In the sprint to publish the issue, writing the introduction is the step I look forward to the least. Not because I dislike writing it, but because I can’t wait to get the issue online and in front of readers’ eyes. As a result, my introductions are short and fail at the task of communicating… Read more »
Issue Four
Front Matter
Fiction
Corben Dennis’s Dad’s Gone Mad
Eyes are elsewhere. So no-one sees the child at loose in the street, dodging bin and lamppost and striking the pavement with stinging feet. A phantom manifesting; thunder through open windows, as a flash of colour, sudden, in the doors of shops and houses. No stopping for traffic as he cuts across a car park,… Read more »
Poetry
A Found Poem
(in a note from Judith Anne Still) On the other side In the brightness of the room Flanked by archangels We consecrate ourselves with The arduous work that goes Into stained glass windows. One true realization delights As when the sunlight bathes The congregation in silent And astonishing rays.
Becoming One of Them that I Hear in the Evening
Morning I am myself. I pander out to the pinewoods, perambulate Mooselung Pond. There’s fresh coyote scat, already a mushroom prongs up from it. I gather the canine’s tracks, prints written in mud, read where it came from, where it went. As I process these I am losing part of myself; I try to collect… Read more »
Debriefing the Bug Guy
How did we come to Cuba from hello? He stood guard at Guantanamo, and before I can pry he points to the treatment: massive canisters marked Ultracide, Maxforce, First Strike, Bedlam. Beads of bait will line my counters, the pump and spray will ply poison borders around my home no bugs will live to cross…. Read more »
Dreaming Ali
It’s not worth writing down dreams except for the one about Ali early 1970’s Ali white shorts black trim Ali bouncing on his feet like a tapping man can tap bouncing on his feet like a hummingbird can hum sweating through in a one-bulb locker room where the man handlers have handled rubbed down a… Read more »
In the Teeth of Easter
“Save me…from the power of the dog.” from Psalm 22 There must have been dogs circling you, Christ, as you hung on the cross, wild dogs drawn in by the stench of death. They moved slowly along the edges of the crowd, their mouths drooling at the prospect of warm human flesh. But maybe I’m… Read more »
Missing
Oh how light the night sky is sister where there are no clouds Loons wail I’m here where are you I’m over here the moon hovers in the clear It’s all just shades sister light blue aqua mad midnight how much black or white the way you butter your toast… Read more »
To Be Human
The Words of Rosa Luxemburg(1871-1919) (a found poem: in Adrienne Rich’s notes for her Collected Poems) See to it that you remain human. There is no special prescription. All I know is once I went walking In the Sudende fields The sunset’s red light was falling On the wheat.
Under the Pecan Tree
I first learned the killing will of men when my mother was away in town, and my father was baling hay in a back field beyond the house. The rancher’s boy and I had parked to gather nuts for my mother’s pie under the old pecan tree, where he found a rattler, a diamondback, bigger… Read more »