Decorum

October 2024 | poetry

I take in a terrific piano concert: classic

ragtime, boogie-woogie, rhumba-boogie

from New Orleans, a couple of blues numbers.

Professor Longhair tribute. A boogie version

of the national anthem; it never sounded better.

 

The pianist’s fingers blur; from his left hand

the bass rumbles like a train under the street.

Beside him a drummer sits on a box-drum

he beats time on, and

I’m grooving,

moving

my body all over along with the drumbeat;

doing a jitterbug

sitting down.

Big smile all over my face.

Keeping time with every beat. If only

someone else would stand and dance!

 

The Texas town that I moved here from, lots

of people would have been up and dancing—

in the aisles, down front, at the back, anywhere

there was room.  Shouts and whistles

between numbers, hair and feet flying.

 

This Midwest audience: the woman next to me

wears a cautious smile. A couple behind me

peer studiously at the pianist. A few people

tap feet or joggle their heads. That’s it?

After each number, polite applause.

 

I’m totally frustrated! And damn!

That curly-haired drummer is so hot

perched there on his cajón

with his twice-pierced ears

and the stud at the side of his nose.

 

Lynn D. Gilbert

Lynn D. Gilbert’s poems have appeared in Arboreal, Bacopa Literary Review, Blue Unicorn (Pushcart nomination), Consequence, Footnote, The Good Life Review, Sheepshead Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry volume has been a finalist in the Gerald Cable and Off the Grid Press book contests. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in a suburb of Austin and reviews poetry submissions for Third Wednesday journal.

Pillow Talk

October 2024 | fiction

We just had sex. But I wasn’t thinking of you.

When you pulled me to your chest, your head resting on my hair, I was thinking of my old physics professor. Wondering how he’d have fucked me if given the chance. When you breathed a sigh over my face and whispered, That was amazing, I wondered how he’d have spoken to me in an after coitus-glow, if he would have noticed that I wasn’t feeling it with you because there was still so much hurt tangled in the sheets of our shared bed. You kissed me, but it wasn’t gentle.

I think that guy from the record store would have kissed me softly, with his fingers playing silent songs along my spine. Perhaps then he would have pulled me closer if I tried to move away. But you just let me roll over to my side of the bed. It’s a familiar position for me, my back turned to you, and I wonder how you can bear not to see my face. Aren’t you curious about what’s running through my mind?

My friend from the restaurant would be. He would have been tugging my hair and saying, Please let me into your head, and I would’ve said, Of course. Because I’d want to let him in, to feel that intimacy with someone who doesn’t want my back turned, who doesn’t let me turn my back. Is that so much to ask?

But you would say, yes, it is actually, because there is nothing more that I need to know about you. I have checked all of the boxes and seen the necessary disclosures. But what you don’t see are the men shuffling through my head like a deck of cards, or the ones I swipe on when I hide in the bathroom with my phone. You don’t know about the people I kissed, and how they tasted sweet after we shared a chocolate souffle. Although none of that matters. We just had sex, and you’re not thinking of me. But I’m thinking of you.

Sophia Carlisle

Sophia Carlisle is a creative currently living in the Midwest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Diet Milk Magazine, Erato Magazine, Crow & Cross Keys, and elsewhere. She enjoys wistful stories of all kinds and has a particular soft spot for the ghosts we let linger.

Ernst Perdriel

July 2024 | visual art

Lethocerus americanus

 

Water Flower

 

Ernst Perdriel

Ernst Perdriel is a multi-field artist (visual art, photography, writing), designer, and horticulturist based in Cowansville (Quebec, Canada). His mission is to transmit his passion for cultural and environmental heritage through the arts, lifestyle, and knowledge-sharing. Learn more at www.ernstperdriel.com.

Ellen June Wright

July 2024 | visual art

Watercolor Abstract 78

 

Ellen June Wright

Ellen June Wright lives in New Jersey. Her work revolves around the power of color and the emotions and memories they evoke. She is inspired by the works of Stanley Whitney, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, and Frank Bowling. Her art has most recently been published online by Gulf Stream Magazine.

Questions for Dead People

July 2024 | poetry

when moonlight bathes the cold marble of your headstone,

do you cling to the echoes of old laughter?

what burdens sleep in the final exhale?

you, where the tiger lilies won’t bloom

and songbirds fill spaces we cannot see you go

can you tell me if a holy hand found yours adrift

in the currents of a starlit eternity?

or is your faith another fiction?

 

are my questions dandelion wishes,

seeds fallen where i find you

at the edge of all my doubts,

prayers i’ll never know you hear;

can you feel the ghost of my belief

memories of silence and empty spaces we cannot fathom?

do you know

when i find the flowers dead,

i think of you

 

Caitie Young

Caitie L. Young (they/them) is a poet and writer from Kent, Ohio, where they earned their MFA in Creative Writing from Kent State University (NEOMFA). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto Del Sol, new words {press}, The Atlanta Review, The Sonora Review, The Minnesota Review, and elsewhere. They were the first-place recipient of the 2022 Foothill Editors Prize for best graduate student poetry and are a pushcart nominee.