ISSUE 15 - Spring 2023

poetry

Fulton St Station, 8:30 a.m.

The doors push open
and we pour onto the platform;

a shiny, frenetic sea of leather laptop bags,
expensive shoes, and black coats.

I am one with the torrent,
so small I almost slip through it,

the dimly lit corridor,

the left turn,

the first flight of stairs.

I step over a puddle
of stagnant something. A man,

overdosed on something,
lies face first on the ground,

limbs akimbo, fish out of water.

The sea parts and collapses together again.
We press forward, the crush of us

through the turn styles,

past the information booth,

up the second flight of stairs,
and into the cold, clear day,

almost late for work.

Zoe Antoine-Paul was born on the island of Saint Lucia, but now calls Brooklyn home. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in F(r)iction Magazine, Scapegoat Review, Funicular Magazine, New Note Poetry, Red Ogre Review, West Trade Review, where she volunteers as a reader, and other publications. Zoe writes about the city, the beauty in the mundane, and everyday internal turmoil. She can be found on Instagram @space.junkie13.

All That Burns

The familiar is lost
to me along with the jackpines
smoldering into ash
and purple pitcher plants threatening
to devour me whole. It tastes
like spring but September
was yesterday and everything
is starved. The leaves
melted into carmine blood,
all day the fire blazed.
All that I burned, I burned
for you and have been burning
since the day you left. The boy
I once was is the boy I am.
My hands sear into my thighs
as I suck breath
from smoke. The tree I climb
is the one I cut. What’s tangible
can’t be touched and for the first time
I’m terrified of having
two hands.

Half Naked Prayers

I always imagined
my father dying
on a bleak winter night
where the snow droops so heavy
on each branch they
spill onto the ground, like ink
oozing from a pen. The words
spelling, I love you
with all my life. I imagine
his bones becoming so hollow
that not even morphine can keep them
from crumbling to dust. The funeral
attended by people
I met once as a child
who each writhe up to me
to whisper prayers that he
may be in heaven. I’d stay
once people went back to their lives,
to twirl, whimsically throughout
the tombstones, and when the air
no longer has any oxygen
left, to dig, to claw
at frozen ground
with fingertips, where his dust-filled
corpse stirs, as if beneath
these frozen layers of earth
lay a man who knows how
to love me. Because I know,
their prayers are nothing more
than attempts for half naked
hearts to blur into fear,
as if fever.

Matt Baker is a student at Northern Michigan University in Marquette studying ecology and writing. In his free time he enjoys moshing in sweaty basements to live music, surfing in the Great Lakes, and drinking beer. He has work forthcoming in The Greatest City Collective magazine.

The Veterinarian

Animals came
on their own
to be healed
by St. Blaise.

My patients
are brought by car.
Often looking
apprehensive, I think

some feel a trip
by car cannot
end well. I lied
to the young boy

who asked if his dog
felt the pain
of the shot, the surgery
and unfortunately

her death. The lie,
St Blaise, a venial sin
if a sin at all.
He then asked

if his dog would
be waiting in heaven.
I told him that Giselle,
his beagle, was at peace

and that, yes, dogs like his
had a special place
in the afterlife. Giselle
had already been

in heaven, sleeping
each night
on the boy’s bed,
living her best life.

I too think about life
after death, wonder
if my dog will be waiting.
I can envision the room,

the lamp’s soft incandescent glow,
the table with the unfinished book,
a fresh glass of red wine,
the dog asleep beside my chair.

John Peter Beck is a professor in the labor education program at Michigan State University where he co-directs a program that focuses on labor history and the culture of the workplace, Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives. His poetry has been published in a number of journals including The Seattle Review, Another Chicago Magazine, The Louisville Review, and Passages North among others.

Sin

Hebrews 13:4 Marriage is honorable among all,

and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and

adulterers God will judge.

She tries to remember what it feels like
to be inside skin and she remembers
but stays without. Instead, she chases blue lotus
to relieve her extratropical cyclones. She’s scared
of the word amour. Opening the Old Testament
to search for questions that she can’t answer,
she places white tulips outside her temple,
waiting for someone to water them. Allah
drains the vase. She pours holy water over touch.
He begged her to wear a white shawl to cover her
from others in the world. She eats bread and drinks
her cup of wine and still can’t be promised healing.
When robes teach lessons, she struggles
to keep her mouth shut. Her sin lays underneath
a reservoir that no one can justify. Her sin
is a man who tied a handkerchief around her hands
and covered her mouth. The only word she learns is suffering.

