The Watch

July 2021 | poetry

Restless in pleasure’s absence,

I watched when my mother woke,

startled by a rooster

that chimed and paced

on the barbed wire fence.

 

She pulled the sheet

over her shoulder, sank

into the cushion and lingered

a moment longer

while I pretended to be asleep.

 

Each morning for the past two years

she turned the crown well

of my father’s watch

how he used to do

before getting out of bed.

 

My father mostly spoke

the truth, but he lied

when he told me

he liked my jagged bangs

the last time we went to visit.

 

It took my mother one afternoon

to trim them herself

with a pair of shears

she borrowed from a shepherd

living down the hill.

 

We both squinted

when we heard a soldier’s whistle.

My father, thinner now, came toward us,

his lips pursed in a frown,

and his hands curled in fists.

 

Melissa Andres

Melissa Andrés is a poet. Originally from Cuba, she arrived in the United States at the age of six. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in The Laurel Review, Rattle Magazine, The San Antonio Review, Ligeia Magazine, and Inkwell Journal, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Yezidi, Northern Iraq

April 2021 | poetry

A Yezidi woman sits across from me

her eyes are flat black

like no eyes should look

as if her spirit has been sucked

backward through her body

to fly away somewhere else

somewhere safe

before

Kocho

Sinjar.

 

“Is it true?”

her handler asks me

“Is it true what ISIS did to the children?”

She starts to cry

great rolling tears

streaking her face black mourning mascara.

 

I seek safety inside myself

in a world that offers none.

 

Is it true?

is it true?

 

It is true.

 

I hear her voice

asking over and over

like the crows now cawing over mass graves

as the Yezidi woman gazes

but not at me.

 

Susan Notar

Susan Notar has flown over Iraq in helicopters wearing body armor and makes a mean beurre blanc sauce. Her work has appeared in a number of publications including Gyroscope, Written in Arlington, Antologia de Poemas Alianza Latina, Penumbra, Joys of the Table An Anthology of Culinary Verse, Springtime in Winter: An Ekphrastic Study in Art, Poetry, and Music. She works at the U.S. State Department helping vulnerable communities in the Middle East.

Tobi Alfier

April 2021 | Best of Net nominee, poetry

Bench Warrant Wednesday

 

You’re finally back in your hometown,

only snow greets your arrival.

 

Court date’s in a few hours,

just time to check into some

 

cheap hotel and change into clothes

that say I’m a good girl, clothes

 

that’ll be dumped at the charity shop

after free breakfast, local bank,

 

and go pay the fine tomorrow.

No time for visiting or sightseeing—

 

you’ll see all you want from the train

on the head-out-of-town express.

 

Window cracked to let a thin stream of smoke out,

you breathe in the incense of pines,

 

catch a quick glimpse of your old house

a little more canted, a lot less yours.

 

All the wildflowers buried deep until spring

do nothing to coax you back,

 

and you leave this town that doesn’t bear repeating

once again, the stillness of dusk broken only

 

by wisps of winter shadows through the trees,

a jukebox song of wild horses in your mind.

 

 

The Year of No Men

 

Granny’s on the front porch with me

playing gin and drinking gin.

I have a Jolt Cola to keep awake.

 

Mama’s coming to get me soon,

take me to the monthly family day

at the corrections house just down the road.

 

They call it “house” so it sounds nice,

but you can’t just leave when you want.

Daddy’s there for a while and that’s all I know.

 

We got a one-year lease on a nice double-wide,

Granny’s a couple rows over.

Other ladies and kids mostly fill in the rest.

 

Mama goes over to our real house every few weeks,

waters the plants, grabs up the bills,

cleans the messages off the garage door.

 

I don’t get to go ‘cause those messages—

they’re not too nice most times and mama says

I’m too young to understand.

 

So she brings me back a lemon pie

from the gas station mini mart

and I watch Granny get stuporfied.

 

Took a lotta years living

before I could sift through the truth

of our time at the trailer park,

 

and I made a lot of promises to myself

after that: no bail, no messages

written on any garage doors cause of me,

 

and gin would always be cards, jelly jars

only for juice and for baking, and “house”

would mean house, with toys in the yard.

