April 2017 | poetry
Bottomless Lake
they all said it was “bottomless,”
that lake past all the farms,
a couple hours’ drive;
they said boats went down
and never left a trace, vanished
as if swallowed whole by time,
no simple sand and rock there to receive them,
no sound, no scrape, no muffled thump
like everything that falls
(and everything does fall);
they all believed it like Yeti in the snow,
saucers in the desert,
things that kept the world exotic
while life took every mystery away,
a box filled and emptied every day,
a depth they knew so well
where water came and went
between the pull of moon and sun,
subtracting to some finite sum,
and they’d fall themselves
into the true abyss
for which there is no wonder
but the unexamined buoyancy of faith
Literacy
what we will and will not understand,
the language of the world
waits in space between the leaves,
rattles in the chatter of the wind,
whispers hope at nightfall,
despair within the questions of its bending trees
in seasons that it does not know,
days in the dyslexia of me
and we,
twisted from the discourse of the sun
John Kristofco
John P. (Jack) Kristofco’s poetry and short stories have appeared in about two hundred publications, including Burningwood. He has published three collections of poetry and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times.
April 2017 | poetry
A boy of birdpoems
and monstrous stories
a painter of numbered rocks
frozen from their histories
a swinger of vines
a creek leaper
a loam digger
and salamander nabber
a boy of graveyards
and grave making
a boy of bramble wanders
scraping a new way
a boy of blush faces
and hidden dreads
and strange songs
etching his lobes
a boy who made me
in the shadow of his spots of time
buried in synapse gaps
of retold dreams
that I might still see the stars
shimmer an ancient sky
David Sam
Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam has written poetry for over 40 years. He lives in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda. Sam has three collections and was the featured poet in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hurricane Review and the inaugural issue of Light: A Journal of Photography & Poetry. His poetry has appeared in over 60 journals and publications. His 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.
April 2017 | fiction
Reminiscent
To-day, I thought of you. Who I’m kidding? Not a day that memories of you, of us—how we were together, slips past. How long it’s been now: a year, many years or was it in another time and place, an entirely different lifetime? I try some times purposely, pretending not to remember those times or you. But it only serves to row the senses, and brings the visions more clearly, more painfully. What was I thinking? That’s it, I remember—I wasn’t thinking at all. I was such a fool! And then you left, and the place—ah the place: our place, never felt so barren, and I was alone: then I began to think. Ha…that’s funny now. Some good it was then. . . thinking. It was too late. And now, well. . . it seems but a dream. Well, at least that’s what’ll tell myself. I was dreaming.
Impertinence
My intention was only to stop in the card-shop to say hello. But then Gia started. She inquired of things that weren’t her affairs, and being a past lover didn’t grant her an automatic reprieve into the subjects personal. As it were, I had only known her briefly one spring, and that’d been two years ago now, and it was only to take revenge at another. In the midst of her impertinent, adversarial inquiries, wherein, underneath, and perhaps understandable, lay a skosh of scorn—she made the mistake of introducing me to Helena, whose person seemed understanding and gentle; and I heard in her greeting: English spoken with the subtlety of German, and that was it. Helena’s blue eyes commanded the rest. The shop was soon to close, and Helena was the one leaving early that evening, and was all ready to go. And we left together: Helena and I.
Taylor Boughnou
Taylor Boughnou was drawn to the writers and thinkers of the ninetieth and early twentieth centuries. After years of a dedicated reading and writing regimen and journal-keeping of his thoughts and observations of his daily routines and personal travels, he began to write. He lives in the greater Boston, Massachusetts area, where he works as a wellness specialist.
April 2017 | poetry
A black drape flutters
before my face or is it
a heavy veil of smoke
while offering prayer
for a friend
following a cremation.
Let the dark pall shield my eyes
dim my mind from knowing the process
of immolating a beloved soul, flesh, bones.
While Jewish law forbids cremation
I ask further how a family rights this
course after the holocaust,
after human beings delivered
such a means of death.
Nancy Smiler Levinson
Nancy Smiler Levinson is author of MOMENTS OF DAWN: A Poetic Memoir of Love & Family; Affliction & Affirmation, as well as numerous stories, and poetry that have appeared in publications such as Confrontation, Phantasmagoria, Poetica, Touch: The Journal of Healing, Survivor’s Review, Blood and Thunder, and Drunk Monkeys. A CNF piece was a Pushcart nominee in 2015. Nancy lives in Los Angeles.
April 2017 | poetry
They were
j u m p i n g
rope
double dutch
they called it.
two skinny
black girls
with legs the
size of
toothpicks
and mouths
that could be
heard from one end
of the block
to the other
and I wondered
What it would be
like
to have
a sister.
Karamo Muchuri Sulieman
At age 61, I am a mature African American poet who has written several hundred poems and published at least 100 of them. I received Honorable Mention in the 1999 Mellen Poetry Contest, for a 100+ page poem entitled Black Roses. I have also published in numerous magazines; journals and anthologies; among them San Fernando Poetry Journal; International Society of Poets; American Academy of Poets; Noble House Poetry collections and others. I also have one published work entitled Seasons.
