January 2014 | back-issues, nonfiction
The brightest star in the constellation Cancer is beta Cancri, or as it is commonly referred to, Al Tarf.
The biggest bruise was just above my collar bone on the left side.
The second brightest star is Arkushanangarushashutu, the longest name of all stars in the galaxy. It means, “the southeast star in the crab.” It is sometimes referred to as Asellus Australis.
I couldn’t see his face. My eyes had begun to swell from the brick wall I was slammed into. I don’t remember that hurting.
The constellation is often referred to as the dark sign as its stars are so pale.
For months I was silent. My therapist told my mother I was in a walking coma.
The fourth sign of the zodiac is Cancer. It represents the home.
My boyfriend didn’t believe that I was raped. He told everyone I was a slut.
Cancers are ruled by the Moon. The Moon, astrologers say, dictates the mood as well as impulsivity.
I ran away. The bruises on my skin were gone but my insides were still swollen. I went to the Sea of Cortez.
The element associated with Cancer is water.
I lived on a beach called Los Cerritos outside of Todos Santos. I slept in a tent. I ate plums for breakfast, fish for lunch and rice with Italian dressing for dinner. I read Henry Miller. I married a Colombian man
Cancers are not compatible with Capricorns.
I left my husband in the middle of the night. I needed to go home.
Karkinos, the giant crab who helped the serpent Hydra in the battle against Hercules, was crushed beneath Hercules foot. However, as a reward for the strength, and willingness to fight, Karkinos was given a place amongst the stars.
by Jacqueline Kirkpatrick
Jacqueline Kirkpatrick is currently an MFA in Creative Writing student at the College of Saint Rose in upstate New York.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
My fingernail, your pancreas,
your palm, starving tribes in the Sudan.
My esophagus, Joan of Arc’s enflamed hair.
Your mother’s lungs, La Brea.
Your neck, a lighthouse’s spiral staircase,
my eyes, a beacon over turbulent waters.
Your conscience, below the surface;
my fingers, holding it there.
My heart valves, the locks along the Erie Canal,
reining things in, keeping things from getting out of hand.
My lungs, an orchard ripe for plucking,
my genitals, coals from the bottom of the fire,
my uterus, invasive, like mint, getting its fingers everywhere.
My disappointment: the iceberg, a lightning strike, a barbed hook. A super nova.
Yours: the Titanic, the Gulf oil spill,
a family of beached whales. No—a black hole.
by Emily Hockaday
Emily Hockaday’s first chapbook, Starting A Life, was published in June 2012 with Finishing Line Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The North American Review, Newtown Literary, Pear Noir!, The West Wind Review, Plainspoke, and others. She received her MFA in poetry from NYU and has served as a judge for NEA’s poetry out loud program.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
We’re sitting at an outdoor table
on the Broadway sidewalk watching
the rhythmic pause-and-go of traffic
through the Saratoga streets,
the hum and squeals of engines and brakes,
the hydraulic groan of the 473 bus as it unloads
its cargo of townsfolk and tourists,
their chatter filling the summer air
in the absence of birds. A boy sits
at the bus stop with a silent guitar in hand,
ignored by those coming and going.
We watch people board the bus
as you sip your Bloody Mary,
savoring the olives in your mouth,
turning them over like words
you’d rather hear than speak.
The waitress brings our food
and sets it down like the silence
between us. The small pink creatures
of your shrimp cocktail remind me
of the things I’ll fail to say––
laid out before us, untouched
and wholly intact yet
so obviously dead.
The boy still sits at the bus stop.
His guitar is still silent, its case
open at his feet like an empty wallet.
Passing pedestrians pay him no mind.
No one is giving me any money
he complains to no one in particular,
but he isn’t playing anything.
by Ariel Francisco
Ariel Francisco was born in the Bronx, New York, though he’s lived in Florida for most of his life. He graduated from Florida International University in Miami with a B.A. in English Lit. He’s also studied creative writing at the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College and film at Charles University in Prague. He currently resides in Miami, Florida.
January 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Marlene glared down the alley at the two pins in their corners, her eyes narrowed over the ball like a snake’s before it strikes. She stood tall and still and substantial, in her black pants and the white shirt with pinstripes and Marlene stitched in red over the left breast.