 

Tobi Alfier

Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee. “Slices of Alice & Other Character Studies” was published by Cholla Needles Press. “Symmetry: earth and sky” was published by Main Street Rag. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

Zeina Lee

April 2021 | visual art

Market Fish

 

Zeina Lee

Zeina Lee is a junior attending Suffield Academy in Connecticut, America. She is a profound visualizer and observant artist talented in the art of observation with an especially color-keen sense. She developed her skills in media art and graphic design by learning traditional art techniques and computer software tools; Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, InDesign and so on. She plans to continue pursuing her interests in art to expand on her creativity and perspective. First and foremost, Zeina’s creative acumen shines through in both her artwork and her presence at Suffield. Her participation in Art Special has resulted in successful school-wide art exhibitions each spring for the past two years. Zeina presents her work and ideation in a way that is not only creative but also in a way that enlivens her peers to follow her lead.

How Many Mad Scientists Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

April 2021 | fiction

The question twisted my guts, triggering an uncontrollable urge to pee.

10,000 applicants for one scholarship to the world’s most prestigious university.  If not me, a life mining coal like dad, both granddads, four great granddads.  Grades made the first cut.  Board scores the second.  Extra-curriculars the third.  Interview, the fourth.  Now the essay.  100 finalists.  One winner.  No runners up, no honorable mentions.  99 losers.  Other scholarships?  Too much coal dust under my fingernails, in my lungs, in my DNA.

My bladder felt like a pressure cooker without a safety valve.

Found an answer online: One to map the bulb to Euclidian space, one to compute the covariant.  99 other laptops glowed with the same answer.  Fiendish, allowing us to use our laptops.  I wracked my brain.

None because we don’t have electricity.  Too third worldish.

My bladder felt volcanic, lava ready to spew forth.

An infinite number to debate whether light bulbs existed.  Too philosophical.

I hailed the proctor.  I begged.

No bathroom breaks.

I cursed.

Four, one to propose to change the bulb, one to obstruct the change, two to debate whether it needed changing.  Too Congressional.

I Googled Edison.  Light bulb jokes hadn’t been invented yet.

Two, one to change the bulb, one to replace it with the original bulb for reasons of editorial clarity.  Too New Yorkerish.

I squeezed my legs together, squirming in agony.

A dude closed his laptop, handed in his blue book, departed with middle finger raised in triumph.

Two, one to change the bulb, one to write a song of nostalgia about the original bulb.  Too folklorish.

A second person, a third, a dozen, the room emptied.  My bladder wished it could as well.  I loosened my belt to lessen the pressure.  A minute or two of relief.

Buridan’s Ass, the philosophy anecdote from college days.  Unable to decide whether to change the bulb or not, the mule stood paralyzed in the dark.  Too paradoxical.

I was alone with the proctor who tapped his wristwatch with impatience.  My underpants dampened.  In pain, I scrawled words in my blue book, hurled it at the proctor, raced to the men’s room, my pee arcing into the distant urinal, a perfect one color rainbow.

None, I had scribbled.  Light bulbs don’t wear diapers.

I won the scholarship.

 

Frederic Liss

Liss whose first novel was published in July, 2020 is a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, a nominee for the storySouth Million Writers Award, and a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Prize sponsored by University of Georgia Press, the St. Lawrence Book Award sponsored by Black Lawrence Press, and the Bakeless Prize sponsored by Breadloaf Writers’ Conference and Middlebury College. He has published more than 50 short stories. He has received numerous awards and other forms of recognition for individual short stories including The Florida Review Editor’s Award for Fiction; James Still Prize for Short Fiction sponsored by Wind; Midnight Sun Award for Fiction sponsored by Permafrost; Third prize in the Arthur Edelstein Prize for Short Fiction; Finalist for the Raymond Carver Award for Short Fiction sponsored by Carve Magazine; and Honorable Mention in the New Letters Literary Award for Fiction and the Glimmer Train June, 2014 Fiction Open. Liss has also been published in The Saturday Evening Post, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, The South Dakota Review, The South Carolina Review, Dogwood, The Worcester Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal. He earned a BA from Amherst College, Amherst, MA; a JD from Columbia University School of Law, New York, NY; and an MFA from Emerson College, Boston, MA. He was the recipient of a Grant-in-Aid in Literature from the St. Botolph Club Foundation, Boston, MA where he leads a workshop in writing fiction.