April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
She Takes the Bus
I’m watching her eat, gathering soup with a spoon from the far side of the bowl, a precise calculation, is she educating me? But I’m remembering it wrong, when did we order soup? Was it the chicken soup I placed before her at my kitchen table, under the grandmother curtain, the night she needed soup, or in the loud bar that late evening when she was hungry, I was hungry and the weather was changing, and the soup wasn’t good, but maybe hot enough. Another time I made soup from the bone broth in my freezer. I put a clump of fresh thyme tied with string, and left it in too long, and the watercress turned to slime, along with the parsley, but the carrots were memorable, she winces at my telling her this, the thought of those living greens turning, is she seducing me? I’ve a steaming bowl of wanton soup in front of me now, which I won’t finish, she’ll be eating it tomorrow reheated, and I’ll pick up her bus tickets from my rug.
She Leaves Antiperspirant Residue
On my bathrobe. It’s a one-size I purchased from a Salvation Army, the same one Magnum P.I. wore, I imagine. I bought it in Hawaii, too, and now I put it on after the shower and catch the scent from which I comprehend actual time-release. And I suspect she isn’t bothered by the word extreme when choosing the items she consumes. It’s all part of a tapestry of surreal negotiations of trust. It’s all part of a quilt of conscience she is making.
She Handles Extraordinary Impasses
With the skill of a faith healer. She embraces what another manufactures for themself and relates to that fabrication, which is only a contrivance in the personality of the Original. In this case the Original is her faith in the authenticity of that personality. That personality was manufactured from the start by the Original. And now she is castigated for not breaking through to an underpinning, not shattering the mirror she didn’t know she needed to shatter. But then she didn’t want to yet.
She Bakes Flourless Cakes
There are bags of pulverized everything on the shelves which she can use to make a cake. We wander opposite ends of a supermarket: I in the dim-lit bottles section, seeming to subsist on cheap red wine, while she in the vegetables selecting mounds of wet leafy greens. We will spend too much anyway, and I will make a fuss before the magic happens. She never makes a fuss until the magic is spent. Her fortitude is in the suspense. Her resolve lies somewhere between the magic and her imagination.
—M. D’Alessandro
M.D’Alessandro is a writer, teacher, publisher and printer. He edits the semiannual literary journal swap/concessions, and is the founder of bedouin books. He has been published in various journals and is the author of two books of poetry.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
For most,
night was bleak,
day was sleep,
For him,
dark lit sky, same as it all
A single glare, and revolving glass
A bed warmth,
Through blackness,
Lying under,
A triumphant yellow,
For him,
night was light,
day was black.
For him,
blues were a loss,
whites were his home,
yellow a guide,
—Daniel Wallock
His creative non-fiction has published in San Jose State University’s The Bolt Magazine.
April 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Melissa didn’t know why she was surprised that you could see all the gum stuck to the parking lot. You could see it right through the clunky gray snow and ice drowned by exhaust fumes. Every frostless patch shone with a newer squashed piece of color against the old, worn black tar. She imagined future gum archaeologists studying the rise and fall of the Clear Valley Mall.
Ah yes. Here we have a fine specimen of Big League Chew. I’d say probably from around 1984 or 85. Hmm. Could be from a mall rat or arcade junkie. Oh, and it looks we could have a teeth whitener, circa 2012, over here.
She remembered giggling in school when the nuns got riled up about gum in any form, whether it was being chewed, stuck under desks, or shoved in notes. Gum took them under siege—it was everywhere.
Melissa felt a little overwhelmed when she thought about the things they were right about, but even more so about the things they got wrong, and in that brief few seconds, before she continued walking toward the mall entrance—when her eyes perused the vast parking lot wasteland filled with dirty snow and chewed up gum—she wondered if she really believed in anything.
—J.M. Breen
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Standards
The dust of the standards that used to hold this body
There was always something here that talked and kept talking, that warmed its way around.
It used to make me believe
It used to make me believe that people were always supposed to evolve into something particular, something sound.
I wonder about that, now.
I wonder about whether the standards that used to apply to what a body turned into have weathered away, and whether the expectations have woven themselves a new frame?
I wonder how many other people feel the same way I do?
When the motions of time and the strength it takes to hold a body together find themselves twisted.
There have been times when I have been afraid I would break, or bend, or be useless.
I convinced myself over time that all I needed was a will strong enough.
Determination would fix everything.
I now think it is a matter of perspective. That those who have had to dig and restrain for the energy for life find themselves in a different place, in a different manner altogether, from those for whom life molded easily.
I think it is a matter of shape, circumstance, and beginnings. And they are different for everyone. Although for some, it is more tumultuous than others.
Trusting the Dark
Trusting the dark
Running into frames of uncertainty
Turning through the rapid motions of someplace I never thought I would be
What is the synonym of description?
When I have run through the gates, certain I knew my calling, only to find myself astonished by the lessons left.
There was a place I did not know, though I thought I had already been there.
The parameters were set in my head, I thought I knew the expectations.
What does one do when the form changes again? The form of how I walked through the mist, feeling the vapors mix themselves with my nerves, tantalizing the air through and around me. I had thought it would make better sense by now. I had born myself into the experience of being reformed, internally and externally. I knew it extended even more so and took shape in the air around.
At the time, I thought I had a glimpse of what the form would come to be. I thought I knew what to expect in time to come, not in direct vision, but in certainty of fearlessness and what the past had shown about the future. I guess I thought the past was going to indicate the future, or at least bring hope. I thought the past was a direct correlation for what the future would look like, in pain being used in purpose and wrong deeds illuminating freedom for others as it had for me.
Now I am in a tide that seems to stand still in time, but requires the energy of anticipating the moves I will need to stay in it. Even while it is not moving. It feels as though it may stay stationary for a time that I can’t predict, and I have to have the strength to churn it until it moves in a way that makes sense again. And the tide does not feel like the vapor had. It is a different season, or at least feels that way.
I am not sure whether the vapor changed, or my perception of it. Or at least the way that I walked with it in me and through me. It seemed like it would only solidify further and make better sense, but how it has felt has changed, and I’m not sure why.
—Lisa Wick
Lisa Wick is from Southern California, where she currently resides and works. She loves writing poetry, and is working on a novel. Lisa’s poetry has not before been published.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
He steps outside of his putty house
and stares at the midnight sun;
catches flurries
of pastel colored barnacles on his tongue.
Candy-coated cigarettes, puffed in
rings of lavender scented mist toward the stars.
The humans make their way through slush
and liquid concrete.
Golf cart garbage men
slip between
alleys and nail polish junkies lounge against
fence posts. Their chests are closed, sewed –
bits of stitching here – and there.
In his restaurant, teetering
over a silken sea,
the hearts cook in pots of oil, thick
and oozing. Sizzle! POP!
They hiss like lightning,
tremble with birdsong.
“Order Up!”
Hollow wooden waiters serve them, still
beating on icy plates.
Grapefruit-sized holes gape
in each patron’s chest.
Their noses sniff, perk; not seeing
but still, the smell of warmth, touch.
Flesh.
Roses on Valentine’s Day and love notes,
familiar raised lines and loops –
like braille, flattened
by starvation.
Pink blood
spills onto the clouds,
(Cumulonimbus)
as they gobble with paws and claws.
He watches, as he does every day,
through glasses of mantis shrimp eyes,
and waits for sunrise.
—Gabrielle Tyson
