Yellow Chair Review: Issue 2 by Yellow Chair Review

Yellow Chair Review Issue #2 – July 2015

YELLOW CHAIR REVIEW ISSUE #2 – JULY 2015

Edited by: Sarah Frances Moran Co-‐‑edited by: Iva Montgomery COPYRIGHT © 2015 YCR Publishing Published by YCR Publishing Waco, Texas All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author. Each work is copyright © 2015 the respective writers and artists. Cover art: "ʺLooking at Eurydice” by Elspeth Jensen

Editor’s Note: This is YCR’s third issue since its inception! We are thrilled that our little Review has taken off as well as it has and we’re honored to continue to give space to great art and literature. We hope you enjoy what Issue #2 has to offer. If you see work you just love please let the poet, author or artist know you’ve enjoyed their work. All contributor biographical information is listed on the Yellow Chair Review website. Happy Reading! Sarah Frances Moran, Founder/Editor

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CONTENTS On The Cover:

Looking At Eurydice – Elspeth Jensen

To The Fascist Fundamentalist Editor – Scott Thomas Outlar

Bit: A Definition – Kelly Magee

The Wrong Empty You In Strange Weather – Christina Murphy

I Find A Dead Wren (After Mei Yao Chen) – George Freek

10-‐‑12

The Amazing Angee – Anushree Nande

Gopuram – Dwarakanathan Ravi

Four Plays – Heller Levinson

Kamikaze Summer – Kevin Ridgeway

Duck Duck Goose – Emma Van Dinter

Sunflower -‐‑ Robin Turner

Humanoid -‐‑ Shloka Shankar

Mandala -‐‑ Shloka Shankar

Playing Love – Jocelyn Mosman

To My Body At 40 – Lisa Wiley

22-‐‑25

A Happy Place – Michael Verderber

Demons – Dah

(Per)Version Of Justice(s) – Euphrates Moss

A Shiny World As This – Julianza Shavin

Denverscape – Julianza Shavin

Hamartia – Casey Hampf

A Spring Tale – Michael Enevoldson

32-‐‑33

Amazing – Brennan DeFrisco

Grenade – Ally Malinenko

Wish You Were Her – Carly A. Kocurek

The Changing Face Of Beauty – Howards Debs

The Changing Face Of Beauty (photograph) – Howard Debs

Less Friend – Jackson Shumaker

Monday – Leonard Orr

40-‐‑41

poem to cindy x garcia – John Grochalski

Yours And Mine – Heath Brougher

Battlefields – Susan Castillo Street

Babel – Allie Marini Batts

Origins – Allie Marini Batts

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The Thrill of Arousal – Bill Wolak Sotto Voce – Ricky Garni

Greenish Irony – Yuan Changming

Travelogue – Rachel Schmieder-‐‑Gropen

Solution To Population – Colby McAdams

The Answer Understands Its Question – Kami Westhoff

More – J.K. Durick

Breakfast At Tiffany’s – Dee Dee Chapman

Heads Down – Caitlin Upshall

Uprooted Tree – James Baxenfield

Ruminations – Na-‐‑Moya Lawrence

Middle Sister – Jessie Ulmer

58-‐‑59

Rant – Chelsea Williams

60-‐‑62

Five Excerpts From Brazil, Indiana – Brian Beatty

Adulthood – Rony Nair

For You, Long Gone – Tonya Eberhard

A Dead River Mark – Wale Owoade

66-‐‑68

How To Find Treasure With A Burning Map – Joe Nicholas

Please visit www.yellowchairreview.com for contributor bios and information.

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To The Fascist Fundamentalist Editor By Scott Thomas Outlar

_________________ I used to agree with Nietzsche about having no pity for fools, but you’ve blown a hole through my philosophy with this one. Your opinion is so bad – (of course, that’s just my opinion) [but my opinion is better than yours] {much better, in fact, by far} …and so is my style… – that I cannot help but feel sorry. Right brain, left brain – some of us like to use both hemispheres, leaving your literal, classical interpretation in the mud with the rest of the extinct fossils that forgot to evolve when the natural selections were being made. To favor a particular aesthetic over others is one thing; to suck its cock eternally like a blind religious ceremony is quite another. This is the New Age, baby – This is the Renaissance Revolution – This is an artistic orgy – Better get you some while the fire’s still hot before you’re left in bed cold all alone jerking off to that sonnet you just can’t get out of your head.

Bit: A Definition By Kelly Magee

_________________ Party postponed for a trip to Urgent Care. Dog bite. Stitches in the birthday boy’s head. I fill out the paperwork for the dog, the vicious dog, the dog I love who’s turned on me. I’m the only one to defend the dog. Everyone else says, Put him down. I won’t. I think but do not say that I understand this kind of aggression. The desire to bare teeth. In the Urgent Care parking lot, I ignore the sound of the ambulance. I let the sun burn shapes onto my face. A sandhill crane flies overhead, its left leg dead and about to fall off. I wonder how it will land, thrown off-‐‑ balance like that. I wonder if it can prepare, or if the ground just happens to it, like an accident. At home, I go into the kitchen to find that the dog has eaten the boy’s birthday cake. This is love, I think as I drag him by the collar to a back bedroom. This, I think, is loyalty. I close the door gently. And fuck you, I whisper, for eating that cake.

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The Wrong Empty You In Strange Weather By Christina Murphy

_________________ 1. Extraordinary attempts are being made Why should we look for reasons? Craft your answer carefully Cut it and trim it like wood The design will say less than you intended And more than you realize 2. Yes, I know, you will laugh at what I tell you Such is the way love goes and how it falters I have more of what I need now, so loneliness Is less an arid and unyielding wasteland I am my own sound of stones splashing into streams And I have lost faith in the simplicity of wishing wells Where coins, like thoughts, tumble through clear water Into a sharp, blue darkness not unlike your own

I Find A Dead Wren (After Mei Yao Chen) By George Freek

_________________ What is this death to me? His tiny body has not yet begun to rot. I wonder if wrens die of old age? I’m now seventy-‐‑three. Unknown to me, many things have passed me by. Do wrens know love? Did he have a mate? Do wrens mate for life? Just two months ago, I lost my wife. When we were sitting in our garden, did we hear his song? I think life is too short, or else it is too long.

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The Amazing Angee By Anushree Nande

_________________ Years later whenever Angee looked back, she would tell herself that it was a blocked nose that woke her up in the middle of the night. It seemed like she had just drifted off to sleep when she woke to find a blurry squirrel staring at her from the window-‐‑sill. She blinked; she was definitely awake. The squirrel continued to stare, its head cocked to one side. There was something comforting about it, something almost familiar. Her phone suddenly vibrated under the pillow. You have 5 new voicemails. She groaned. Why hadn’t he got the hint? She put the phone back, sitting up in the sudden silence. The squirrel was gone. Maybe it had been a dream. Angee shrugged it off and tried to find a comfortable position to fall asleep. There was none where she could breathe through both nostrils and she finally settled for a half mouth open situation. The bright morning light made her forget the night before. She got ready for what she knew would be another busy day, remembering to message her aunt – Hope you are having fun on the cruise, don´t worry about me! All fine here. And it would have been too if she hadn´t seen the small kitchen window open just as she was about to leave. There were small footprints on the sill, faint but unmistakable. Ten days later that was the least of her problems. On that first evening she had been teaching the kids at the after-‐‑school programme where she volunteered. They were all engrossed in drawing the numbers after she had shown them how each could be turned into an animal. Angee had nipped to the small supplies room to get some more colours when she found herself face to face with her kindergarden mascot. There were few things she remembered from those first years – the swing in their back garden, the taste of chopped up strawberries sprinkled with powdered sugar, how her mum´s hair smelled before all the hospital treatments … and how scared she used to be of Happy the Hippo. All her classmates adored him, even after they realised he was just a puppet controlled by their teacher. But Angee had a vivid memory of being terrified of his beady eyes and of his smile that seemed to her a bit sinister. She also thought it suspicious that he was always happy. Did that mean if he had been named Sad, he´d cry all the time? But she hadn´t thought of him since her aunt made her draw him as many times as she needed to get over her fear. Her aunt was a big believer in facing one´s fears, provided it was done in a methodical way. It had taken her a minute or two to even believe what she was seeing. He was almost life-‐‑size, and even though she had rid herself of the irrational terror all those years ago, this unexpected reunion made her want to run far away from there. But he just sat there, silent, with that unchanging, ridiculous smile. She had stuffed the hippo in a corner at the back of the supplies room, composed herself and walked back to the kids as if nothing had happened, albeit without the colours she had originally gone for. That night, Angee returned home with a dull headache. There were more unopened voicemails and messages on her phone. The first thing she heard was the television in the living room. Was her aunt back early? The room was empty but then she heard the low snoring coming from the couch. Angee swore softly and grabbed the nearest thing she could find – a teddy bear she hadn´t seen in years. Where had that come from? She would worry about that later. For now she had to tiptoe from the back to the front of the couch while ruing the lack of a baseball bat around. But how could one ever be prepared for an 80s loving, talking unicorn? It was then that she remembered why last night´s squirrel had seemed familiar.

