pasta enthusiast, and anxious poet. At age 18, she has already written over 50
poems and several short stories. Jade currently resides in Pennsylvania with her dog, Indie, and will be
attending university in several months.

Janet Mason

Janet Mason is an award-winning creative writer, teacher and blogger for The Huffington Post. She had a
background as a poet and a prose writer. Her book, Tea Leaves, a memoir of mothers and daughters,
published by Bella Books in 2012, was chosen by the American Library Association for its 2013 Over the
Rainbow List. Tea Leaves also received a Goldie Award. Her work appears in BlazeVox15 (Spring 2015).
Janets short fiction has also appeared in many other literary journals including the Brooklyn Review,
Sinister Wisdom, and Aaduna. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Jennifer K Dick

Jennifer K Dick is the author of the poetry collections Circuits (2013) and Fluorescence (2004) and the
BlazeVox ebook (Enclosures, 2007) as well as 7 chapbooks, most recently Afterlife (Angel House Press,
Canada, 2017) and Comme Un n9 (AREA ditions, France, 2017 with artwork by 4 Japanese artists). She
recently completed an artist residency where she had an architectural art-text installation at the Basel SBB
train station from Nov 2016-January 8 2017. She translates and teaches creative writing and literature at the
Universit de Haute Alsace, France, and writes a regular column on Of Tradition and Experiment for Tears in
the Fence magazine in the UK. New work appeared or is soon forthcoming in Parentheses (Barcelona), READ
(Paris, France and NYC), Molly Bloom (Germany), Dusie, Denver Quarterly, and in the Theenk Anthology
women: poetry migrations (forthcoming fall 2017, NY, USA). Jennifer also runs the Ivy Writers Paris reading
series.
John Meyers

John Meyers poems, stories, and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications. Over the past year
his work has been featured in The Louisville Review, Lunch Ticket, Fiction Southeast and Jellyfish Review,
among others. He has work forthcoming in Misfit Magazine and Hoot Review. John can be found online
at http://www.johnmeyersauthor.com

John Paul King

John Paul King is from Hilliard, Ohio. He is currently editing his first novel (i.e. either snacking or scratching
his dog's belly).

Joseph E. Lerner

Joseph E. Lerner has worked as a photographer, filmmaker, writer, editor, and small press publisher. His
flash fiction and poems have appeared in 100 Word Story, decomP, Gargoyle, matchbook, Jet Fuel Review,
Pif, PoetsWest, The Prose-Poem Project, and elsewhere. He also founded The Washington (D.C.) Book
Review in addition to Furious Fictions Magazine, and is an alumnus of the Clarion SF Writers' Workshop.
He lives in Gaithersburg, MD and can be reached at lernerje@gmail.com Taos, NM and blogs at
www.josephelliottlerner.com <http://www.josephelliottlerner.com> .

Justin Rogers

Justin Rogers is new on the poetry scene but making a splash. He has previously published in Spillway
Poetry Magazine, Straylight Literary Magazine, and The Green Light Magazine. Justin works at an art gallery
in the Texas hill country.

Katie Howes

Katie Howes is an MFA graduate from the University of Washington. Her work has appeared in ShotGlass
Journal, Right Hand Pointing, and The Seattle Review, among others. She lives in St. Paul with her husband
and two cats.
Kelle Grace Gaddis

Yellow Chair Press published Kelle Grace Gaddiss poetry and fiction collection, My Myths, in December of
2016. Other recently published work appears in Dispatches Editions Resist Much / Obey Little, Vending
Machine Presses Very Fine Writing, The Till, Five Willows Poetry Review, The Hessler Street Fair Anthology,
LOLX, Moonlight Dreamers of the Yellow Haze, BlazeVOX in BlazeVOX15, The New Independents Magazine,
Thirteen Myna Birds Journal, Knot Literary Magazine, Entropy, Writing For Peace, Dove Tales: The Nature Edition,
Blackmail Presses Edition 37, Knot Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Ms. Gaddis has written three poetry
chapbooks It Is What It Is; It Was What It Was, Visions Of, and American Discard. She is honored to be one of
4Cultures Poetry on the Buses contest winners in 2015 and 2017 Ms. Gaddis earned her MFA in Creative
Writing from the University of Washington in 2014. She is currently working on her first collection of short
stories.

