April 2020 | poetry
I notice my parents’ aging as I do my own:
Not at all, then in a photo, all at once.
I blink and seasons, eons have passed.
Now Winter speaks to me, her voice
a groan of boilers straining against cold—
Don’t be sad. Does not the frost remind
of home? Of baking Piroshki with Grandma?
On sluggish mornings such as this, when
the sun sweats to warm the chilly earth,
I wonder what my napping son is dreaming,
what he will ask when he grows old—
Remember that photo of Grandma and Grandpa?
They are smiling and, though it’s getting dark, I smile back.
What was it you wrote about America and hope?
(So much happens when we’re asleep;
One morning I awoke to an altered Earth.)
You’ve begun to stir. I hear your happy babbling.
This darkness is heavy; I won’t let it crush you too.
Andy Posner
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. He has had his poetry published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
April 2020 | nonfiction
The phone is ringing I am sure the phone is ringing somewhere in the dark cave of my bedroom in the black void of sleep I know the phone is ringing.
The phone is not ringing. The phone is in the other room, plugged into its charger. It is not ringing. The phone is not ringing.
Something is wrong with the kids I know something is wrong with the kids deep in the fissures of my brain I know that something is wrong with the kids.
Nothing is wrong with the kids. Go back to sleep. It’s 3 a.m. Nothing is wrong with the kids.
*******************
Thirty-two years ago, as I lay asleep and unsuspecting after a glorious night, nature worked the way it often does, and I was invaded by another human being. Hospitably, I opened my womb to a developing life–my baby, our baby, a temporary visitor, a sublet for nine months or so.
I did not know he was colonizing. I did not know he was going to stick with me forever.
While I thought I was gestating, he was moving in. Fetal cells crossed the placenta into my blood stream, into my cells. Like stem cells, fetal cells can morph and change into the tissue they inhabit. Scientists discovered this when they found cells with Y chromosomes–male chromosomes–in a woman’s brain tissue.
Her son was right inside her head.
Further research has shown that this is much more common than anyone had previously believed. Apparently, we give birth, but apparently, they never quite move out.
*******************
They call them micro-chimeras, little bits of other people living inside of you, making cell lines, taking up residence in your head, in your heart.
These chunks are all mashed up like the chimera of Greek mythology—a monster with a lion head, snake for a tail, and rising out of the back of the beast, a goat head. The chimera breathed flames. It was an omen of disaster ahead—fire, shipwrecks, volcanoes.
The chimera was, of course, female.
*******************
Later, a sister, another colonizer. As her cells crossed the placenta into my blood, as they latched and landed and became one with my tissue, did they meet her brother’s cells? Did they wrestle, like Jacob and Esau, in my brain, in my heart? Or did they link up, united in their intrusion into my body?
How do they mingle, co-mingle, with each other and with me? Which one is the lion head, which one the snake? Which the goat head rising up from the center, bleating its dismay?
******************
Now they roar inside me in the middle of the night. Wake me in a blaze of panic because I know one or the other child is in trouble–struggling, despairing. Sometimes I am right. The phone is ringing, the kids are in trouble.
But my heart always knows before the phone rings. My brain knows before I am even fully awake. My boy, my girl, they will not let me go.
Kit Carlson
Kit Carlson is an Episcopal priest and a life-long writer with work appearing in publications as diverse as Seventeen Magazine and Anglican Theological Review. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, recently published in Ponder Review, Bending Genres, and The Windhover. She is author of “Speaking Our Faith” (Church Publishing, 2018). She lives in East Lansing, Michigan, with her husband Wendell, and Lola, a nervous rescue dog. Find her at www.kitcarlson.org.