It was her father who had taught her how to hold a pencil, how to colour inside the lines before it was fashionable among her school mates. The last memory she had of him was of the night he left. He had come home late from the studio and she was tucked up in bed by her Aunt Jenna who was baby-‐‑sitting. Little Angee had a surprise for him. The lines were a bit shaky and one of the ears was bent, but she thought it looked exactly like Mr. Squirrel who came into their yard at noon every day for a few nuts from his friend, Angee. Her father had smiled tightly, mumbled something about being tired and left the room without kissing her goodnight. The sketch had lain under the bed for days after, until her aunt had put it in a box with the rest of her art things. Mr. Squirrel stopped coming to their house and Angee made herself forget her little friend. Until he had briefly turned up on her window-‐‑sill, blurry with a wonky ear. Who would have thought drawing cartoons and animals could be this dangerous? For some reason that she convinced herself had nothing to do with her father, Angee had always wanted to be an illustrator for children´s books. Sparky (Angee hadn´t planned on naming the unicorn, it had just happened) had been a response to a tutor saying that she needed to try out “edgier” things. Not that Sparky was edgy or even dangerous really. He was just proof that when you thought things were finally working out for the better, you came home to find a baby unicorn sleeping on your couch. Now here they were, two misfits eating popcorn (he preferred caramel) and watching Hugh Grant movies. Because what else was any sane person supposed to do in that situation? While she tried to find loopholes in her college-‐‑work – small, inanimate objects were fine, it was the ones with a soul that she had to be careful about – Sparky watered her aunt´s plants and watched a lot of dance movies. While Angee tried to salvage her second (and last) chance at getting an arts degree, and ignored more voicemails and messages from the last person she wanted to talk to, Sparky tidied her desk, her art supplies and calmly informed her about new and thankfully mostly lifeless arrivals at the end of the day. Maybe it was a good thing that she didn´t draw people or too many talking animals. But her aunt would be home soon and there was a limit to how many gifts she could give within her small circle or how many animals she could donate to the local zoo. Even Jenna would never understand if Angee ended up turning their house into a menagerie of woodland creatures. Sparky was hard enough to explain, even without his preference for cheesy Doritos, carrot sticks and grape juice. How was one supposed to even begin to deal with all of this? Mr. Rowland, I can´t submit any assignments because I am afraid they will come alive. I have this power, you see. Who wouldn´t believe that? Angee had never been desperate enough to make up an excuse like this back when they were all she had to protect her dream. But now when she was on her last chance to make up for all the tantrums and eventual detachment in her original first year, even the truth wasn’t enough. Calm rational thinking was near impossible while one´s headaches got worse, and one had to strain their brain thinking up harmless ideas for the kids at the after-‐‑school programme. She could just imagine the news – Sudden, inexplicable outbreak of hummingbirds and butterflies down Main Street. Experts at a loss to explain this sudden invasion. We advise everyone to remain calm and shut all of their windows. Angee finally understood what her teenage self with the DIY haircuts and dye jobs, her marker-‐‑doodled cut-‐‑offs and clip-‐‑on nose-‐‑rings never had. Being different when you had no choice was feeling truly alone.

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At least things couldn’t get worse, she thought as she planned a simple class on primary and secondary colours for the kids. It gave her something to do while she tried to think of a way out of her assignment mess. She should have known not to jinx it. Coming home that night, covered in random blobs of colour that suddenly started appearing on her clothes as soon as she got off the bus, Angee was ready to lock herself in her bedroom and never come out. Whatever it was seemed to be getting stronger. Even the impromptu Saturday Night Fever dance-‐‑a-‐‑thon courtesy Sparky did little for her mood. She left him watching The Breakfast Club and went to bed early. A night of turning this way, then that and finally on her back even though it gave her strange dreams, hadn´t made things better for her. Until she saw the text message. Is it happening already? We need to talk. It was the only thing that could have made her pick up the phone. How do you greet someone who left in the middle of the night without any goodbye? Luckily Angee mostly listened – increasingly light-‐‑headed and nauseous as she finally realised why she had never seen Mr. Squirrel after her father left, or why animals always seemed to turn up in their backyard while she was a little girl. She didn´t even realise she had drifted off to sleep again, but when she woke up, it was without a headache for the first time in a while. Not that she could enjoy the feeling. The words “clean slate” loomed over her Sunday. Yesterday she had been so sure that was what she wanted. Until her father told her it was her only shot at surviving with the slightest hint of sanity. But he meant an actual clean slate, erasing who she was, who she had been, who she wanted to be. The boxes of everything she had ever painted or drawn were accusatory just with their presence in her room. Even the doodles on the walls seemed to judge her from under the numerous layers of fresh paint. Her aunt had allowed her to scribble on them as much as she wanted, provided she helped her paint over it after a year. Angee remembered that first time. She had been only six years old. Her father had locked himself in his studio and started to work from home, ignoring the fact that he couldn’t handle saying goodbye to his wife. And she was overly agitated because the hospital smell had finally washed out of her clothes. She was afraid that she was already forgetting her mother and Aunt Jenna had held her close before handing her a box of wall chalk and asking her to draw everything she remembered about her mother. Angee doubted that quiet efficiency and wall chalk would work this time, but a part of her still wanted to be back. Even though she found it difficult to swallow every time she thought about the ache she still felt, the people she still missed. At least then she could paint everything away without a worry of being invaded by them. “Clean slate”. At least Sparky wouldn’t have any art supplies to tidy up, she thought, before realising that it would mean no Sparky either, no few but well-‐‑chosen words that were oddly comforting. She sighed, picked up a pencil and the notepad she always kept on her bedside table. Straight lines, curvy lines, circles, thin lines, thick lines … all the exercises her father had ever taught her. She then moved on to shadows and light, to empty spaces. Angee drew everything she could see, everything she could remember seeing some time in her life, everything she wished she could see. How could her father just give it all up? But then, how could he just leave his daughter and not contact her for 14 years? That night Angee kept her bedroom window open, hippos and talking owls be damned. The flat across the street were watching the football, their cheers and groans making her downstairs neighbour'ʹs tuneless ukelele playing seem almost pleasant. She had a lot of work to do. The adventures of Angee and Sparky, crime-‐‑solving duo extraordinaire. She grinned, a Cheshire Cat smile at no nobody in particular. Maybe that was the key she thought, as her pet unicorn settled down on the rug beside her bed and started to gently snore -‐‑ even superheroes, especially them, needed a dose of normal every now and then.