Kevin Ryan

Linda Worden

Linda studies Political Economy at Williams College, MA. She is a dual citizen of Hungary and Canada, and
looks forward to writing more about the intersections of her identities and experiences. Linda is spending
her next academic year at Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Marc Carver

Marianela Valverde Varela

Marianela Valverde Varela is 35 years old and works as a career counselor at the Nelson Mandela
Institutional Care Center, a prison located in San Carlos, Costa Rica. She has been writing since the age of
ten. Her book of poetry Vigila sin noche [vigil without end] was published this year by the Salvadoran
publisher La Chifurnia. She is also a co-founder of the Grupo Folklrico Bajyr, a fusion of dance, theater, rap,
and ropingall rooted in Costa Rican cultureand works with her husband in the musical arena as a
songwriter and singer.
Mark DuCharme

Mark DuCharme is the author, most recently, of The Unfinished: Books I-VI (BlazeVOX, 2013). Other volumes
of his poetry include Answer (2011) and The Sensory Cabinet (2007), also from BlazeVOX, as well as The Found
Titles Project (e-book, Ahadada, 2009), Infinity Subsections (Meeting Eyes Bindery, 2004) and Cosmopolitan
Tremble (Pavement Saw, 2002). Counter Fluencies 1-20 was published in 2017 in the print journal The Lune. His
work appears in recent or forthcoming anthologies, including Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing
Resource (Baksun Books & Arts, 2014) and Litscapes: Collected US Writings (Steerage Press, 2015). His work has
also appeared in numerous journals, among them Big Bridge, BlazeVOX, Bombay Gin, Colorado Review, Mantis,
New American Writing, OR, Pallaksch Pallaksch, Shiny, Talisman, and Vanitas. A recipient of the Neodata
Endowment in Literature and the Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative American Poetry, as well as an activist
for adjunct faculty equity, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Mark Young

Mark Young lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia, & has been publishing poetry for almost
sixty years. He is the author of over forty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction,
vispo, & art history. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number
of languages. His most recent books are Ley Lines & bricolage, both from gradient books of Finland, The
Chorus of the Sphinxes, from Moria Books in Chicago, & some more strange meteorites, from Meritage & i.e.
Press, California / New York. A limited edition chapbook, A Few Geographies, was recently released by One
Sentence Poems as the initial offering in their new range.

matthew harris

Matthew Scott Harris (the second offspring and only son

of Boyce and the late Harriet Harris) made his unheralded debut
on a brutally cold January thirteenth tooth how sand and fifty nine.
His father - employed as a mechanical engineer with general
electric - heard powerful lungs of gangly newborn prior to being
permitted to cradle said Enfant non terrible.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, this sole son spent majority of his life
situated within quadrant of Southeastern Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
His ability to adjust from one grade to another evinced early signs of difficulty.
Extreme shyness in tandem with congenital speech defect (submucous
cleft palate - i.e. split uvula) alienated him from classmates.
As an outside neutral observer, I watched with gut wrenching agony.
He was socially detached, and rarely invited to join any reindeer games.
Yes, a gross degree of taunting left him without friends.
Lack of confidence and ultra reticence offered manna to bullies.
 Thus in my hum bull opinion: Sticks and stones will break your bones,
but names will never hurt you IZ PURE BUNKIM!
This vulnerability and susceptibility being on receiving end
of verbal taunting slings continued all thru public education.
Zero anti-bully tolerance NOT even on the drawing or black board.
Hindsight finds me claiming that suppurating from leprosy would have been
preferable over painful barbs, dings, and fists held inches away.
He graduated without any vocational idea (despite ignoble attempt
to fail at failing, and mere take up time and space, and essentially fail -
he got promoted nonetheless).
The absence of clear-cut goals found him enrolling and withdrawing
from countless colleges and/or universities.
Delay with interpersonal success accompanied like dark shadow creeping
closer like the edge of night.

