October 2016 | poetry
We barely took any space,
maybe a foot square, you
placing my hands where they go
and knocking my feet with your toes—
who dances like this, anyway
(as comets careen into their own ice)?
Your favorite story about me: I’m
chained, at 3, to a tree. When you
return, my uncle—fed up with my roaming
in his oil—stilled me that way and
you removed the loose chains, carried me
inside to scrub my body like a rescued pelican
awash in petroleum. It was California
in the 60s—your brother, my sitter,
not much more than a child himself
(the moon bright enough to be visible from Mars).
The dancing seems easy, step-turn,
step-turn, and your smile surprises me.
I knew, before my grade school dance,
I caught on quickly. Nobody danced
with me that night at school. But earlier,
you and I, turning and rocking,
prepared me, made ready for that nobody.
We danced, hand-in-hand, me a prosthetic,
you counting steps with whatever music was on
(scattershot lights everywhere in a moment).
Joddy Murray
Joddy Murray’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 70 journals, including, most recently, The Broken Plate, DUCTS, Caliban Online, Existere, Lindenwood Review, Licking River, Meridian, McNeese Review, Minetta Review, Moon City Review, Moonshot Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Southampton Review, Stickman Review, and Texas Review. He currently teaches writing and rhetoric in Fort Worth, Texas.
July 2016 | poetry
New Orleans broke my heart. So did Utah.
I’m the son of both and neither.
All these places break boys’ hearts.
Send them crying to their rooms on Sutter.
When I was young my dad collected frogs.
He dissected them. Kept them in glass jars.
Pressed quarters in my palm to love me.
The frogs stared at the world, unblinking.
I walked to town in roadwork season.
Smelled the bitumen and gripped the coins.
Love was the soft road leading from my father’s den.
I’m older now and I preserve things too.
Here’s the glass. Crystal’s my formaldehyde.
Tonight a man will come and kneel before me.
I’ll push his head back, trace his throat, and kiss him.
Then I’ll take the straightedge from my chest.
The scalpel stolen from the box below the frogs.
I will cut him open. Save him from New Orleans.
And Utah. The fog swirling outside the window.
by Graham Coppin
July 2016 | poetry
(a Tom Waits kind of drunk poem for
a poet friend who calls himself Moonface)
Sing Motherfucker! …Sing!
Like Moonface in the dark, in the cold,
‘cause that Jack’s off the track
he ain’t never coming back
…he had his long-johns on.
Nah, funerals ain’t funny,
but ya gotta laugh,
‘cause he ain’t had nothing from nobody
‘cept Sally once, or maybe Sue–
there’s two women with wishes
for more than the dishes
that just got old
cold Moonface
…with his long-johns on
Yeah, Sing Motherfucker! Sing!
–like the devil saying he’s sorry
after all these years
‘cause that Jack’s off the track
he ain’t never coming back
…he had his long-johns on.
by William Waters
William Waters is an associate professor, associate chair, and director of composition in the Department of English at the University of Houston Downtown. Along with Sonja Foss, he is coauthor of Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation. His research and teaching interests are in writing theory and practice, the history of the English language, linguistics, and modern grammar.
July 2016 | poetry
Fragile girl; the delicate grass-blade’s dewily soft sheen
trances me, sends me into a liquid dream or reverie;
Novitius symbolum of I, the belfry, and you-
Great bell for the angelus, siphoning to my growerly
Every furrow and bone of the sphere’s celestial
stars; Belle’s water; “indicator of the reborn sun:”
The radiant pavonids of your eyes; you pull my dreams
Right from my throat, bestowing to my crown the gift;
Traumas eclipsed by divine ascendening frequencies
Of autotelically-wide, shy- blue translucent eyes,
Eyes I recognize to be just as true and soft as those
Of Hazel: sheathed in her bright robes, inscribing me
In rainbow body and jewels, dispelling samsara. Great
Mahayana vehicle; sweet recalling dreams
by Matthew Scott Bartlett
July 2016 | fiction
Old M1911, the puppy your father handed you at breakfast on your twelfth birthday, right across your Honey Smacks, before he tramped out the door toward any place but here. You stroke her barrel as she whimpers in your lap, your only puppy ever. In high school, she slept under your pillow. You whispered to her. When you had your own kids and pulled out the dirt driveway to work, she was your Annie Oakley, stowed under your seat. On weekends, after you moved out, she was an outcropping of your own hand when you toted her into your stall at the firing range. She slept quiet as you cut through the hidden part of town, where the down-and-outers live. You liked to stop at the Biscuitville there before looking for work. She slid into your feet when you rear-ended the F-150. She’d always been standup. But now, when you reach down for your little waggly-tail, she takes her sweet time coming to you, as the man busts out of his vehicle all wild-eyed and red-faced, hastens back to you, reaching behind him, wears that close-inspecting look you get when a man figures he might come under assault. The codger’s thinking just that—he eyes you up as you reach down for Brownie. You stiffen as he reacts to sun gleaming off steel, recoil as he fires two rounds into your side. Your Colt Browning falls from hand to lap, right on top of your Fried Chicken Biscuit. The shooter leans in, you can hear his breath, as you, for the last time, pet your little partner, now wet with what looks like ketchup. Something’s stirring in the man, he calls out, “Hey! Hey!” Then asks, “That you, son?” But by then it wasn’t. It wasn’t you anymore.
by Ronald Jackson
Ronald Jackson writes stories, poems, and non-fiction. His work has appeared in Blue Monday Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Firewords Quarterly, The Gateway Review, Kentucky Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and in anthologies and online venues. Recognitions include honorable mention in the Doris Betts Fiction Prize competition in 2012, third prize in Prime Number Magazine’s 2014 flash fiction competition, honorable mention in the 2014 New Millennium Writings short-short fiction competition, and runner-up in the 2016 Lamar York Prize in Non-Fiction.
