April 2018 | poetry
I am sins of decades
despite duck and cover
and breathing mushrooms
of imagination
draft age wars
jungling heart attacks
in the genes
and pollution in
bottled water
fires in the belly
stringing the lobes
in spider webs
aromas and penstrokes
a mess of bedtimes
numbering thousands
no need to pull a Roman
when Broca has forgotten
by David Anthony Sam
Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam has written poetry for over 40 years. He lives now in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda, and in 2017 retired as president of Germanna Community College. Sam has four collections and was the featured poet in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hurricane Review and the Winter 2017 issue of Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry. His poetry has appeared in over 70 journals and publications. Sam’s chapbook Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson was the 2016 Grand Prize winner of GFT Press Chapbook Contest and his collection All Night over Bones received an Honorable Mention for the 2016 Homebound Poetry Prize. In 2017, he began serving as Poetry Editor for GFT. www.davidanthonysam.com
April 2018 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
i.
I know that statistically, some of us are meant to be stabbed. But first there is only
a slight pressure, a metallic taste where my mouth could be. And some muffled sounds
I have learned are cuss words. Or the shaking they do in frustration.
If that doesn’t work. If that doesn’t render me in their hands, there is a blissful pause.
But I know they are looking for something sharper. When they find it, they will pierce
what protects me, even if it makes them break a sweat. They will get to me.
When they do, sometimes they are wheezing;
their breath belabored. They look at me like
I am supposed to cure them, relieve them
of something.
ii.
The dumb one is leaking and then swallowed.
We are difficult in our packaging, these bodies.
These round, silicone drug-filled things.
iii.
Her hand was shaking and I fell from it, so giddy I bounced. Rolled
on the uneven hardwood, fifteen feet from her grasp. I listen to her
suffer. I heard the echo of her fuck and then an oh and I knew
she wasn’t coming for me.
In the middle of this night only half of her can breath,
half of her filled with a corporal cement. The kind nature
designed to suffocate things. Her chest congested
with common things. I could have helped, but why
enable a good rest.
iv.
I am faulty; what they advertised.
A real plague
is coming.
by Natalie E. Illum
Natalie E. Illum is a poet, disability activist and singer living in Washington DC. She is a 2017 Jenny McKean Moore Poetry Fellow, and a recipient of an 2017 Artists Grant from the DC Arts Commission as well as a nonfiction editor for The Deaf Poets Society Literary Journal. She was a founded board member of mothertongue, a women’s open mic that lasted 15 years. She used to compete on the National Poetry Slam circuit and was the 2013 Beltway Grand Slam Champion. Her work has appeared in various publications, and on NPR’s Snap Judgement. Natalie has an MFA in creative writing from American University, and teaches workshops across the country. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter as @poetryrox, on her website, and as one half of All Her Muses, her music project. Natalie also enjoys Joni Mitchell, whiskey and giraffes.
April 2018 | fiction
(Based on a scene from The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood)
Identical red dresses and white winged bonnets crowded around the drugged man, the rapist. His pulpy face a mess of cuts and purpling bruises. His stench forced me to cover my nose and mouth. Sounds of retching and murmuring in the soupy air. Then, a shrill whistle signaled “Kill him.” Our pent-up rage surged: a red blur kicking, punching, pulling. Spilled blood blended into our Handmaid’s dresses. Later, trembling uncontrollably, I learned he was no rapist.
by Loreen Lilyn Lee
Currently tutoring English and writing at North Seattle College, Loreen Lilyn Lee is a Seattle writer fascinated by topics of personal and cultural identity and how we are shaped into becoming who we are. Her writing often reflects her three cultures: Chinese (ethnicity), American (nationality), and Hawaiian (nativity). She has received fellowships for a Hedgebrook residency and the year-long Jack Straw 2014 Writers Program. Her personal essay “Being Local” was published in The Jack Straw Writers Anthology. She has read her work in numerous venues in Seattle and Portland, including being selected for the Seattle performance of “Listen To Your Mother,” which was produced in 41 cities in 2016.
April 2018 | poetry
Once upon a time on an outskirts bus to center Paris,
I found her rapt in a magazine. She shared with me
a photo: a wooden sculpture, an Afghan treasure,
once stolen, carried place to place,
a beautiful river goddess – flowing skirt, tight waist —
(a noticeable backside crease).
She spoke in slow French, for me, how the stolen treasure
exposed a new opening into Asian mystery.
A perfect piece, 1st century, recovered
intact in a sunken ship off Indonesia.
Ambling along the Seine, she also shared regrets
— her boyfriend killed in war’s affairs.
To make it short, I blurted out, “Je voudrais te baiser,”
meaning ‘to kiss’ her, but the word I used – I learned,
translates to fuck. She corrected my French — laughing
later in my concierge-guarded hotel room.
Maybe it was because when goodbyes came,
and she whispered, Ne m’oublier pas, that I remember
the hunger hard in her taut curves, her stirring
deep as wreckage. The stuff of fairy tales,
when treasure lost then found, rises to the surface.
by McLeod Rivera
McLeod Rivera has four collections of poems: Café Select (Poet’s Choice Publisher, 2016); Noise (Broadkill River Press, December 2015); The Living Clock (Finishing Line Press, 2013); and Buried in the Mind’s Backyard (Brickhouse Books, Inc. 2011). Rivera’s poems have been published in various poetry magazines: Innisfree, Broadkill River Review, The Broome Review, California Quarterly,Gargoyle, Recursive Angel, The Curator Magazine, Third Wednesday, Lit Undressed, Blazevox, 2River Review, Loch Raven, as well as The Nation, Kenyon Review and The Prairie SChonner.
April 2018 | fiction
A couple moved into an apartment. They discovered that one of the doors was locked. They called the caretaker who explained to them that the room behind that door had been designed and built automatically. No human being had been involved in the process whatsoever, or had even seen the room, and all data pertinent to its construction had been carefully deleted. It therefore contained each and every possibility – as long as the door remained closed. The couple was happy in the apartment, and often joked about what the room of possibilities could possibly contain. The child that they raised knew for sure: “A swinging rainbow monkey.” At that her parents laughed, but in fact they too entertained different fantasies about what could be in there. Sometimes they shared those fantasies, which made them grow closer, yet other times they kept their thoughts to themselves. Some things deserve to stay secrets. They married and led a simple life, whatever that means these days. But above all, they were happy. However. As the years went by, the man couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. Nothing new and exciting ever happened. Everything was dull routine. Why, for instance, hadn’t they ever opened that door? Was it even locked? He couldn’t remember. Sure, it was fun to play around with thoughts about what was in there, but what if they had forgone a world of riches, pleasure and excitement? One night, feeling particularly weary, the man got up, walked to the door and pulled the handle. The door opened like nothing. It didn’t even make a sound. Pitch darkness in there. He felt the wall for a light switch and found one. A simple lightbulb hanging from a chord gave off a neutral white light and illuminated an empty fucking room. He immediately realized his mistake. The next morning his feet almost touched his daughter’s face. She looked up and saw red eyes, orange skin, yellow hair, a green tongue, a blue face, indigo fingers and, where the chord tightened, a violet neck. All the colors of the rainbow.
by David Olsson
David Olsson is 38 years old, lives in Stockholm with his family. He works as a copywriter and writer and is the creator of the experimental literary initiative “P_R_O_J_E_K_T_E_T,” which currently consists of the Instagram-account @p_r_o_j_e_k_e_t and the blog www.projektet.org. His work has previously been published in Microfiction Monday Magazine and The Esthetic Apostle.