Nicole Favors is an Afro-Mexican poet and writer. She studied Professional Writing at Woodbury University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in the Spring of 2023. Nicole is also a former Editor-in-Chief and Production Editor for the university’s national literary magazine, MORIA, and a staff writer for 7500 Culture & Arts Magazine. Her poetry has been published in Obsidian Literature and Arts, The Nubian Queen Confronts a Future Mother-in-Law (2023), You Need To Hear This, Unknowing Identity (2023), The Sims Library Of Poetry, The Little Girl on The Swing (2021), and the Young American Poetry Digest, Why I Love Parents (2013). You can find her on Instagram @npfavors.

Whom

For a long time off and on
I’d have these compensating dreams
where I was in New York and felt “Normal.”
Everyone’s agreed to let me
use that word whenever I feel like it.
It’s no accident
that the book I took home
and never returned
when last I dropped out
and repeatedly and obsessively pored over
was called “Abnormal Psychology.”
But! It didn’t have anything in it about vampires.

I come from a long line
of miserable people
who were always ready
for disaster to strike.
So many of them were quite charming
while drunk
and then incredibly angry
when the party was over.

I feel like I have to ask
someone’s permission
to be glad.
But damn, I don’t know whom to ask.

Matthew Freeman's seventh collection of poems, I Think I'd Rather Roar, was just published by Cerasus Poetry. The winner of several academic prizes, he holds an MFA from the University of Missouri-St Louis. Find him on Twitter! @FreemanPoet

The Memory Amended

Beethoven and dogs are rolling over as we speak. The Danish pastry is consumed by pirates, ersatz, on talk-like-a-pirate day. How suitable on level playing fields the induced rubric! At the intersection of two searchlights simultaneously lines of sight and Gertrude Stein arrive. A universe designed for the creation of black holes, as reconstructed from cross sections, I'm a human being, I'm a jumping bean. Over before it started surely it's a non-event . The n plus first day is a variation on the nth. I have morphology to do with then to do without then without warning I change lanes. Indifference as directed knows no nuance. If I isolate one category then I'll have to isolate them all. Under a precious chestnut tree, a stanza. Pleasures incommensurate, their product is their smallest multiple and nuclei lie roundabout like food for thought like phantom hands.

Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower. Since retiring from academia/mathematics he has published poems in numerous journals and in five poetry collections. His manuscript, To Justify The Butterfly, won second prize, and publication, in the 2022 James Tate Chapbook Competition.

Lady of the Ibis

  after Daria Petrilli

They follow me, these red birds,
wings folded
as if flight is a dream. 

In silk pajamas
a girl and a girl and a girl 
perch on the edge of the bed.

I tell them they're warriors—
badass mythical beings
meant to rule the sky 

but all along I know
they're just wild, ruffled things
that fell through the clouds.

They scream and thrash and scratch,
their healed bones
always on the verge of breaking.

At dawn
when they recede down the driveway
wind kites the leaves

but I shutter my mind against color.
Their case worker
flashes me a sad smile

as I give them the royal wave,
sip morning coffee,
revel in uncomplicated light.

At nightfall, the windows
frame familiar eyes
wide and dark and unblinking.

Beaks peck at memory  
as the fire shadows of feathers
stain my skirt.

So I lasso a gossamer string
around each thin neck—
give (at least) their ghosts

a lesson about how easy it can be
to forget the wide, wild embrace of air   
after the sky forsakes you.

Lori Lamothe recently published her fourth poetry collection, Tulip Fever, with Kelsay Books. Her poems have been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She is an assistant professor at Quinsigamond Community College and a (belated) MFA student at the University of Houston-Victoria.

Continuation

She’s been at the school only two months, this girl who shivers
in my office, fever pushing through her limbs. At fifteen,
her face a crossroads of beauty & despair.

She confesses to Coke & cereal in the cupboards, nothing
else. Hunger a stone in her stomach. The electricity’s been out
for a week. Her mother’s bed a Hail Mary full of men.

Days ago I drove her to the cinderblock fourplex she called home.
I'd met her mother, non-stop twitch & talk, tarnished
as a thrift store knife, smoking one cigarette after the other.

I’d seen enough to know every word was true.