Gopuram Photography Dwarakanathan Ravi

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Four Plays By Heller Levinson

_________________ coming apart at the intersection provokes public display. some would

consider dissolution a personal matter. others would not. an

intersection in its own right.

I’m going to wear my favorite odors she said. just don’t smother

them in surprise he offered. the waft was dense, … foliate.

supervision out the window.

Kamikaze Summer By Kevin Ridgeway

_________________ early that last June of school, I received dozens of get well soon letters from classmates in response to a week earlier when I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills that landed me in an adolescent psychiatric ward, flowers and great big stuffed animals waiting at the front hospital desk. I cannot remember much about that day other than all of the revisions my suicide letter went through, and I nearly lost my nerve with Brian Wilson singing on top of a teenaged symphony to God that made me dwell too much on small tragedies, and my brother flew out from New York City not knowing what to say while my teachers all felt sorry for me enough to pass me without completing my final exams and rumors that I was disfigured in my feeble attempt at death were quashed when I marched with a class of over four hundred students at our commencement, still breathing but just another lonely name they announced that hot afternoon that echoed off the bleachers of their football stadium before it rocketed beyond the clouds to the outer limits of uncertainty.

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Duck Duck Goose By Emma Van Dinter

_________________ 1) Whitey-‐‑tighties found on the damp 70’s shag carpet of my oldest brother’s bedroom. Clumsily I lifted my knees and guided my feet through two holes and wondered what the third was for. 2) Pokémon t-‐‑shirt found crumpled in a netted laundry basket in my older brother’s room. Against black cotton glimmered a vivid yellow vinyl sticker, it complemented my new underwear. 3) Sunhat made of woven brown hay. Under the rim, rosy cheeks and a gap tooth would hide. On the swing-‐‑ set, my feet dangled above grey pebbles and my floral dress swayed in summer air. 4) Shiny bikini displayed on the front porch of my childhood home. My brother’s friends gathered around a silver car as I tried to catch their attention. I walked down the smooth concrete like a model; plastic sequins emitted white light with each dramatic hip jolt. 5) Motorcycle rides only allowed when protected by teenage boy arms. Elbows hovered parallel to my shoulders, big hands directed muddy tires around the yard. I would imagine tightly gripping the throttle alone. 6) BB gun given to my youngest brother while balloons and paper plates cluttered the kitchen. My fingers itched to pull the trigger, proving my outdoorsman-‐‑ship to my father. 7) Tampons were quickly recognized as uncomfortable-‐‑fun-‐‑sucking–stick-‐‑of-‐‑cotton. Every step rubbed what felt like a yarn ball against my insides. 8) Pubic hair being pulled out ferociously. Black zigzag hairs, coated in red wax, crunched between thumb and pointer. I ripped back the solid wax slab, soft pink skin remained. 9) Open doors lack respect. My mother feared closed doors, the promiscuity behind them. I was compared to the teen moms she would nurse, girls without rules making their own decisions. Protection is what she offered but not direction. 10) Cellphone pictures lack trust. My mother requested to send photos of familiar faces and places whenever I went out. I decided to plan ahead, storing fake visual memories to lie with while I explored that last of my youth.

Sunflower By Robin Turner

_________________ Somewhere a sun-‐‑yellow universe. Somewhere painted dusk nearing night. A petal pressed deep in the fold of your pocket. Every pretty little name of love. Somewhere orbit and low slow motion. Somewhere whisper and sweet red wine. And there is each quiet room in the house of your childhood when the rain fell steady outside.

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Humanoid By Shloka Shankar

_________________ i am a humanoid bursting at the seams. i am the colour purple in all its hues. i am a sounding board for your problems. or, at least, i pretend to be. i am not easy to please. i have a ghastly temper that ties itself up in knots and comes undone when you kiss me. i was born out of the earth’s belly when lightning struck thrice on the same spot. i am never who i think i am. a dream is exhaled from a banyan twice my age.

Mandala Black Pens on Paper Shloka Shankar

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Playing Love By Jocelyn Mosman

_________________ we played house, but never home for a year of unorthodox loving our relationship was car rides in broken down jeeps with duct taped windows shopping cart romances in the yogurt aisle stealing bacon at the local cracker barrel we played mommy and daddy to your two dogs but their real mommy was daddy’s ex-‐‑wife split custody of dogs and clothing i felt like the other woman exiled from the eden of our love affair we played king and queen, without the royalty sprawled across his bed like a housewife we created fortresses out of the sheets to block out the world around us we were stolen glances in classes quiet kisses in an empty parking lot we never played teacher and student it felt too much like reality in the fiction we wanted to create from our story the quiet never felt more like torture than the moments of silence in shared spaces where fingers intertwined like butterflies and ribbons we played adam and eve wearing only each other’s kiss as clothing until the shame of our sinful nature set in god promised us fruit but my barren soil told us even eden could not last forever we played house for a year but never did our hearts resonate the sound of forever home i was just a squatter for a while but we never could have made it to “‘til death do us part” we were just playing into the fiction of an impossible and unorthodox love

To My Body At 40 (after Carl Dennis) By Lisa Wiley

_________________ If I’ve interpreted your smirk properly, You’ve never brooded, never slammed A door because I’ve treated you More as a teenager treats a younger sibling Than equal treats equal. On the warm morning when you’ll be too tired To meet my request for an early run, I don’t envision You’ll be pleased, content to be rid Of an acquaintance who abused you. I sense you’ll feel perplexed, Leaving me alone on the cold pavement. I know how blessed I am That your knees and Achilles held up so long, So willing to run in the sun for hours — Now that your freckles are almost faded And the belly fat has responded to repeated crunches — Without whining, active Except for those nights of sipping Malbec with friends. What overture could I perform Sweet enough for your sake, to convince you I’m not unappreciative. Should we vacation Together soon? Should we ski the black diamonds Or swim at the beach? It’s your choice, if you pick the beach, Whether we race to check your speed And stamina, and face fatigue, Or recline under an umbrella with slim volumes of verse. And if we recline, it’s up to you whether we dine, There and then, consuming all that we packed, As if that picnic were our first, Or keep a serving so that tomorrow Won’t seem empty, If not as full as today.

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A Happy Place By Michael Verderber

_________________ SETTING: A beach in Blake’s psyche and several memories in his past. (Lights rise on BLAKE, who is face down on a beach. Around him are four items: a coffee cup, a black umbrella, a paper bird, and a flower bouquet. The soft sound of gulls can be heard. He rises slowly and looks around. A slightly different light coloring could be used to distinguish between beach and flashback scenes.) BLAKE – What? Where am…I recognize this place… I remember, I think… (Lights fade as BLAKE exits and then rise. SHELLY is on the beach crying. BLAKE enters nonchalantly carrying a coffee cup. He sees SHELLY and takes a moment to think.) BLAKE – (Crossing to SHELLY) I thought the beach was supposed to be a happy place. SHELLY – Leave me alone. BLAKE – See, now I can’t. I see a pretty girl on the beach crying and now I have to intervene. SHELLY – If you are trying to be cute, you are trying way too hard. BLAKE – I think you calling my actions as, what was the word? Cute? I think that is you calling it cute. Unless you meant me? SHELLY – (Lightens up and smiles) Ok, that was pretty good. BLAKE – Thanks, I’m Blake. SHELLY – I’m Shelly. BLAKE – Huh, I found a shell on the beach… SHELLY – You’re slipping back into corny. BLAKE – I’ll say no more. (gestures to zip his lips) SHELLY – …why are you drinking coffee? This is a beach. BLAKE – Oh, so I’m the weird one now? Would you suggest I drink a beverage more befitting of the beach? SHELLY – Yes. BLAKE – Say, sun tan lotion?