Maya D. Mason

Maya D. Mason is the co-author of Autopsy Turvy (Meritage Press, 2010) and has been published in
BlazeVox, ditch, EOAGH, Helios Mss, Marsh Hawk Review, Of(f)course, and Set. She holds an MFA in
Painting at New York Academy of Art and most recently had a three-woman show at Sotheby's Institute in
NYC.

Melissa Reynolds

Melissa Reynolds is an editor for Everydayfiction.com. She studies English with a focus on Professional
Writing and Editing at West Virginia University. When shes not busy chasing her four children, she enjoys
terrible movies, building cairns, and large cups of coffee.

P. K. Pierson

P. K. Pierson is from Dallas, TX, and along with being a writer, is a published singer/songwriter. She
incorporates expression into every aspect of her lifethrough painting, sketching, and especially writing.
When she isnt writing, she enjoys staying at home with her three cats and going on adventures.
R. Keith

R. Keith is a persona that works with visuals, texts, poetics, fiction, and exophonic writing. He is the
author of four collections of poetry, and five chapbooks. His collection of Visual poetry Chicken
Scratch was published in 2017 (eyeameye books) Forthcoming is his 1st novella in 2018.

R. S. Stewart

R. S. Stewart is a native Oregonian who taught English at Christopher Newport College (now University) of
the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where he also directed two seasons of plays. Among others, San
Jose Studies, Blue Unicorn, Able Muse, The Raintown Review, Canary, Poetry Salzburg Review, 2 Bridges Review,
The Same, Serving House Journal, The Journal (UK), the Avatar Review, PIF Magazine, Ink, Sweat & Tears (UK),
and Brittle Star (UK) have published his poems. One is forthcoming in Clockwise Cat.

Rebecca Rodriguez

Rebecca Rodriguez is a young writer from Pleasantville, New Jersey. Her hobbies include playing with cats,
dancing ballet--though she is not very good--and writing short stories. She graduated with a BA in Literature
from Stockton University in 2015.

Rich Murphy

Rich Murphys 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. These poems are from his book Asylum
Seeker, the third in a trilogy focuses on globalizing Western / American culture. The first collection in the
trilogy was Americana. Body Politic was published by Prolific Press in 2017. Murphys 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 Gibbons

Robert Gibbons lives in Waterville, Maine, where he was recently appointed Research Associate at Colby
College. For the Marsden Hartley's Maine exhibit at Colby Museum, Gibbons wrote a suite of twelve poems
titled, Blues & Green for Marsden Hartley. Reviews of his tenth book of poetry, Animated Landscape
(BlazeVOX) by Ben Bollig of Oxford University and Peter Anastas of Gloucester, are online here,
respectively: https://minorliteratures.com/2016/04/15/animated-landscape-by-robert-gibbons-ben-bollig/;
http://peteranastas.blogspot.com/2016/12/animated-landscape-by-robert-gibbons.html.
Samantha Lacey

I try to write serious, sensible poetry, about love and loss and disabled dragonflies with a weak-spot for
cable-ties, oh dang it, I've done it again. I start off contemplating the true meaning of solitude and then
things quickly escalate in to talk of fridge magnets with algebra issues. It just happens. The green squiggly
line in Word has a field day, yelling out 'this makes no sense!'

Sandy Coomer

Sandy Coomer is a poet and mixed media artist. She is also an Ironman Gold All World Athlete, ranked in
the top 1% of her age group in the Half Ironman distance. Her poetry has been published in numerous
journals and anthologies. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Continuum (Finishing Line Press), The
Presence of Absence (Winner of the 2014 Janice Keck Literary Award for Poetry), and the forthcoming Rivers
Within Us (Unsolicited Press). Sandy is a poetry mentor in the AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program
and the founding editor of the online poetry journal Rockvale Review. She lives in Brentwood, TN.

Sarah Valeika

Sarah Valeika is a poet whose works are featured or forthcoming in Fem Fiction, The Eunoia Review, Dying
Dahlia Review, Parody Poetry and other print and online journals.