I tell her what I have to do—phone calls, forms to fill. She nods Yes.
Later, the social worker arrives & the two go outside, hunker
on the picnic bench, the girl’s hair blowing about her pale face.

The passing bell rings & students spill from the portables, pausing
at the unmarked county car. They can write this story too. Waving
goodbye, they keep their distance. Overhead the sky

is dark as pavement, snow waiting its turn.

Moira Magneson calls the Sierra foothills home and taught English for many years at Sacramento City College. Prior to teaching, she worked as a river guide throughout the West. Her poems have appeared in a variety of journals, including most recently Passager, Horned Things, New Verse News, Persimmon Tree, and Plainsongs.

Portrait of a Liar

Dude. Babe. I’m cuddled up in my cardigan and Lil Bae’s got a story to tell in a bathtub big enough for tew. Let’s paint a picture of a Mississippi man who’s gonna make camping great again. Armed with his passport to America, wind with me through this rotten apple. Look out for bandits, look out for bears, we’re taking the portal to Destin-y.
Turn up the Steely Dan, this Bucs Fan is taking his Dodge Ram to the latest caravan. He’s living large with his Micro Minnie. Two dirty martinis please, one to drink, and one to spill
the drunken truth or the honest lies, whatever will stain your pants the best. 
Wander with us through the roaring aquarium, the dry casinos, the bleeding Smokies, ride straight into the Grand Lake. The long drive could be heaven or could be
Hell, maybe we should stop at Taco Smell, or how about we take that left hand slice to the golf garden instead? Hide some cigarettes in your waistband, slip on those white vans, roll a j, but please, no PD—
A Thai restaurant wedding speech, ER cocaine, white water raft, dine and dash, let’s have ourselves a day. Forget trick or treating, let’s go easter egg hunting, but wait, he’s still searching for his keys. Smash your phone, mom is calling, Ambien wandering, cancel the plans, you weren’t going anyway, taking life           day      by        day

where is day by day ever going to take you? 

From the condo view to the Crested view, let’s watch baseball and fall asleep rocking in our chair. Damn. Is life easy like a Sunday morning now? 

Didn’t   peg   you for a 

                                                             liar 

but even if you can’t smell or taste    

do you still

  promise?

Shanna Merceron is a Florida writer whose work can be found in many acclaimed literary journals and magazines. Shanna holds an MFA in Fiction from Hollins University, where she wrote stories that explored the darker aspects of humanity and pushed the boundaries of the strange. She is currently at work on her first novel, and when not writing, best spends her time traveling or with her dog. You can read more of her work via her website: https://linktr.ee/shannamerceron

On My Son’s April Visit

We spread peach preserves
over layered French brie
on a fresh English muffin.

In a too bright kitchen
he pours a cabernet.
Sit with me now a bit.

I ask how everyone is doing
and forget to ask about him.
Bordeaux photos surface—

there we are on the river
three years ago.
The French breeze in our faces

frozen on that path—
mother, son.
What lies ahead?

Take me forward
into vine tiered fields.
Sit with me a moment.

Let sun rest on our backs.
Let us feel its warmth.
Break open a bottle

taste the grape’s tart smooth
over our tongues. Let it linger.
We just found our way here.

Didn’t the heavens
just open? Didn’t we hear
the loud hosanna?

A Visit to Blaye, France

A high tide rush takes us underneath the bridge into this city.
Each April, a bone chill lacerates my son and me. This spring we travel
the river that shapes the southwest French coast—

the two rivers that meet with ocean’s open water only a mile away.
A long boat brings us to Blaye. We walk cobbled streets in a once walled
town. Joey my grandson’s loss, an undertow.

In a Roman relic once captive Jesuit priests still haunt. World War II
sailor’s remains silent deep off the bank in brine-thick waters.
Ghosts are everywhere. We climb citadel steps to the medieval wall

look across the estuary to Medoc’ slow hills and twisted
vines, still green and not quite ready.  It is as if we could reach
across the body of water, as if we were close enough to spit

to the other side. The surface flat enough to skip
stones across like four years ago when my grandson’s stones
zipped the bay’s still surface. 

Later at La Petite Cave the wine shop’s owner leads
us down steep cellar steps to the cold stone bottom
where bottles rest in locked cells.