SHELLY – If this is your way of cheering a pretty girl up, you aren’t doing a very good job. BLAKE – Really? I should drink more lotion then. And I beg to differ. SHELLY – Do you now? BLAKE – I do. You are smiling and seem in better spirits. I’d say I’m doing a pretty good job. SHELLY – (Lightens) Perhaps. BLAKE – (Points) Is this mound taken? SHELLY – Grab a seat, er, sand. (pause) Is this when the gallant gentleman asks me why I’m crying? BLAKE – Who said I was a gentleman? Who said I wanted to know? SHELLY – Do you? BLAKE – Of course. You think I’m gallant. I need to live up to that. No pressure or anything – gee thanks! SHELLY – You gonna offer me that coffee? BLAKE – You gonna offer me lotion? SHELLY – (laughs) BLAKE – So are you gonna tell me why you are crying? SHELLY – Trade you for a coffee. (Rises and starts to exit) BLAKE – (Rises) Wait, wait! (Lights out and then back up. SHELLY is gone and BLAKE is alone on the beach again. The sound of gulls is heard.) BLAKE – She felt like a storybook. But I never got that happily ever after…did I? Everything went fast, so by the book. (He picks up the black umbrella) (Lights out and then rise. BLAKE runs on stage with wet hair as he closes the umbrella. SHELLY is seated with a pregnancy test in hand.) BLAKE – Did I miss it? SHELLY – Why is your hair wet? BLAKE – Baby, it’s pouring out! SHELLY – Isn’t that what the umbrella is for?

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BLAKE – Well, yeah, but I was in a rush to get here. SHELLY – It’s only a test. You’re so sweet, Blake. And I’ve got good news. BLAKE – Yeah? SHELLY – I’m pregnant! BLAKE – Ahhh! Yes, baby! (They hug exuberantly) SHELLY – (Sighs) Now how on earth are we going to put up with a kid? (Laughs) BLAKE – More importantly, how is this kid going to put up with us? SHELLY – You are silly. (They kiss.) (Lights fade and rise on the beach. BLAKE is alone.) BLAKE – We were prepared parents. We were good parents, we paid attention to our kid. Took him to baseball. We paid attention… (Lights fade and rise on the beach, in a memory. BLAKE and SHELLY enter with picnic supplies.) SHELLY – (Readying a towel for the floor. She talks to TYLER, who is represented as a voice offstage.) Tyler, honey, you ready to hit the beach? TYLER – Yeah…momma, can I build a sandcastle? SHELLY – Yes, but stay close. BLAKE – Don’t get too close to the water, alright? You haven’t learned to swim yet. TYLER – Ok, daddy. (SHELLY and BLAKE set up the picnic) SHELLY – You know, we met right over there. Remember? BLAKE – Of course. (Catches sight of TYLER offstage.) Tyler, no wait! (Lights turn blue) SHELLY & BLAKE – (Run offstage yelling) Tyler, stop! (Lights turn red as stage empties. Lights out.) (Lights rise on the beach. BLAKE is alone. He crosses to the bouquet and picks it up.) BLAKE – Shelly was never the same after that. It became harder and harder for us. Everything was like…moving through this impenetrable force. Even waking up and making coffee was monolithic.

(Lights fade and rise on SHELLY, sitting in a chair, playing with a paper bird. BLAKE enters with the bouquet.) BLAKE – You found Tyler’s bird. SHELLY – (Sniffs and wipes tears away) BLAKE – He really loved that thing. SHELLY – We really loved him. BLAKE – Still do, Shelly. We still do. And we forever will. SHELLY – (Examines the bird) We got him everything he wanted, every toy, and this was still his favorite. BLAKE – A little paper bird. SHELLY – It was the first thing he and I made together. BLAKE – I know, baby. I know. We need to go. It’s time. (Lights fade. In the darkness, church organs are heard playing a somber dirge. Lights rise slowly on BLAKE and SHELLY at Tyler’s funeral, facing downstage. They each step forward slowly.) BLAKE – (He places the flowers down.) I should have been a better father. I’m sorry, Tyler. (He steps back.) SHELLY – (She places the paper bird down.) I brought your favorite toy, Tyler. Keep playing with it, ok? (They quietly weep as the lights fade.) (Lights rise on BLAKE alone on the beach surrounded by the coffee cup, umbrella, paper bird, and bouquet.) BLAKE – (He weeps and picks up the paper bird. He rises.) I thought the beach was supposed to be a happy place. (Lights out as the sound of splashing waves rises and fades.) [ F I N ]

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Demons By Dah

_________________

Once again the demons emerge from the news fly into my ears and stab my heart It is difficult to fathom how they have eaten half of the world The refineries fiery exhales blast the atmosphere until the sky wears a dirty mask The demons swarm like radiation and move their goods across disheveled kingdoms and each streak of brown light is a sick body plunging into a soiled bed In the overgrown sepia haze hot residue singes the air A dense smudge cripples the waters plagues the oceans with black disease Once again the demons emerge from the news fly into my ears and stab my heart (after the latest oil spill)

(Per)Version Of Justice(s) By Euphrates Moss

_________________ Somebody call Chris Hansen! Predators! Predators! The first men of the cloth to be featured, too, I think… And the diddlee the fairest document in the land Gather ‘round, little children, and hear me tell Of the road to kakistocracy, our political hell Money shot through Ashtown’s glory hole Into the hands of the vested Catholic priestjudges Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas From unknown donors in conscientious deniability, Sworn ignorance of bribers or even of a bribery They used scalpels but it was no surgery performed, Near Viceregal Lodge, this Supreme Court butchery Before they convened in their holier-‐‑than-‐‑thou cassocks And administered the Gospel of Greed to the rule of law Gloria in excessus richesse– unmonied bemarginalized Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission I speak of complete collusion between government And corporations, a merger in the face of anti-‐‑trust That’s cancerized America’s very blood in rich clods “Money is speech.” … “Corporations are people.” Jackjustices doing the hokeypoky and then They brother Buzz the vote; that’s what it’s about How far down the rabbit hole does this infection creep? Conservatives: Catholics now in bed with Protestants Corporations, church, and state: totalitarian Trinity O padre of Rome who art in Vatican City, Please ring out the curse against these ministers Who so dearly love that never-‐‑overflowing chalice First-‐‑first last-‐‑last, the sentence read from the book May these five candles forever be extinguished, amen!

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A Shiny World As This By Julianza Shavin

_________________

Putting the innocent knife to her throat, my mother says, I don'ʹt give a shit who eats broccoli! Rain mudslides her makeupped face that reflects her mother, projects her girls. The dog, having gnawed all sun and stink from bone, skulks to his upside down self by the sofa'ʹs timid welcome, and my brother, smiling like the village idiom, reaches for salt. Then salts. My sister, God bless her, has sworn off food and later will pronounce us dysfunctional which is when all laughter ceases, not at the knife, those second and third helpings. My father'ʹs appetizer, an anxious tranquilizer, fails to keep his sweet brown eyes from silvering in some sudden gastronomic aging. It occurs to me then that Elijah never came. It occurs to me that once we heard Elijah rustle, but it was the dog, and how we laughed, that dogs were our only real hope in such a shiny world as this, except they kept dying, just the usual. The knife returned to its baby-‐‑hungry drawer. Then, low blood sugar picked us all off like kites and my mother cleaned up alone.

