July 2019 | poetry
My days are measured
By bottles of discount wine,
My weeks by clean linens;
Each morning
I seek salvation
in a cafe benison.
Sleep, sleep divine,
Why should eternal sleep
not be heaven?
For religion begins
Where knowledge ends.
My little fame in life,
I know,
Will be confined
to a freeway sign:
“Missing Elderly,”
numinous against
a gray morning sky,
Flashing, flashing, flashing
above a highway exit.
The door was closed
and did not open,
So how did the cat
go out again?
But remembering to floss
gives each day
a bright new meaning.
So knowledge ends
Where religion begins.
Italy’s third volcano,
what’s it called?
Not Etna or Vesuvius,
The one in the movie we saw?
I forget, though I should know;
And not Olympus,
with Hera and Zeus
and Jove.
For us mortals what does it signify,
purchasing stain remover
by the gallon?
Pessimism of drooled spaghetti
or long life’s delusive
grand ambition?
All hail Staphylococcus,
with my name on it;
Where fear reigns,
religion gains.
Dough, the financial guru says,
you’ll need ’til you’re ninety five,
or perhaps, I think,
to .38,
Or maybe I’ll rob a bank
or fail to pay my taxes
for a prison bunk
and hospital bed.
But what about the poor teller,
the cop
and the unlucky feller
who has to clean up the mess?
But hark!
The coffee grinder churns,
the espresso machine
still renders,
so why should I surrender?
Yea, verily, I declare
on my life’s embers
that where true knowledge ends
unyielding ignorance begins
and religion wins.
James Garrison
A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Duke Law School, James Garrison practiced law until returning to his first loves: writing and reading good literature. His novel, QL 4 (TouchPoint Press 2017), set in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, has won awards for literary fiction and military fiction, and it was a Distinguished Favorite for the 2019 Independent Press Awards and a finalist for the 2018 Montaigne Medal. His creative nonfiction works and poems have appeared in online magazines and anthologies. Sheila-Na-Gig nominated his poem “Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry”‘ for a 2018 Pushcart prize.
July 2024 | fiction
The blond man in front of her is too tall. European of course, Dutch perhaps. It’s claimed the Dutch are the tallest people in the world. She’ll find out if it’s true soon enough. Amsterdam is their next stop. Kyoko stands on her toes. She can’t even get a glimpse of the woman with history’s most mysterious smile, only the right upper edge of the gold-varnished, renaissance-inspired frame. How she’d love to see a friendly face, even if it’s just a painted one.
***
She planned the ten-day Euro trip with her daughters right after the divorce. A chance to forget, at least momentarily, to “make new memories together”, which was what the travel brochure said, “while admiring artworks with a lasting impact”. Now, she’s standing here alone. She’d already booked three tickets and didn’t want them all to go to waste. Her teenagers preferred shopping on the Champs-Élysées, without her. She just wants her daughters to be happy again. It already means the world to see the girls getting along. That hasn’t always been the case, but a common enemy unites.
She’s the guilty one, the instigator. She’s not even sure why she did it. She simply didn’t have a choice but to leave their father. If she has to describe the reason, the feeling when growing out of her favourite dress at the age of thirteen comes closest, the blue one with ruffles. She still loved it, but it didn’t fit anymore.
***
She had expected the Louvre to be busy, but not like this. Crowds are a strange phenomenon. Each has its own distinct character: some fierce and loud, others dumb and dangerous. Though obstructing her vision, this one seems kind, rocking her softly from left to right, holding her tight, making it impossible to fall over.
Josje Weusten
Josje Weusten, PhD (she/her), is a writer of (auto)fiction and a senior lecturer in literature and creative writing at Maastricht University. She is a Faber Academy London alumna. Josje aims to write fiction that stays true to Oscar Wilde’s words: “A truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true.” Her shorts have appeared in Litbreak Magazine and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions 2023. Her first novel, Fake Fish, a near-future story on the devastating impact of fake news, will be released on November 14, 2024, with Sparsile Books (Glasgow, UK).
July 2024 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
Elect
Toast with choice wine the elect.
Toast the vampires, bad boys, hyenas,
stone-cold demons and assholes
strolling the halls of heaven,
side by saintly side with hermits and virgins,
stumbled apostles, unwed social justice mothers,
preachers-to-the-animals,
preacher dragged to the fire,
girl soldier dragged to the fire,
mothers, fathers, babies unbaptized,
founders of monastic communities,
fallen archbishops, Juan Diego,
the poor and unsightly, the troubled rich
— which is to say, every one of wealth —
robbers who love their father,
lost tribes of angels,
archdeacons who don’t get along with each other,
holy men wrestling with Satan,
the innocent old, Job, the inside traders,
the cashing-in and the cashiered,
holy men wrestling with an angel
or a Deity maybe,
break the rib, dislocate the hip.
Collect the elect
— the hell-raisers and hell-preachers,
the abject, reject, object,
subject to pride,
subject to anxiousness, empty echoed terror.
Toast with Diet Coke the McDonald’s regulars,
the cathedral regulars,
the Mozarts, the Manets, bankrupt Vermeer,
the pulsing maters, the buttermilk cups,
open arms, open legs,
the bell ringers and the rung bells,
the sleek-bodied, the weighted,
the glide and slide and blithe,
the large and loud and meek.
Round up the elect for the trains.
Lift the incense.
Light the tall candles,
the Easter candle before the tabernacle.
The mystery of faith.
Lift the morning sun through the rose window
and the saints with green halos
and the virgin with blue halo
and the baby with the halo of red.
Gather in the plaza the elect
for goats-and-sheep time,
each then by a different path to the same pasture.