He talks about being open to what the universe sends us.
We sit at a table to taste a cabernet with a red horse label.
The wine’s ruby grapes come from porous

limestone and clay soil.  In the metallic ash death returns.
The universe calls to you. Sometimes it does try
and we don’t respond, the owner says.                                                                           

The cave walls close in like a pall. We swish; smell the melon,
the floral, and a hint of the French oak barrel tobacco.
The glass touches our lips vanilla lingers in our mouths.

White asparagus soup boils on the stove upstairs
and here in the faint stone’s musk sweat, in the translucent
glass a glimpse—Joey returns his cheeks flush a radiant pink hue. 

Florence Murry is the author of Last Run Before Sunset. Her poems have appeared in Slipstream Press, Stoneboat Literary Magazine, Off the Coast, Bluestem Magazine, Westchester Review, Cumberland River Review, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Wild Roof Journal and others. Florence lives in Southern California with her husband and two cats. Visit her website at florencemurrywriter.com.

The Cobra Eaters

Hanoi, 2022

When it's cut from the body
with one chop,
in Hang Ha Noi restaurant,
the king cobra's
severed head yawns. 
In the death dream, the fangs come
out to bite, then hide
inside the sleeping jaws.
The headless body
leaps
high from the metal pan,
gets tangled
with the wiggling tail.
Minutes later, it’s skinned,
slit with kitchen
knife, dripping blood
into a plastic cup.

It's still alive. In a way
we're alive when we recuse
the body
to sleep, tuck
our fangs in
in a helpless yawn,
poison hid
in the nook of the heart.
The sleeping torsos jerk
at the thud of a chop,
thump the ground
with a fuming tail:
when we cobra eaters crawl
in the hollow
of the night
slowly serpentine
between dream and death.

Arun Paria lives in Pune, India. His poems have been published in The Bombay Literary Magazine, Nether Quarterly, Shiuli, Madras Courier, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2021, and Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature. His short fiction has been published in EKL Review. His creative non-fictions have been published in White Wall Review of Toronto Metropolitan University and Usawa Literary Review. He is the founder of the Pune Writers’ Group, a creative community, serving over 2000 writers.

The Dotted Lines of a Silent Night

Empty parking lots are cathedrals,
Every marked space is a confessional booth,
Curb stops like staggered pews,
Halogen lights burning like moth-covered censers                              
Burning holy over the acrylic dotted lines of a silent night.

A cigarette is a sacrament,
I touch my lips to a bottle of seven-dollar cab,
I think of the infant king, incarnated to bleed
In empty parking lots with lost sheep like me,
Staring up from shopping cart mangers swaddled in fast-food napkins
At moths and stars that are supposed to mean something.

Angels hang from darkened grocery store signs
Whispering that I shouldn’t be afraid,
They drop feathers on the asphalt as they roost in giant letters
Assure me that tonight they won’t let me cry alone.

The whole world is dark, still, unmoving, cold.
As I listen to that quiet pounding in my head,
I remember your lips moving against my ear,
Telling me you love me in the glow of our Christmas tree.
I watch the faded lines of the lot swim into an outline of your face,
And I wonder who’s ears your lips are brushing tonight,
Quiet as a mouse.

Hosanna, hosanna, the angels weep over my head.
I just nod quiet as a mouse atop my curb stop pew
And feel the emptiness
Like an incarnation shaped with dotted lines in my lungs.

Julian Porter is a thirty-year-old father of two little creeps, Jack and Luna, and has a short story published in Paper and Ink Literary Zine.

Form of a Fox Head

His scalpel tongue has licked the lapis-jade
staining it with blue rust.
       The aged copper blood dripped down his chin
to form a dragon’s beard.

This fox robs instead of hunts.
His actions are no longer forgivable.
            No longer a product of nature.

This fox devoured sin by choice.

He smiles with his affectionate and pernicious eyes.                     I become
an animal
    trapped within my innocence.
     My metallic amber skin tarnished with vicious pain.

Smile fox.
Smile for all the smiles you have stolen.
                      Bring one last gift to the forsaken. Help me dream
          in amaranthine.

Lick the tears which fall from my chest – try not to let them drool between your marbled teeth.
Don’t waste.
Kiss others with my spit.
   Bite others with my teeth.

Kate Schnetzer holds a B.A. in Theatre & Drama from Indiana University. In her spare time, she makes rugs, writes bad—but not boring—plays, and kills basil plants. Her writing is published or forthcoming in Sweet Tree Review and The Meadowlark Review. She is originally from Orlando, FL.