October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The Dining Room Table
is the universal receiver of all
letters that will be answered and filed soon
and bills to be paid next month and the sprawl
of folders on diets and the health effects of prunes.
It’s the holder of everyday intentions
to make some sort of conscientious order
of what we’d forget if put away. The tension
of undone work turns a table into a hoarder
that could say, “I know it’s in here somewhere.”
Yet, the presence of some trivial burdens
are motes defining light-rays shafting the air.
These small tasks we see remain blurred on
the outer edge of our visual periphery,
to be completed by the vagaries of industry.
The Quart-Size Strainer,
having given up its childhood ambition
to be a catcher’s mask, still sees itself thrown
off ceremonially as the catcher runs to position
himself to snare a pop foul. Standing alone,
the catcher puts on his mask and squats behind
home plate.
How spaghetti’s rinsed with cold water,
so their strands won’t stick together, reminds
him that he is made of mere mesh; that order
of wires and space, with a handle of wood.
Yet under the faucet he feels the Zen
of being in the flow. He guesses it’s good
holding rinsed string beans for string bean julienne;
but to be a hero, no one can replace—
ah! to be a catcher’s mask and save a catcher’s face!
by Marc Tretin
Marc Tretin’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in Bayou Magazine, Crack The Spine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, The Griffin, Lullwater Review, The Massachusetts Review, The New York Quarterly, The Painted Bride, Paperstream, The Penmen Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, The Round, Whistling Shade, Ghost Town Literary Magazine, and Willow Review, and he was the second runner-up for the Solstice literary magazine poetry prize in 2013. Conferences Marc has attended include 92nd Street Y, Colrain, and the West Chester Poetry Conference. He has studied with David Yezzi, Molly Peacock, Rachel Zucker, William Packard, and Emily Fragos.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
It should be Margaret Meade
leaving her barely palatable threesome
to figure it all out for me.
I don’t live on the banks of the Orinoco:
these rocks on the bottom are
all paved and worn with ruts.
I do want to know why
my brown eyes turned green after
fifty years, why Ancestry DNA needs
my saliva. Is there really no
First Nation in my children
or Swede in my black hair?
Come on, Margaret, crawl out
of that anemic bed and learn
my language, that secret ceremony
that should save me, again, again,
and never does. Tell me the meaning
of rituals I always answered with yes.
Why is time suddenly the last button
on a dress shirt; the half-ripped
left back jean pocket; I’m naked
wading to my waist in muddy
water, leeches threatening.
Just look at me, write it down.
by Karen Vande Bossche
Karen Vande Bossche has been writing poetry and short stories for decades. Some recent work can be found at Damfino and Damselfly. Karen is a hard core Pacific Northwest inhabitant who believes that sun is best delivered in liquid form.
October 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
“The Marrow of Zen,” one of the sutras of Shunryu Suzuki’s book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, relates zen practitioners to four horses, with the fourth horse responding only after the pain of the whip penetrates to the marrow of its bones. If alcoholics need to hit rock bottom, I have some sense of what that means. I read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind thirty years ago, yet it took the onset of chronic neurological pain in order to commit to something I had only dabbled in for decades.
When looking out became impossible, and I could reflect but not imagine, I retreated within. At times, breathing was the only thing I could manage. What I found looking within was a life thrown out of balance, like a load having shifted in the back of a pick up with nothing securing it to the bed. Having seen myself for so long as a good guy, it was unsettling to realize how vain, shallow and self-indulgent I could be. Meditation became the ropes to re-anchor the load.
Who knew that pain could teach so much? Not me, but I now admit to being a slow learner. Someone might question whether I’m glad for the headaches. Make no mistake, I would like to be free of the symptoms that stifle me and keep me from enjoying all of my days. In fact, my search for a cure continues. Yet, looking back, I don’t think I would have otherwise learned things about my life and I’m glad to have found a teacher who speaks my language. Pain has finally penetrated so that I know in my bones what once I only thought in my mind.
by Charles Varani
Charles lives, writes and teaches in Oregon. He is also a shodan at Open Sky Aikido and rides his bicycle. Like most people in the Willamette Valley, he usually has something fermenting.
October 2015 | back-issues, fiction
Wordlessly, she positions him beside her, leaning against the boat’s railing for support. She is now somebody’s wife. She is satisfied with their pose—only slightly more intimate than a prom photograph. Even now, twenty-five years later, I can hear the tension in her mouth. Her gaze is direct, flat. Her thoughts are elsewhere. The photographer fiddles with the aperture, trying not to overexpose the fleshy whiteness of her skin, a princess in her past life.
My father is my mother’s contrast. He is brown and complacent. No matter how many times the photographer counts to three, advances the film, my father’s lips stay a stodgy tan line. His eyes are narrow behind the enormity of his glasses, three years out of style.
I try to imagine the moment my mother has described in detail, the one the photographer captured and my father later destroyed—the only time she ever saw my father cry. The newlyweds drop their arms, turn away. Bride and groom, shoulder to shoulder at the rail, contemplating the churning water below. A cork pops behind them. After a moment, he lifts his hand. He wipes his face. His head dips slightly. Her eyes do not turn to acknowledge his movement. Her hands grip the wood in front of her. A small breeze catches his hair, flutters her veil. They are quiet, their bodies stiff. The boat skips over a wave, lurching like a subway train. They stand together. They do not flinch.
by Moriah Howell
Moriah Howell was born and raised in Penns Valley, a rural community outside State College, Pennsylvania. She is currently an MFA student at Temple University, focusing on fiction. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction as well, but feels she was meant to write fiction. Her dream job would be an editor at a publishing house, as well as an author, and she hopes to make those dreams come true.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
I never told anyone but
I’ll tell you.
About the fire
Folding up my tongue,
The last counted hour
With my stomach shrinking
Toward my graveyard spine.
My body wanted to be pins
And needles,
Balancing voided meals with
Cigarettes. Burn marshmallow
Fat like burning up
S’mores,
Campfire chocolate,
Childhood knobbles
In my rounded knees.
My body was statistical.
It was burned and tarred
And feathered. Monster me,
An under-the-bed story.
Cool dinnertime untruths,
Tamed, lightheaded.
Bless
The daily dizzy shrivel, the
Ribby abdomen poke, the
Airbrush collapse. Spark,
Sear, scissor open
The new pack.
by Alison Lanier
Alison Lanier is a Boston-based writer and graduate of Wellesley College. She recently joined the editorial team at The Critical Flame. Her fiction, reviews, articles, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Atticus Review, Counterpoint Magazine, and The Wellesley Review, where she also served as editor.