Sacha Archer

Sacha Archer is an ESL instructor, childcare provider, father, writer, and visual artist. His work has appeared
or is forthcoming in journals such as filling Station, ACTA Victoriana, h&, illiterature, ND, Experiment-O,
UTSANGA, and Matrix. Archers first full-length collection of poetry, Detour, a conceptual work with the Dao
De Jing as the source text, was recently published by gradient books (2017). His most recent chapbooks
are, The Insistence of Momentum (The Blasted Tree, 2017), and Acceleration of the Arbitrary(Grey Borders, 2017),
with two chapbooks forthcoming, TSK oomph (Inspiritus Press) and upROUTE (above/ground press). A
collection of broadsides from his work Ghost Writingis his latest publication from The Blasted Tree. One of
his online manifestations is his blog at https://sachaarcher.wordpress.com. Archer lives in Burlington,
Ontario.

Seth Howard

Seth Howard is a New-London-based-writer, & practitioner of Zen, who greatly enjoys the study of kans,
alongside daily sessions of zazen. He focuses his energies on the discipline of poetry, nourishing his spirit
with the study of existentialist / phenomenological-works, as well as delving into an assortment of
experimental writings. Lover of things Japanese, Chinese, Korean & Taiwanese, he keeps up with goings-on
by listening to Japanese-Web-Radio, watches K-drama, & in his spare time co-edits CAPSULE Magazine.

Shadiyat Ajao

Shadiyat Ajao is the founder and sole contributor to the food-poetry blog, Off The Bitten Path
<http://www.offthebittenpath.org/poetryandshortstories/> . Her work primarily focuses on the ways in
which food has the power to absorb our sentiments and serve as a reflection of ourselves. She spends much
of her free time reading and visiting bakeries at a rate some may refer to as alarming.

Scott Reimann

I am a liberal arts instructor at Bryant & Stratton College. Also, I am an officer with the Western New York
Network of English Teachers (WNYNET). One of my non-fiction pieces was published in Right Here, Right
Now: The Buffalo Anthology. I live in Buffalo, NY with my wife, Kelly, and our daughter, Harper.

Shelli Margolin-Mayer

After cutting her chops on hundreds of public documents, Shelli Margolin-Mayer is thrilled to be writing
fiction. Much of her technical work has been published and is still floating around on the internet. She holds
an MA in International Policy with an emphasis in Cross Cultural Communications and Social Psychology.
She is keenly interested in the intersection where misunderstanding meets comedy. Shelli is a member of
The Writers Pen Factory and Greater Los Angeles Writers Society (GLAWS). The novel she is currently hawking
to literary agents can be previewed at www.shellimargolinmayer.wordpress.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,
including Reading the Difficulties (U of Alabama P, 2014). His paintings hang in various collections.

Travis Cebula

Travis Cebula currently resides in Golden, Colorado. His most recent collections of poetry, Dangerous Things
to Please a Girl (2015) and One Year in a Paper Cinema, are available now from BlazeVOX Books and
Amazon.com.His poetry, photographs, essays, and stories have appeared in or are forthcoming from New
American Writing, BlazeVOX, Tarpaulin Sky, Aufgabe, Versal, Eleven-Eleven, NO/ON, The Talking River Review,
Monkey Puzzle, E-Ratio, Cricket Online Review, Otoliths, In Stereo Magazine, Fact-Simile, Bombay Gin, Dear Sir,
Trunk of Delirium, The Strip, Right Hand Pointing, Leveler, and Whrrds. Travis is also the founder and editor of
Shadow Mountain Press, specializing in limited-edition chapbooks. He teaches at the Left Bank Writers
Retreat in Paris in June.
na Nolan

Zinnia Plentitude

Zinnia is a nom de plume for another writer entirely.

Zoe Guttenplan

Zoe Guttenplan is a book- and word-smith from London, UK. She is the recipient of a SELEF prize for poetry
and the author of Redstockings to Riot Grrrls (2016).