Denverscape Photography By Julianza Shavin

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Hamartia By Casey Hampf

_________________ My flaws have been bothering me today more than usual. Lateness turned off my alarm this morning and hid my keys in his pockets. Though he refuses to come clean. When I finally did make it to work, I was tapped incessantly on the shoulder by Anxiety with her bitten down nails. She can’t seem to let me forget about the presentation I had. The one I didn’t make it to after I was tripped by a red-‐‑faced Clumsiness, making me spill coffee all over myself. Thankfully Self-‐‑Consciousness stopped cowering from behind the stairs to help pick me up. Leaving has been the most persistent flaw. I keep finding him hiding in places he isn’t supposed to be like in the trunk of my car or under my bed. But he’s different now. He’s starting to look like you. And even though I said wouldn’t, seeing him makes me want to call or even go back. Especially on days like this. But whenever I pick up the phone, I am instantly berated by Anxiety, Fear, Desperation, and Restlessness. Their huddled bodies block me in while they strangle the phone away. I can’t stop them from hanging up on you. It will be hard to avoid them after that. Even harder to evade the smiling faces of Alcoholism and Depression. So instead I’ll lie in bed and turn off the lights and try not to think of you. And because he has your face, I’ll seek out comfort from Leaving.

A Spring Tale By Michael Enevoldsen

_________________ A beautiful butterfly Tasting the sweet honeydew of a spring child May suddenly catch on fire from his embrace A dangerous game A dangerous game The warm touch of this strange child Spread all of the bed of flowers Will soon catch on fire other butterflies Like a moth to a flame Like a moth to a flame The spring child full of honeydew Awakens green passion by his name...

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Amazing By Brennan “B Deep” DeFrisco

_________________ Hey you— looking down at this page you’re amazing & here’s why: Did you know you can glow in the dark? Humans are bioluminescent— it doesn’t matter what color your skin is— this light that our eyes can’t detect lets other predators know where we are we all look the same when you can see through the darkness Or instead, let’s talk about love: an avalanche of neurotransmitters moving through you speeding up your heartbeat making it hard to eat or sleep producing the same chemical effects as amphetamines We are literally addicted to love In your blood, there will always flow a dash of gold You are more precious than you know & did you know we share half our genetic code with bananas? Or that the average ejaculation contains 1,500 terabytes of information? Do you know how many hard drives you’d have to buy? Never mind… A few of us humans can taste the flavor of syllables as we speak them & some women have an extra color receptor or two seeing more shades of red and blue than men will ever know

Loneliness is physically painful— the same part of the brain that makes pain frightening drives us to connect, to seek companionship to feel home in someone else’s arms & feel lost when you aren’t there which might explain why tears are like memories, changing shape depending on why you’re crying even though around 90% of the cells in your body have their own DNA and are not, technically, you Every atom inside you is 99.99999999% empty space & not one of them are the ones you were born with but all of them were born in the belly of a star You are so amazing I just thought you should know

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Grenade By Ally Malinenko

_________________ It happens for too long. Everything I tried to shed when I boarded that plane and crossed that ocean comes back and here I am walking through the streets of Leipzig telling you that I’m not getting better that sometimes I just want the disease to come back and kill me because then it will be over. The waiting and worrying and wondering will be over. I don’t think that’s what you want, you tell me softly and I realized I did it again threw another grenade of fear right at you and you caught it and held it and pressed it to your chest and you didn’t even blink when it blew up your heart.

Wish You Were Her By Carly A. Kocurek

_________________ He sends me letters from other edges of the world as I stand staring off the coast of Texas. He drops postcards from cliffs in South America, sets them adrift in bottles in the Black Sea, sends them sliding down Alpine slopes, leaves them to rise on heat waves in the Sahara. They come to me crinkled and world-‐‑weary, Their messages incomplete. One depicting Argentinee tango dancers read “Wish you were her” Maybe he imagined things would be simpler if he were twined in my two-‐‑step arms as we scuffled across bare board floors Maybe he thought he had taken a wrong turn Somewhere out in the Gulf. But maybe to he wished his two worlds would compress. His Texas girl would dissolve into the thick black hair of the tango dancer and breathe through painted lips.

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The Changing Face of Beauty By Howard Debs

_________________ The Japanese have made an art of it, golden repair —after a commentary on Kintsugi, lacquerware mending Soon these, will bear wilted petals golden hues succumbing becoming burnt umber taking on another cast, reflecting not the past but the passage of time. *** Long ago in what too will change from a quaint fishing village called Edo to a burgeoning Tokyo a craftsman ponders a conundrum in his ceramics shop one spring day, looking towards a sky of periwinkle blue he searches the heavens for an answer amidst that exquisite view the delicate porcelain masterpiece known as “two flowers” fragile as its namesake sits upon his bench then, after examining each crack, each spidery wrinkle conceded from use, with care he fills the fissures applying a lacquer and metallic mix the object of his art now showing its wear in shimmering golden seams not hiding what came to be— redeeming the changing face of beauty.

The Changing Face of Beauty Photography By Howard Debs

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Less Friend By Jackson Shumaker

_________________ I remember colored pencils. Long hours spent indoors just you and me. Drawing snakes, elves, dragons, dream creatures, robots, magic rings, things we knew. A secret world. I remember you’d pick me first in any game and I’d do the same for you. A childhood promise. I remember making a tipi in the woods out of sticks and an old carpet we took without permission. Marching around with arrowheads tied to sticks imagining we’d go hunting turkey and spearing fish but never hurting a thing. I remember when you’d disobey your parents. Mock them. Fight them. But then rely on them. I remember waiting with you at the cabin when you were too afraid to go tubing behind the boat or too disenchanted to make the trip to watch fireworks on the 4th of July. I never minded. I remember you telling your mother and me that you were more fire than water. Mostly fire. I remember thinking you were immature. A tolerable trait. Because I loved you. I remember our freshman year of college. We ate lunch together almost every day because we didn’t know anyone else. We were both so glad it turned out that way. I remember when you got a girlfriend. I remember you shocked us both when you told her you thought that men were smarter than women. That males were inherently more likely to produce genius-‐‑level intellect. I tolerated that too. I remember sleepless nights under the influence of fantastic substances. Feeling a sense of peace, love, realization, and acceptance. I tell myself it was worth it. That each night was worth it. I remember when you lost your girlfriend. You said she had problems you couldn’t help her with. I remember you calling my own girlfriend toxic, unstable, and insane. My girlfriend? I remember when you told her that men had stronger friendships than women and that it was a man’s biological imperative to sleep with as many women as possible and to bear as many children as possible. How could you? I remember avoiding you for months. I remember sleepless nights trying to reconcile your presence in my life. I remember asking you to meet me for lunch. It had been so long. Maybe you’d changed. I remember you said you were done spending time with people who sucked. You didn’t want to see the cousins on your father’s side ever again. Didn’t want to see anyone from your mother’s side. I asked how you felt about your parents and grandparents. You said you hadn’t decided about them yet. Hadn’t decided? Those people love you unconditionally. I remember leaving you with tears in my eyes. I’ve never been strong enough to fight you on anything. I couldn’t bring myself to ask about the other subjects. What do you think about women? Are they second-‐‑class citizens to you? Inferior? I remember suffering a loss. I remember our mother’s called us “Baby buddies”. Born just a month apart. Spending every summer together, playing the same games, attending the same university. But finding a world of difference.

Monday By Leonard Orr

_________________ I search for telltale signs of your approach: the horizon brightens and the river calms, the seagulls stalk about and mockingbirds wave their semaphore wings, quails bob past. Then at last, still apart, closer, then the moment when our shadows coalesce, when we pounce and hold, and could kiss for a week at a time. Two days without meeting is far too long, a time of gloom and tedium, two days of lower back pain, a period that seems boring and bereft, like two long days in the dental chair, days of talk radio. Two hours without meeting is too long, a time of restless, high-‐‑tension nerves strung dangerously in the electrical storm, imagining unaccountable delays, or that you find you must leave too soon (any time is too soon). Two minutes without you is still too long; when we meet, I don’t even want to blink because of the seconds I lose sight of you.

