Impressions

July 2018 | poetry

shadow

 

The shadow

of a cragged tree stands

 

sharp and complete

across an old apartment building,

 

though my angle

of vision

 

blinds me

to the shadow’s tree.

 

*

 

pigeon

 

A pigeon flies toward the cornice

of an old tenement building then

 

draws up short, startled by something

it finds where it was about to land

 

and it flaps in the air, in place, in

a flurry of disbelief; then it either

 

attacks or shoots away

but I don’t notice

 

because it sticks in my mind

as stuck in midair, in shock,

 

unable to square

with a truth

 

I can’t

see.

 

*

 

deli

 

The royal blue

deli awning, dripping

 

with rain, says:

Cold Sodas, Newspapers,

 

Sandwiches, Hot Coffee, Beer,

Play Lotto Here.

 

The cramped, over-lit, under-cleaned

deli itself

 

crunching these commonplaces

together in

 

the dark

reflection of

 

my deli-stocked

face.

 

*

 

mirror

 

The acoustic guitar

hanging on the café wall

 

behind me

hangs halved in a mirror

 

on the far wall

before me, a mirror

 

in whose frame is tucked

a curled, faded photograph

 

of a smiling young woman, a mirror

crossed by cropped reflections

 

of staff and customers

coming and going

 

until it empties

in the night.

 

by Mark Belair

Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East and The South Carolina Review. His latest collection is Watching Ourselves (Unsolicited Press, 2017). Previous collections include Breathing Room (Aldrich Press, 2015); Night Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2013); While We’re Waiting (Aldrich Press, 2013); and Walk With Me (Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2012). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times. Please visit www.markbelair.com

Assumptions

July 2018 | fiction

An old woman stands on the corner of 5th and Wall, a book of poetry in her tattered wool jacket.

 

  1. She shouts to no one in particular.
  2. She used to be famous. I heard it from the postman.
  3. I think I knew her.
  4. She was my teacher in first grade.
  5. She was my Girl Scout leader.
  6. She is my mother.
  7. She is not my mother.
  8. It’s me. I am on the street corner and I am all alone.
  9. There is a white dog with scruffy fur in the alley. His front right paw is deformed and he limps. He is focused on his daily quest for food and sex.
  10. I call him goat dog.
  11. He protects me from the addicts.

  

Meanwhile, on the opposite corner.

A yellow haired man with whiskers is holding a fortune cookie and sobbing.

 

  1. He’s loved her since the day they met, at the office Christmas party. She had her hair in a bun, loosely tied with a gold and red garland.
  2. She doesn’t love him. She is ambivalent about love.
  3. It is raining outside. They are too busy with their mental chess game to notice. He wants her.  She wants his job.
  4. The office is on the 15th floor and with a view of the street.
  5. He has a cold and left his raincoat in the car.
  6. She doesn’t have a cold.
  7. He wants to get married and start a family. That’s all he’s ever wanted. Being promoted to Director was never in the plan.
  8. He is terrified of ending up alone.
  9. She’s terrified that this is all there is in life.
  10. This is all there is in life.

 

by Sheree La Puma

Sheree is an award-winning Author, Producer, and Social Media Strategist. She holds an MFA in Critical Studies & Writing from California Institute of the Arts and has published articles/fiction/books on a myriad of topics. In addition, Sheree has over 30 years experience in the charitable non-profit sector, working as a social scientist, synthesizer, and wordsmith. In 2012, Sheree traveled to Ghana, Africa to meet with a child trafficking survivor. Changed by the experience, she spent the next two years writing about his journey. Passionate about women and the rights of the child, Sheree wants to reach out and inspire the voiceless.

Jamie Derkenne

July 2018 | visual art

Looking north from Lord Howe Island

Looking north from Lord Howe Island

 

by Jamie Derkenne

Jamie Derkenne is interested in photographing landscapes of solastalgia. The seas around Lord Howe Island off Australia’s East Coast are full of coral reefs, the most southerly part of the coral reefs that further north make the Great Barrier Reef. Lord Howe Island’s reefs are about the only ones off Australia not in imminent risk of dying because of global warming.