Hymn the bricks and marble,
the dark basement, the ceiling, cracks,
the space like another cosmos.
Whither shall I go?
Count sins. Record errors and malignancies.
Keep track humanity.
Serve the chalice of soup-kitchen soup.
Break day-old bread, a leg unwell knit.
Mark each word.
Dog in the sanctuary.
Armor at the church door.
Turnips growing in rows under the pews.
Much barking at the altar.
Wake up, baby!
Open your eyes to the morning snow,
sunlight on the white city, a joyful demand,
on the streets and sidewalks,
factories and tattoo shops,
police cars and hearses.
Climb the column.
Sit on top and pray alone
for a novena of novenas,
eighty times eight.
The aroused, the aloud, the bowed
and unbowed, the cowed, the aground,
the bound and unbound.
Soon and very soon.
Let the barrio close you in awkward embrace
— smell the rot, touch the frail wood,
feel the play of texture in the ugly wood,
listen to the wind across the wood face.
Let us as elect wash the feet.
Let us chop up pews for firewood.
Let us recalibrate the statues
and the paintings and the hymnals.
Let us go out each morning as elect,
each noon, at night.
Let us go out and among
and in and with.
Toast with strong coffee
out and among and in and with,
sacred prepositions.
Holy grammar. Holy word.
Holy embrace, elect.
Patrick T. Reardon
Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of six poetry collections, including Salt of the Earth: Doubts and Faith and Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby, A Memoir in Prose Poems. His poetry has been featured in numerous journals such as America, Rhino, After Hours, Heart of Flesh, Autumn Sky, Silver Birch, Burningword Literary Journal, The Write Launch, Poetry East, The Galway Review, and Under a Warm Green Linden. In addition to his poetry, he has also written a history book titled The Loop: The ‘L’ Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago, which was published in 2020 by Southern Illinois University Press.
January 2024 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
I attended a party hosted by one of my university
English professors. The party was timid. Everyone
in a house full of friendless people. Soon, I see
my professor is flirting on my date. I am across the patio
talking to a stoned lonely classmate near the nacho
salsa station, and my prof, swinging jigging away,
making my date giggle, smile, move, bob and sway.
The world is glorious and cruel. Full of voids
impossible to fill and so hard to ignore.
My professor was working hard to diminish
his middle-age pansa: running his hand through his hair,
leaning forward, holding that cigarette but not lighting it.
Does this really work? When does his ex step in? And I wonder
if this is me in twenty years. Drifting to bad jazz, citing Derrida,
considering busted summers in Prague, then back to all this,
hosting a house of students and colleagues
without anyone causing a lucha, because no one thinks anything
is worth throwing a punch. Nada happens.
I had this friend who launched off a table
in a crowded bar because he saw his novia
dancing with a gringo. Did my friend think she really
had a Sancho? (Remember this: action is often a good
remedy for grief). He flew into the dancers,
a super-villain returning to earth. His cape a flash
of cursing. A big fight, the boogying couples scattering
off the dancefloor. After the incident, and him
banished from the club, I spied him and la novia, seated
on a curb in the parking lot. She cupping his face
in tenderness insisting, she loved him, loved
him. Chanting it. The night sky believing all
of her. My friend looking down into the alley,
discovering his bruises, adjusting his ripped
camisa, her words all shadow and dusk.
Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith
Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith was born in Merida, Yucatan, grew up in Tucson, Arizona and taught English at Tucson High School for 27 years. Much of his work explores growing up near the border, being raised biracial/bilingual, and teaching in a large urban school where 70% of the students are American/Mexican. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his writings will appear in Drunk Monkeys, Inverted Syntax and have been published in Sky Island Journal, Muse, Discretionary Love and other places too. His wife, Kelly, sometimes edits his work, and the two cats seem happy.
July 2023 | fiction
“Momma, where’s Mamaw?”
“I think she’s out in the yard somewhere.”
Regina Woody opened the back screen door and called out, “Mamaw! Mamaw are you out here? Then she spotted the old lady down along the fence standing very quiet and still. She was watching something. Regina Woody walked down past the peach trees to where her grandmother stood. “What you doing?” she whispered.
“Look Honey,” said the old lady.
“What?”
“It’s the Little Yellows. See? The Little Yellows are out.” She pointed to the honeysuckle growing along the fence. There were eight or ten small yellow butterflies fluttering above the green leaves in the morning sun. See how the dance,” said the old lady, “Like darting yellow petals. They are another of the Lords simple gifts.”
The small yellow insects flittered like tiny dancing marionettes in the bright sunshine. It was as if they moved in time to some sweet melody that only they could hear. But the old lady must have heard it too.
“They’re beautiful,” said Regina Woody standing very still beside of her grandmother.
“When I was a little girl just about your age my momma made me a Sunday dress out of material with Little Yellows on it. Oh, how I loved that dress. Momma told me that they were a reminder of God’s love for us. They’re only here a short time. Then they’re gone again for another year.”
As Regina Woody watched the tiny butterflies it seemed to her that the world opened up around her, the clear blue sky, the distant green hills and the sweet smell of the honeysuckle there before her. It felt as if she and her grandmother were standing at the very center of the universe with the colors and shapes spinning slowly around them. Is that the gift of God, she wondered? Is that why the butterflies dance?”
James William Gardner
Author of, “DEEP AUGUST: Short Stories from the American South,” and “THE HEALING GROUND,” James William Gardner writes extensively about the contemporary southland. The writer explores aspects of southern culture often overlooked: the downtrodden, the impoverished and those marginalized by society. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Gardner is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University and lives in Roanoke, Virginia. His work has appeared in numerous publications including Deep South Magazine, Newfound Journal and The Virginia Literary Journal.