April 2020 | poetry
Another Poem About Liberals
Some of us use paper straws & take two minute showers
others schlepp coffee cups to Starbucks
to be filled with almond milk lattes
many of us separate paper & plastic for recycling
then yank plastic bags from the dispenser at Whole Foods
& fill them with crème fraîche, avocados & pine nuts
a few tell the server they will keep their plate, thank you
no need for a clean one for their entrée
of Atlantic salmon or T-bone steak
several car pool if convenient, maybe once a month
then fly to the Barbados or Cancun or Kauai
for lavish vacations in five star hotels
air conditioning blasting in each room
one of us planted a tree, another bought an LED light bulb
all of us feel virtuous about our choices, our laudable intentions
that leave us with a taste of piety on our tongues
none of us wants to look at islands of trash
floating in the Pacific, forests burning in Brazil
none of us wants to hear the thrum of extinction
marching steadily behind
finger bones pointing at our backs
Grey Witches
Three ancient sisters huddle together
passing one rheumy eye between them
each taking a turn, ten minutes max
bickering since only one can see the clock
each sister with a different perspective à la Freud
depending on how she was treated by her mother (never her father)
Deino afraid of everything, gulping Xanax by the fistful
staying home at night, watching sitcoms with curtains closed
Enyo a woman of rage, marching for gay rights, trans rights, squirrels’ rights
throwing fire bombs into right wing protesters, cheering as they explode
Pemphredo a visionary sending out alarms of rising waters,
bones on bleached deserts, wars fought with iron spears
three stygian witches who rule a swamp
three me’s with one eye between them
Claire Scott
Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.
April 2020 | poetry
Los Angeles energy and diversity
sometimes combined with a sort of
malevolence and I needed an escape
At first I had closed the blinds to the
sea, visitors asked me why, I said it
just served to emphasize I’d gone as
far West as I could go and Alger’s
advice was meant for younger men
and it saddened me. Then I came to
find The Tube. In moments before
sleep, I would enter a pneumatic
tube of copper and glass and it sent
me deep into the earth with a quiet
whooshing sound, and I’d descend
smoothly with a growing sense of
calm, down, down, down until the
elevator came to a slow, non-jolting
stop, and the doors slid open to
reveal a scene: walkways, panorama
of depths and finished walls chipped
out of cavelike structures, softly lit
but well-lit, the light was green but
greenish gold in areas, industrial
machines whirred and performed
generative tasks and men in hard
hats walked about checking things
and took no notice of me. The big
machines, made of one foot pipes
bolted together with flanges were
all industrial green on concrete
pads, with gauges and louvered
sides, and I knew they supplied the
power and light for the complex, a
seemingly endless cave of tranquil
energy, there for me whenever I
needed it for restoration and deep
green sleep to face the L.A. day.
Guinotte Wise
Guinotte Wise writes and welds steel sculpture on a farm in Resume Speed, Kansas. His short story collection (Night Train, Cold Beer) won publication by a university press and enough money to fix the soffits. Five more books since. A 5-time Pushcart nominee, his fiction and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals including Atticus, The MacGuffin, Southern Humanities Review, Rattle and The American Journal of Poetry. His wife has an honest job in the city and drives 100 miles a day to keep it. Some work is at http://www.wisesculpture.com
April 2020 | poetry
I am a stranger
I am not your bird
I am not your sea
I am not your inspiration
I am not your tree
I am not your ear ear
I am not your flirt
I am not your overseer
I am not your dirt
I am not your Ledbetter
I am not your Freud
I am not your fairy tale
I am not your every wish for
I am not your Prophet
I am not your favor and favor and favor
I am a
stranger
Wendy Gist
Wendy Gist was raised in the forest of the Southwest on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in For Women Who Roar, Fourth River, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Rio Grande Review, Soundings Review, St. Austin Review, Sundog Lit, The Chaffey Review, Tulane Review and other fine journals. Gist has worked as a professional contributing writer for many leading publications including Better Nutrition, Caribbean Travel and Life, eDiets, New Mexico Magazine, Pilates Style, Today’s Diet and Nutrition, and numerous others (national and international). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the chapbook Moods of the Dream Fog (Finishing Line Press, 2016). She was named semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions, 2017.