Jeri Theriault

July 2018 | poetry

how the body heals

 

slow-crawl through thick air

mind furrows its weighty rut

& a boy flits past on his board

threads the sluggish cars

so fully his 13-year-old self

left foot lifted

headphoned rap

metal    thrash

slings him wide

onto Deering

& I want to warn him

 don’t ride here   it’s too

dangerous

but he pulls me

into the perfect stitch

of his turn

holds all of us car-bound cynics

in thrall

weaves his net

exquisite

rule of body-need

the way

I danced once

between a mirrored wall

& plate-glass street

bare feet & red skirt

music & muscle in synch

whisper-stomp

my middle-aged body

loose-hinged

claiming this column of air

                                                you make me feel

                                                                        you make me feel

                                                each step a truth

                                                            I danced

though I was not

had never been

a dancer

lifted all of Congress Street

                                                                  my bones singing

a hymn

unlearned

& necessary

 

 

inukshuk

after Rising Cairn by Celeste Roberge

 

the stones piled variously on the thin beach

near my favorite walking path  fall

when the tide turns & collect

 

in the crook of that place   prepared

for stillness. the water beats them smooth

& makes a kind of music    grief’s

 

innumerable chuffs & sighs. the woman kneeling

does not put the stones into her pockets

but swallows them   each stone

 

remembered by the tongue.  swallows clay & silt

taste of cavern   cliff edge & crag    until her body holds

the balance between weight

 

& right. earth-pinned   I  too  remember  each fist-sized

bruise   each rain-wise stone tuned to the illumined lullaby

of loss.     like the low-tide man   hefting

 

stone in his well-muscled arms   smile-less   stone-

worthy.  another swallower     he cairns & stoops.

does not look at me even when I speak.

 

we swallow what gathers   clamoring.

we sink a bit more each day   stone-anchored.

she says she’s rising. not

 

sinking. in another telling   she carries stones

one by one uphill.     some say

the carrying goes on forever.

 

Inuksuk (inukshuk in English) is an Inuit word for a figure made of piled stones constructed to communicate with humans throughout the arctic. Inukshuk  means “to act in the capacity of a human.” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/inuksuk-inukshuk/

 

Jeri Theriault

Jeri Theriault’s Radost, My Red was published by Moon Pie Press in 2016. She also has three chapbooks, most recently: In the Museum of Surrender (Encircle Publications contest winner, 2013). Her poems have appeared in journals (Paterson Literary Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Rattle, The Atlanta Review, etc.) and anthologies such as French Connections: An Anthology of Poetry by Franco-Americans. A Fulbright recipient (1998-99) and Pushcart Prize nominee (2006, 2013 and 2016), Jeri holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Maine.

Status Updates and Russian Trolls

July 2018 | nonfiction

Your neighbor Dorie says it’s hard to leave a man who is emotionally abusing you. Mom likes Franklin Graham. Your cousin Brian shared a selfie. Your colleague Jacquard published a poem that took years to write. Your niece’s husband Jesus ran Bloomsday while pushing his daughter Gabriela in a stroller. Your friend Mei is taking an online class with a comedian who kicks cismales off the stage. Brian likes Defend the 2nd.  Gaia says being online is living in Plato’s cave. Defend the 2nd wants people to join their community of patriots. Dorie harvested a thousand delicious plums from her backyard. Blackivist says the government dismantled the Black Panthers because black people stood up for justice. Brian likes cutting big trees and watching them fall.  Mei likes Blackivist. Sounds True says mindfulness is being fully awake. Brian can’t believe a naked woman walked into an elevator at the middle school. Mei wants people telling Hillary to shut up, to shut up. Dorie says the naked woman was on drugs and just trying to find her dog that had wandered into the school. Jacquard’s poem features three men, one of whom raped her. Dorie wants advice on how to get rid of hornets nesting under her house. Franklin Graham thanks President Donald J. Trump for his support. Jacquard learned there’s such a thing as an Assassin Caterpillar and is using that as her spirit animal. Sounds True says mindfulness is about not having a self. Dorie shared a video of three men rescuing a goat from an electrical wire. Brian likes Secured Borders.

Gaia says we are just little waves in a great big ocean. Brian and Mei checked in at Murphy’s brew pub, Jesus is at the Mariner’s game, and Mom is babysitting Gabriela.

by DJ Lee

DJ Lee is a professor of literature and creative writing at Washington State University with an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and a PhD from the University of Arizona. DJ’s creative work has been published in Narrative, the Montreal Review, Vela, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as other journals and anthologies. One was a nonfiction prize finalist at Terrain and The Offbeat; another received a Pushcart Prize special mention. Yet another was shortlisted for the Disquiet International Literary Prize.