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poem to cindy x garcia age, approximately 5 ½ By John Grochalski

_________________

cindy what is there to say? except that we’re both pretty tired coming home on this evening train only i don’t have my mother with me to try and keep waking me up, like you do she’s only doing it because if you sleep now you’ll be a terror when she tries to put you to bed it’s kind of like how i feel those nights struggling to keep my eyes open until at least ten o’clock frustrated at all of these inabilities and limits i seem to be acquiring year by year cindy it’s hard at your age and it’s getting harder at mine and i know how you feel two parents working full-‐‑time or maybe even just one up and out the door before most kids are even awake back home to the insult of everyone else’s warm yellow window because you’ve spent mornings and afternoons shucked off to daycare or lousy babysitters that your folks can’t really afford you know they’re working hard but it’s tough only seeing them when the sun comes down when you’re tired and on this train tonight where thankfully no one is making any noise remember they don’t want to pay someone else to raise you either

cindy i wish that i could say that it gets better that the tiredness abates but if i have to be honest with you life comes down to small pockets of joy tucked between the sadness and strife and before you know it you’ll be putting your mom to bed or saying goodbye for the long run so don’t give her too much shit right now because she seems like a nice lady with soft, brown loving eyes cindy i can see the tears welling up as she keeps sitting you up straight there’s no need to cry because this is just what we do trying to live this life we’ve been given we endure we make magic happen when we can and there’s still a few more good hours left in the day for us both dinner, television, or maybe a decent book so let’s not squander this, little girl on tears and petty disagreements let’s do as mom says and get up let’s get off this train tonight and get back to the art of living until tomorrow, cindy until tomorrow.

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Yours And Mine By Heath Brougher

_________________ The day is made of slammed doors everything is labeled and certain and few things are more certain than a slammed door everything is closed off or separated the natural boundaries of ownership [wolf piss on a bush] have ballooned to a near explosion by what Mankind has done to this extant thing…………………………………..this thing commonly called ownership left here for you humans to find and exploit to where it has become the dominant force in almost every culture in the World. [these illusions make me sick to my brain]

Battlefields By Susan Castillo Street

_________________ You’d think that battlefields Would be haunted. Fierce bursts of cannon, horses’ shrieks, soldiers’ groans hissing through air, rustling in grass, reverberating against stones But no. In Hastings and Bayeux, in skies above green fields in Kent or beaches in the north of France no echoes there, no cries, no drones of aircraft spiralling down in catherine-‐‑wheels. The wind blows soft and ruffles grass as though young soldiers never fought, guns never roared, shells never burst and burned through bones and flesh and earth.

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Babel By Allie Marini Batts

_________________ if sorrow is the autumn of heart & mind, then with the sun tangled in myrtle branches instead—re-‐‑seed between my thighs & name me springtime plant flowers of fire along the edges of my skin & watch me burst into bloom coming up green-‐‑eyed again, like blades of grass after a controlled burn— if language strips away the meaning & the motivation, then breaking apart this well-‐‑wrought vessel turns the translator into a traitor. if there are five distinct tonal qualities to language, then explain away the night by breaking it down into five simple sounds: pull each of them from my antediluvian lips, thread them up from the anchor in my lungs this thing—mistranslated as love that was planted bitter— like autumn— bring it back as languageless sound, joined as my breath to the water & the heart radicals re-‐‑emerge & intermesh, turning the traitor into a pure tonal value, a rose of deepest blue, the color a saturation of love untranslatable.

your breath

Origins By Allie Marini Batts

_________________ Because I had no interest in learning the art of blowjobs, practicing skills I saw no use for on an acned and unappreciative audience, I made myself a target. Defending that virginity like it was a goddamn lottery ticket taught me better than AP English 11 the definition of irony: When what happens is the opposite of what’s expected— WHORE scrawled on my locker four times in four years, painted over to hide what’s written beneath Ignore it; they’ll lose interest if you don’t react to them, but my mother didn’t seem to understand that ignoring it only made it worse, upped the ante: DykeFreakBitchCuntSlutWhassamattergonnaCRYnow? Spitballs clinging to my hair, I terrified myself as I leapt up like a dog gone blood simple, whipping my desk across the room like a prairie twister, bearing down towards Jason-‐‑or-‐‑Josh Caught at the cuff of my long-‐‑sleeved shirt by Mrs. I, revealing to her in a flash, the map on my arm dotted and cross-‐‑hatched in cigarette burns and shallow cuts silvery scars and half-‐‑scabbed attempts to Just Ignore It After class, she finds me behind the portable, hands me a blank notebook, a detention slip, and a skinny volume of a book that’s not on the reading list— stark white with jet-‐‑black capital letters spelling ARIEL. I’m tired of writing you detentions for smoking back here, she says, I’m not going to tell your dad what happened today, and motions toward my arms— But we need to figure out a better way for you to get through this. In detention on Saturday morning, I stabbed at the page with the sharp nib of a Pilot pen and learned that in order to forge a sword that is sharp and strong you must first suffer through the burning.

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The Thrill of Arousal Collage By Bill Wolak

Sotto Voce By Ricky Garni

_________________ Sometimes I think of the woman I love and then I say to myself all the things that I can see that she is. For example: “She is a cloud, she is a tree, she is that bunny rabbit there, she is that log cabin, she is that cat asleep on that jeep, she is that John Deere Tractor, she is that Hallmark card, she is that water pistol, she is that loofah, she is that noisy bird, she is that big bar of soap, she is that funny movie, she is that race car with the flame decals, she is that piece of chocolate candy in the fridge that is so expensive yet so delicious.” After I do that, I say to myself all the things she is not, but rather than be specific, I sweep my hand from one horizon to the next and I simply say: “She is none of these terrible things.”

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Greenish Irony By Yuan Changming

_________________ You wish to be a Douglas fir Tall, straight, almost immortal But you stand like a Peking willow Prone to cankers, full of twisted twigs Worse still, you are not so resistant As the authentic willow that can bend gracefully Shake off all its unwanted leaves in autumn When there is a wind blowing even from nowhere No matter how much sunshine you receive During the summer, you have nothing but scars To show off against winter storms The scars that you can never shake off

Travelogue By Rachel Schmieder-‐‑Gropen

_________________ -‐‑-‐‑ And now I’ve loved another woman from another city: Springfield, TN, with its murder rate and gentle lovers. Mark the map; add it to the list of places I don’t intend to revisit. The list is getting longer, the map riddled with pushpin holes like a town crossed with a hundred tracks. A red splotch where Texas used to be. Boston, my pretty city, where can I walk without retracing all my steps? Boston, my pretty city, with swan boats in summer and bookshops where we ducked behind the shelves to kiss and whisper and run our hands over the spines of new bodies and old books -‐‑-‐‑ any direction can take me a step too far. Tell me, where can I walk in peace? Please, mark the map. Drive a pushpin through the secret places in my heart, the places I have been and will not be again.

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Solution To Population By Colby McAdams

_________________ Someone tell them to stop having kids. That’s your kid with vomit down her camisole. Your kid is broke and calling for more money, learned to love back as needed. I love you-‐‑ hangs up. Picks up-‐‑ I love you. Never loves you in the middle. Oh and yours is so mean, Predator of Breakable Objects-‐‑ teeth and heart and once a car. Better than Crier in Public Too Often or Sex-‐‑er of People Because Bored. Better than Your kid is insecure about her nose today her hips. (Your hips, really) But yours is Ted Bundy. Your kid will choke to death on a ravioli. Your kid is breaking her kid’s heart. If they would just stop having, how beautiful to watch an undoing. Drag your hand through a spider’s web. The dying off-‐‑ first the people you love then know then think you know like Angelina Jolie’s lips, your own kid then what does it matter a bus driver or a prime minister then you. Something final, until everything eventually-‐‑ I love you. Hangs up.

