April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
when I close my eyes,
my bones quiver like I’m
the girl I was last summer,
waking up eighteen on
the banks of the river,
four inches deep in little boys
that press themselves flush
into the creases of my barefoot callouses
it’s there:
honeysuckle, rationed
single drop by single drop,
nectar touched so gently
by our green mother
that it’s bitter to my tongue,
pressed inside my cheeks,
to bite, to knead,
sewn into silk-hewn soil
that bleeds roots from seeds,
bursting leaves like sunburst skies,
like the amber-glossed eyes
of every horse I led to water
only to never let them drink
by Alora Ray
Alora Ray is 20, temporarily lives in Northern Virginia, perpetually lives in a state of denial, performs for whimsy, writes by necessity.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
i want to build you castles of words,
letters looping into stairs & banisters –
standing up billboards of breath
in a sleepless city lit by commas &
question marks. i want to sprinkle consonants
into your dreams & i want you to wake up with poetry
under your tongue. i’ll soften all the vowels
that dewdrop on the roses & i’ll sculpt
the adjectives into a vehicle
to the extraordinary. my fingers
may be feeble & my heart may spin
rambling novels before it’s through,
but i’ll keep restacking these bricks
and trimming these topiaries
until every last syllable
comes out right.
by Sarah Marchant
Sarah Marchant is a writer, poetry editor, and literary enthusiast living in St. Louis.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Like The Blue Like Infinity
From you,
the wings of a seraphim grow.
Like the blue.
Like infinity.
You tore the currents from
the shore,
you belted the sky against its flesh and
held back the threat of rain.
But there was a recent time when you
fell through the thick of clouds
and fell some more,
the heart pattered out,
the bone slipped into death,
and the truth peeled away at the skin.
A limpid metaphor.
Your tendons were led, strung up like
skulls on pikes.
Your tears, clear droplets mingled with
plump pity were
flicked beneath the burning sighs.
While breaths wrung out to be strangled by
the claws of mud-coated ground.
But, the patient one, with hearty bale of madness
you had carried on.
Stripping apathy of its sorcery.
Leaving it eyeless and dull.
Then you stirred when tomorrow arched
across yesterday,
where the hallowed calm
darkened over water-lights of today.
Pleasures and pain. Glory and shame.
And skyward to light you soared,
on extended wings.
by Lana Bella
Under My Dark
Five long hours. Under my dark. I sprawl awake.
Tumbling through the house. Sinking against the
windowpane, watching rained acoustics patter on
the terraced roof. Cries of raindrops. Mingle with
a symphony of ghosts roaming about me. Then I
pour myself a memory from a simmering cauldron,
flavored of alphabet scars and flakes of consciousness.
Hands on the pot. A sudden blink. How do I pour the
liquid thoughts and lettered inks into a bottomless beaker
without leaving my body in a pool of shadows? But now,
my lips thirst for drink. To warm over the cold where the
bone is hollow. Until, I lean in, something exposed and
glassy, echoing on the surface. It is my eyes staring back
at me. Gliding through the fluid with hooked arms. And
its mouth slurping up the pale gullet, heaving off the
squirting blood. The muddy mass of flesh throws up
in the mirage. Then high above, a dullard of rain again
breaks over the house. If I listen, my heart would once
more weep and my eyelids would suspend in tears. So I
stretch my skin where the stairs lay muted and heavy,
under the particled air into which darkness goes.
by Lana Bella
Lana Bella has a diverse work of poetry and flash fiction anthologized, published and forthcoming with more than sixty journals, including Aurorean Poetry, Burningword Literary Journal, Eunoia Review, Mothers Always Write, New Plains Review, The Criterion Journal, and Featured Artist with Quail Bell Magazine, among others. She resides in the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, with her novelist husband and two frolicsome imps.
April 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction
‘Time to count it out,” said Tommy the gay black manager. I always liked Tommy, he was not stupid, he was good to us and not needy or demanding. The black girls started counting out the chicken pieces and talking shit as usual, I listened in because they were blunt and funny. Some of them didn’t mind pocketing money from customers. I walked across the greasy floor and started counting out the leftover pieces of chicken and bucketing them, planned to take home some original recipe and red beans and rice. One last group of customers appeared at the register, a black dude ordered a two piece chicken and biscuit, by accident he got two boxes but paid for one, a white dude in the crowd called him out, they went out to the parking lot and squared off, the black due took off his belt and started swinging it at the white, this went on for a couple minutes then Tommy told us to stop watching and get back to work.
by Joel Rook
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
could have seemed more mundane
than an accidental Safeway run-in
after you simply stopped your pursuit
and, instead, went after groceries.
You wore brown, reminding me
of New Yorkers I used to watch,
in grey flannel flesh,
seemingly unfamiliar with sun.
Nothing more mundane.
Just grey and brown and we had to,
or I did, speak. You had been the sun,
the foreign flare, bursting last time
we met with life.
You saw me again and your hands
hung from your jacket
like leaves dead early on branches
in another fall. Nothing of life
was left, neither precious gold or warmth,
or Spanish rhythm. Only packaged meat
and bagged produce. Hands off,
and an explanation I had to buy.
by Alita Pirkopf
Alita’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Alembic, Caduceus, The Chaffin Journal, The Distillery, The Griffin, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Harpur Palate, Illya’s Honey, Lullwater Review, Quiddity, RiverSedge, Ship of Fools, Westview, and Willow Springs Review.