Then she moved, power under grace, just the barest hitch to her step, and this being only the sixth day out of the hospital. Today there would be no fat-ass comment to upset her four-step sequence. Today was about the clarity of the pins.
Between steps two and three she began to lean and lower, torso approaching horizontal, right arm back with the ball, left forward for balance, and if she felt the bruised ribs you couldn’t tell to look at her.
On step four her right arm swung forward and she didn’t so much roll the ball as release it—opening her hand as you’d free a bird. Marlene slid to a stop just short of the line and hung there, balanced on her left leg, her right raised behind her and folded in a delicate ‘L.’ The ball rolled straight until the english she’d applied took hold and curved it left, a pin-seeking missile. She liked to call it that: english. Most just said spin.
The ball kissed the inside of the seven pin and sent it caroming into the left wall and bouncing back and across in an arc, where it took out the ten and both pins dropped from sight into the back-alley abyss.
The sound it made was sharp and satisfying: de-ba-cle.
“Nice shot, hon,” Candace said.
Marlene blew cool air on her fingertips, then turned back toward where Harold used to score her and said, “Take that, motherfucker.”
by Richard Bader
Richard Bader’s work has been published by National Public Radio and by the rkvry Quarterly literary journal.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Requiem for an Empire
“Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.”
—”Clenched Soul,” Pablo Neruda
I remember you with my soul clenched,
realizing the ground has given way.
This façade crumbles, a life envisioned
becomes a ruin before its construction—
our vast empire founded on untruth and decay.
I remember you with my mind blockaded,
every exit patrolled by the ghost of us.
Trapped within this hostile land
I hide in the shadows of monuments
dedicated to a god that no longer exists.
I remember you with my body broken,
blood that would have spilled for you
wasted on barren earth, boiling in the heat
of the sun that once polished your face,
but now blisters my eyes as I remember.
As I gaze upon our remnants,
sand claiming what was once ours,
I recall those earth-ending words—
they caught like bones in your throat,
until they lurched out, laying waste.
I stand here, in remembrance of our empire,
devastation ruling my heart, your name
treading the edge of my tongue
as I force myself to stone, yet crack.
I am all that has survived—
A crumbling statue at the center of nothing.
by James Thomas
Reconciliation
They wake despite themselves,
backs still turned, each spine an abatis against intruders.
First-sleep is broken by the witching
time of night; Circadian servants rebel against their ruler.
Neither remembers why they’d fought,
or is certain that they ever had, confounded by dreams.
Wheel and pinion turn in unison:
mechanical precision, oneiric delirium.
Wordless mouths blindly advance,
mashing together with sacramental stress.
Hands pass over skin like braille
their serpentine bodies in blissful anguish.
Order’s simulacrum born
of bedlam: zealots under goose-down.
They offer sacrifices
to each other, prayers, seeds.
Unburdened and disarmed,
they end, captivated, entangled,
And drift
to sleep—their spirits cleansed, their flesh unclean.
by James Thomas
Post-Mortem
I dream of a corpse lying before me—
rigid and staring, eyes fogged over,
mouth tightened to a grin—
a warm gesture from my dead-ringer.
I smile back at this cold me, my knife
sliding down his chest like a lover’s
hand, lustful precision arousing flesh
to reveal its taunting secrets.
He opens up to me—a host of maladies
malign my inquiries—each adamant
about their role in my friend’s demise.
So I ask my corpse, “what killed us?”
His grin is less welcoming now, ribcage
glistening in fluorescent light, I dig
for answers. My knife nicks his liver,
like an eagle’s beak, over and over.
In the silent room I hear my own heart
beating back the stillness of death.
For an instant, it seems his heart beats
in time with mine, but no. I continue.
I grasp his heart, press it in unison
with my own—a last-ditch effort
of a man wishing to become
Lazarus, but my prayer falls unheard.
I set my tools aside.
I glance back at my pale face—the eternal
grin mocking my fear,
happier dead than I will ever be.
by James Thomas
James Thomas is a Senior at the University of North Texas studying Creative Writing.