The Answer Understands Its Question By Kami Westhoff

_________________ In the quieter moments, perhaps when the knit and purl have led her far from the lifeline, or during the snap and shuck of this season’s corn, its sweet stickiness silking her fingers gold, she pities his mother. The realization must’ve slammed into her like a mudslide: the pre-‐‑dawn thud and whimper reasoned away as stray-‐‑cat feuding; the squirm of her daughter under the blanket in the backseat the fuss of motion sickness; even the night she found her son slinking from her daughter’s bedroom his woolen footsteps quiet as a ghost’s, a sleepwalker like his father. And then, the moment the answer finally understands its question. Pity passes quickly. She notices a mis-‐‑stitch and the yarn unravels like a nervous system. She discovers an ear of corn, deformed by genetic flaw, kernels in a scatter. His mother is again just a mother that failed to protect one child from the other child. She’d once told her, If his father had known he would’ve killed our son. I had to think of my family, her voice like a high tide, eyes slick as a seal.

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More By J.K. Durick

_________________ Right now – we need more. It seems like – there’s not enough. There’s never enough. This shortage outweighs any past abundance. This lapse seems unforgiveable – this empty feeling unbearable. This void is something we needed to avoid – but didn’t. We need to fill this blank, this bare cupboard, this barren field. We need to soothe this hollow ache, this disturbing futility, this unfulfilled promise. Everything seems meaningless, pointless, aimless without more. We need whole armfuls, bags and barns full, whole rooms overflowing till we need to build build more to hold the more and more we need right now and for our foreseeable future, years and years of more and more, and never any less. Right now – we need more, But it’s hard to imagine why.

Breakfast At Tiffany’s By Dee Dee Chapman

_________________ Because all the really crucial moments must happen in the back of taxicabs in New York, in the rain. The wild things and the super rats as well as the cats without names belong to each other there. Hollywood knows the important part is the solidarity found, the prize in the Cracker Jack’s box, knows we have our own Tiffany’s, cages with noble, high ceilings we’ve built ourselves, where nothing bad can ever happen to us, full of all the things we’ve never done. So though the weather report won’t be the same in Brazil, Fred Baby, you can take comfort in the checks you earn outside the powder room; it can be found in the champagne you have before breakfast. Know that the loneliness can be defeated by climbing the fire escape if, Darling, you only open your window.

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Heads Down By Caitlin Upshall

_________________ Every Monday was mystery meat Monday. Along with that, other things at Wilson High School that should have died in the 80’s included the racist mascot, the spare gym clothes that smelled like Marcus Trufant’s sweat, and Mrs. Jameson, the math teacher who served in WWI and enjoyed killing people, both physically and emotionally. I walked into the lunchroom, got my state approved meal, complete with all one half serving of carrot mush, and took a seat at the table with my friends. The table to our left was the pregnant freshman’s table and the one to our right was the drug users’ table. It was quite the three little bears’ predicament. As I poked at my mush, disguised as food, I noticed how eerily quiet the lunchroom had become. I looked around and saw my friend Sasha staring towards the dusty windows to our left. When I followed her gaze, it became clear what was attracting so much attention. By the windows, Jacella and Tyesha were speaking. It was no secret that they were rivals. Jacella ran the east side of the school and Tyesha the west. It might seem silly, but that was my city. Territories were alive and well, whether that meant claiming a side of the city or claiming a person, it didn’t matter. The two of them stood in quiet conversation for a few minutes; everyone in the cafeteria breathed in synchronized, shallow breaths. Up until now, the two of them had only ever exchanged glances. Words were a whole new game plan, but they were nothing compared to what happened next. There was a shriek and then the sound of glass shattering. Beside me, Sasha shouted for people to put their “fucking heads down” and she dove under the table. Others followed suit, but I didn’t. Gunshots were nothing new to me, which meant that I could tell them apart from other loud noises. This was no gun. I looked at the two girls, realizing now that there was only one. Jacella was bent over with her hands on her knees, panting. I followed her gaze and saw shards of glass by the window-‐‑ correction; by where the window used to be. Through the newly opened space, Tyesha was laying outside of the building, trying to catch her breath and looking shocked at being thrown so far. There was a flurry of movement and one of the security guards ran over to Jacella and handcuffed her. Outside, a few professors pulled Tyesha up from the ground. The window was fixed within a month, but not quite soon enough to stop a few dozen squirrels from taking up residence in the alcoves. The two girls were suspended and came back a few weeks later. The next year the window was a different tint, the territories had changed once again, and the students discovered that the only living things that enjoyed mystery meat Monday were baby squirrels. High school is a confusing time. Everyone tries to hold on to the remnants of their childhoods while imitating whatever they think adulthood looks like. Responsibility isn’t remembering to pick up your toys, but it’s not to the level of picking up after your child’s toys either. There is no easy way to get through high school: there aren’t any notes that you can write on your hand to help you. It’s one test that you can’t study for and that you’ll probably never experience again. All you can really do is to keep wading through the murky waters of “not young enough to get a kid’s movie ticket and not old enough to drink”, until you make it to the other side. It will be the longest test you take, but the results are much more than just a number. The results are you.

Uprooted Tree

Photography By James Baxenfield

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Rumination By Na-‐‑Moya Lawrence

_________________ Wake Broad swaths resting warmly. Tingle where tingle is welcome, unwelcome. Come. Flicker, flicker darting gamely. Alive, mist before mirror. Write the name, curving perspective. Image is soul, stolen totem. Devil on the chest. Respite in breathing. Devil in the nuance. Wake wake. The lights are no brighter. Stumbling, tripping over ribs. Slick, what does it mean. Slow, succumb to gravity grasping at your center. Magnet at your navel. No, lint. Morning Light Tell me something no one else knows. Lies. Soft shelled crab don'ʹt scream like the lobster. Strive for prescience. Press deeply the vault until it shudders open. Soft shelled ear, peach smooth. In one out the other. If my tongue goes in, does that make you any truer? Look down, look left, don'ʹt look in, mirrors suck and expel. You'ʹre prettier in theory. Cube Touch me and perhaps I'ʹll believe the cold press of your tip. Climbing an iceberg without protection is impossible. Frostbite my lips. Maybe then a secret will be secret. Anything you want. Wet floors breed cruel hands. Mop, mop until the floor is gone, until we sink into the center of the earth and burn up our eyes. Refuse Take. Take what is taken in the giving of what? Like marshmallow blackening and sweetening and hardening and melting primordially over a fire. Containing a high amount of acid, pineapples will burn you with their sweetness. Cutting out the core is the suggested remedy. Would that it were so simple. Waste not want not. Glue the shoe back together and weather the leaks. Anticipation Christmas lights never looked so romantic. Perilous shelf, knowledge is tumbling and breaking and waking only to fogginess. Sharp and bitter, sometimes spiced, rum is produced on

plantations. Chills up your neck, hands, hands so close. No touching. Press cardamom to your nose, inhale. Wake.

Middle Sister By Jessie Ulmer

_________________ (Found poem from page 71 of The Classic Fairytales, edited by Maria Tatar) The old morning my mother said married the gold groom Chased Glory Turned Cunning My house is living cunning like birds careful like bone We saw my eldest sister turned to woods She no longer remembers I, middle sister, live there now

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Rant By Chelsea Williams

_________________ Dominant, skinny jean-‐‑wearing, duck faced smirked prick. A vegetarian if-‐‑I-‐‑can’t-‐‑eat-‐‑it-‐‑neither-‐‑can-‐‑you son of a bitch. The Adonis of jock hipsters putting New York hippies to shame. Hairless like a naked mole rat, a rugby loving, screamo music blasting smartass. A smartass who likes starting arguments over little shit like gluten free pizza. The diva who spends more time in the mirror with his phone than he does with me in bed. Who dislikes holding hands in public, Valentine’s Day, and the need to be romantic at our young age. The age of finding ourselves and our other halves like Plato stated in symposium. The rock star wannabe who tells me makeup makes me look fake, yet he wears eyeliner. That wearing clothes to show off my genes makes me look desperate. The gorgeous sarcastic bastard who, spotted me in a crowd of people at a frat party one Saturday night, my boyfriend. My asshole boyfriend who politely guides me Away from the candy aisle, the land of never ending sweets, the reason why we’re here. With his thick unevenly waxed eyebrows, the one tooth in the front of his smile that will never fit in the pearly white royals. A stiff Mohawk ready to keel over any minute, a chin that looks like an ass, oh the irony. Hazel eyes that I want to claw, until my fingertips are raw, as he educates me…constantly, On cavities, calories, BMI, cellulite… meanwhile the fucks I’ve given have flown freely out, the window. Pasta sauce? Check. Asparagus and green bellpeppers? Check. Black bean Humus? Check. Candy…in progress. I distract him, tell him that he’s right. I’m always wrong. We stroll.

The back wheel of the grocery cart quivering, squealing for me to stop the torture. The creamy skinned ass-‐‑hat trails in front of me like the leader of the pack. The only one who wears the pants in our relationship. But he loves it when I wear my, baggy black fuck-‐‑you-‐‑I’m-‐‑on-‐‑period pants to the grocery store. The army tank top that hadn’t survived its days in the washer. Remnants of Its life clinging to broken thread that can never be repaired. He loves it when my hair conceals the left side of my face. The right side available that still says I want him. and always will.

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Five excerpts from Brazil, Indiana (a folk poem in the spirit of Ralph Eugne Meatyard) By Brian Beatty

_________________ Underage kids purchased their package liquor on the corner at The House of Spirits. Or that’s where we’d hide bottles in our coat pockets. We were chased outside and threatened to no avail. You couldn’t tell the future about failure back then. All of us knew better than to abide ghosts. **** The A-‐‑to-‐‑Z Store’s sagging wooden steps and floor creaked beneath the fat boy’s weight as he made his way to the cave of a basement to explore generations of unsold toys buried under an entire alphabet of dust. He would hide down there in the dark, teaching clocks to turn backwards using only a look. He sat in the cobwebs like a Buddha. He spoke his own language to no one. Eventually he saved up enough birthday money to buy himself a rusted electric train engine without a track. ****

Each spring our volunteer fire department to pay for the gear necessary to put out trailer and Xmas tree fires the rest of the year would play the same team of sheriff’s deputies in exhibition games of donkey basketball. But that’s not all. Down behind the old stacked bleachers dancing, singing wives also sold cakes and pies whole or by the slice to the curious neighbors who packed the gym buzzer-‐‑to-‐‑buzzer just to see grown men fall. **** The mayor who kept bears and lions he rescued from the circus in train cars down a gravel road behind his family’s place was also known for his earlier career as the youngest police chief in the town’s history and how during debates he used to grind the edges off of Kennedy half-‐‑dollars with just his thumb. ****

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After the lady next door died somebody brought in a wrecking ball to knock over what remained of her house where a dentist wanted his new office. But first men had to wrangle a hundred or so unhappy cats she’d loved as if her children. The weak, hungry ones were harmless. Others they had to carry out in thrashing, hissing sacks like straightjackets with no arms.

Adulthood By Rony Nair

_________________ another rejection for not being adroit and the horizon looms far from the house of prismatic prose that pretends to call itself poetic even after multiple slugs from the 3 liter bottle of vodka that these days grows in the head like the tautological mirror you saw when you first attempted to pierce the abscess saw red and ran for your life with alternate realities and telling tales laden with baskets of the mediocre we were junked out and beds with sprines meant more for you in the passing than me and then it rained and we were thrown out next to that ciggy shop where it poured curiosity and a mix of scorn and querulousness. and i junked you and hitched a lift and ran and the last i saw was of you alone.

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For You, Long Gone By Tonya Eberhard

_________________ Winter blows through our coats making us shiver. We walk past frozen man-‐‑made lakes and shoveled driveways. Our footsteps circumnavigate the city. Two sets of footprints in powered sugar reveal we are real, but we still cannot fathom mortality. Morning to noon we walk, a pilgrimage with no god or purpose. The skin of my left heel is chafed by the insides of my boot, forming a blister. Out of devotion, I grit my teeth and say nothing. We continue walking. For lunch we split a pb & j sandwich, with jelly oozing down the tear like a bloody heartache. Your face is blank as I push 75 cents into a newspaper dispenser, taking out the paper with her face on the front page. The words inform our eyes she was killed by an index finger and a trigger in a heated pole shed. But whether or not the dead girl is now a ghost, it does not specify. You remain skeptical of an afterlife. Instead of a Bible you use Slaughterhouse Five to banish existential guilt and anxiety over inevitable end. I only hope your fingers that smear the ink across the front page is a final signing of “with love” for she who is gone.

A Dead River Mark By Wale Owoade

_________________ a mourning flood your face the pillow has been drinking your moistness and building a small ocean but when your river went off-‐‑course but when your river burnt off-‐‑course a cylinder style marked a dead river mark the dead river mark was running to your pillow to build a flood who raised your face? who drained your tears? as if you have not dreamt of oceans and inland seas as if you have not dreamt of overflowing your bank

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How To Find Treasure With A Burning Map By Joe Nicholas

_________________ Fourth of July in August. No wait. Easter. The humans play rabbits for their children and continue deep into the night. If you saw me now I would wear a demon'ʹs grin. I would wear pretend feathers and flowers. If you saw anything else but these words right now it'ʹd be a miracle. Let me not forget my serpent. I call thee Quetzalcoatl. I call thee blistered memory. Fair enough you caught me. Makeup still dripping. My hair a cotton candy blue. Tomato stained nose bleeding. Wear yourself and remember to walk nude at night. Crown a squirrel and watch it crown the others. Hug the tree then hold it gentle. The twigs are whispering but I only speak fire. Cut to jellyfish dancing the ocean ablaze an old man dipping his pen(i)s in oil jars. If anyone asks this is not what it was supposed to be. In the end you bury me and if you

don'ʹt you end up buried. My grandfather'ʹs bones lie beneath Maine sky. My uncle is ash in the Atlantic. Take a breath. Take a breath. Take a breath. Take a breath. Take a breath.

You wake up and it'ʹs night. You laugh. You always laugh. You are widely known as the Laughing One. They say your eyes are polished opals. They say your teeth can travel through time. Hold your hands out and take the next thing that'ʹs given. Give it to the next thing you see. Guard your face from the embers. The smoke reeks of venom. It hisses broken secrets. When you cough you laugh and cough again. When you speak you start to tremble.

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Gemstone meets soot. Soot wins. Pinch your fingers and don'ʹt let go. Make your teeth a crumbled prison. Teach your tongue how to dance. Dig your toes in every step. Don'ʹt you dare close your eyes: you might miss the gilded canary. Keep a dousing rod at your hip at all times. Don'ʹt wear a watch. Forget the twelve-‐‑centric clock. Breathe and let go but for goodness sakes don'ʹt let go. At least one secret is still intact: when you reach the X there'ʹs a pile of serpents. If you remembered your own it whispers something in twig and they all tie themselves into a slightly larger map. Fair enough you caught me. You were never there. I was never there but someone somwehere somewhen wasiswillbe there. In the last moments put it out but realize from now on it'ʹs useless. Forge a razor from stone and shave your head. Tattoo what you remember and show it to all you see. Smile and shine those opal eyes. I tell you this: You'ʹre gonna need 'ʹem.

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