January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Farm land, house land,
Town land, mall land
3 hectares of box-store monolith land
Land of the soccer-centre and recreational utility building
Of thirteen civic centre’s and four public libraries with faded magazines and instructional videos
Occupying two thirds of a floor
Of catholic-school kids hogging the computers and Russian literature, faking excessively long shits in the single bathroom stall, to stalking the only people who actually filled out the requisitional form for a library card.
“can I have your number?”
Of one memorial centre/ prison and four banks on separate corners.
“This was once the most fertile land in all of Canada”
Red-eyed in Denny’s after church
“This was all field all corn and field”
I once grew a pumpkin
It took eight weeks and fourteen seeds and
Ballooned to the size of a lemon
And spat out only three seeds when my dad stepped on it
With size fourteen steel-toe workmans.
Of white flights that keep darkening
And a checkerboard layout that keeps filling in all the
Blank spaces
And two schools built in the middle of factory zones
“what’s wrong with this picture students”
And the laser-tag looks out onto the refinery by the Toys R Us
Next to the ten-lane highway with seven interchanges
Where we still see the occasional coyote.
“but where are the good neighbourhoods anymore”
one bar per hundred thousand
And sixteen home reno stores
“just outside of town”
And the movie theatre blasts opera on Fridays to scare off the teens
But don’t tell me there’s religious tension, the grandmother’s won’t allow it
Of cities that still think they’re towns
and town-lines that change every month
and immigrant towns that change the words for immigrant every month
“but don’t tell me we’re full there’s corn everywhere,
don’t worry we’re made for flight”
by Connor Mellegers
Connor Mellegers is originally from Brampton, Ontario and currently resides in Montreal Quebec where he is pursuing an English Literature degree at Concordia University. His work has previously appeared in The Fat City Review.
January 2014 | back-issues, nonfiction
Driving up a curvy incline, all that mattered was the beautiful sunshine which illuminated my rough, grey booster seat. Out the window I saw endless hues of forest green and muted browns that looked like my aged dinner table. Everything in the woods; the trees and faint noises of birds emanated a deep ingrained feeling of my own belonging. As the car crept up along side of a cliff I gazed out at gorgeous cracked rock. Half Dome laid right in the middle of the valley, just to the left was the thundering water drifting down off Yosemite Falls. Through the wonderland of heart-opening trees I rose higher and higher into the valley.
“You ok back there Daniel?,” asked my mom.
“This is better than Disneyland!”
My doctors had warned my parents of altitude with my seven life-threatening heart conditions, but they wanted to try it. As we reached a peaking ecstasy of life in the inner valley, I began gasping.
The world began to deteriorate into a mere image, then suddenly my body fell cold under a redwood as tall as the sky. Cedar, pine, and the valley floor were the only things tangible. A hazy gray seemed to encapsulate my existence. Loud sirens blared as men in white rushed me down the mountain, disturbing the natural world.
Opening my eyes seemed like a mission. What if I can’t open them? What if it’s only gray? The room was an exploding fluorescent white. The white bed, toxic cleaning products, the sting of the IV and of course the smell of rubbing alcohol. My eyes drooped forward and I slouched down. Turning over onto my side I peered out a cellar like window to see the bright sun, which only a few hours ago I had been under.
by Daniel Wallock
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Ecosystems
The morning was cold and fat with leftover
Chinese food plastic forked on a bus stop bench
while a cat hissed at another cat for passing by.
It was the sun who staggered up the alley
between gray walls to let a brown bird slip
through the gray no one would call a sky and land
in a busted-ass tree that forgot the weight of leaves
as the first drops of rain fell to form exhaust puddles.
I watched the bird perched there on a janky branch
as I scooped the last bits of crusty brown rice
and goopy-sauced beef into my mouth until
the bird flew off in a way I could never understand
and there was nothing left to do but drop
the white flap-top box into the black metal garbage can
and begin the long drizzly walk home, past
the last few high-rises quiet for the weekend,
the parking lots and weed lots, the underpass where tin
can fires warm homeless dreams and bold youth
leave their names on tall walls holding up busy streets
with no idea of what’s underneath, the renovated mills
and the worn out millhouses, the slick path where
fearless lovers and shitfaced vagrants sneak
to disappear in a tangle of weeds and malt liquor bottles
and silence and muddy banks and dark privacy,
to where the sidewalk finally becomes bridge.
It has been too long to remember the first time,
but somewhere along the years I picked up a habit
of stopping halfway across the bridge to pull
a candy bar I saved for the moment from my pocket,
tear open the wrapper, bite off a mouthful, enjoy
the shame of chocolate and toffee on a drunk morning,
and stare down into brown water tumbling over
shallow rapids, thick with the dirt of centuries
of snapped lines and Styrofoam and sunken canoes,
runoff from the chicken plant, the cemetery.
A length of pine trunk and the two rocks it wedged
between before I ever passed through catch everything
catchable in the ambling current, flecks of scale and shit,
twigs and pebbles and leaves, plastic grocery bags and
frayed cigarette butts, grains loosed from stones and bones,
to hold it all together, gather it all up to make it part of
themselves, to grow into something bigger until there is
an island of the wasted and the forgotten left behind
in the middle of everything, piling up all over itself
every moment, waiting for it all to take root and settle in
so the otters and great blue herons may rest there one day.
I do not stop to remember, to reminisce, to grow
nostalgic. I stop for the forgetting, to let the days slip
from me in that time between then and now, that place
lost here and there, in the cool warmth of early morning
as the sun finishes rising over the dawn-misted water
that passes under me and disappears forever downstream.
I stay only long enough to finish what I brought
with me, swallow down the last bite, take the empty
wrapper and fold it neat as a letter from a dead
lover, tuck it in my pocket before moving on.
by Darien Cavanaugh
From a Window in the Humanities Office Building
The trees along College Street are green fists punched
through the concrete foundation of the campus.
The rooftop of the Colloquium Café is flat white,
as lonely and alien as arctic plains and lunar seascapes.
Students are drinking iced coffee and eating cold sandwiches
at wrought iron tables under blue canvas umbrellas.
Your building is across the brick courtyard,
but your office does not have a window.
Still I am standing here again,
my thoughts drawn in your direction,
as I imagine that somehow you will be there
behind a new window built just for us, waving back
to me with the selfishly joyous smile of a child
who sees a friend enter the waiting room.
by Darien Cavanaugh
Capital
As a gesture of compromise, they took
the flag from atop the dented copper dome
and planted it where the grounds meet
Main Street but would not surrender it.
That flag’s post reaches seven generations
deep into hard-packed earth, so the sound
of wind whipping red, white, and blue
cloth echoes through downtown
and sunlight turns to shadow as it bleeds
through faded stars and graying memories.
Passersby shake their heads
or salute with small nods,
take photos for skeptical friends back home,
simply ignore it, or chuckle and ask
Is this it?
Is this what it was all about?
by Darien Cavanaugh
Darien Cavanaugh received his MFA from the University of South Carolina. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Dos Passos Review, Memoir (and), The Minnetonka Review, The Blue Collar Review, Struggle, Pank, The James Dickey Newsletter, Megaera, The Pickwick Press, Gertrude, I-70 Review, Kakalak, and The San Pedro River Review. He lives in Columbia and works at The Whig.
January 2014 | back-issues, fiction
“Have another?”
“Can’t, I have to go.”
“You always say that.”
“Only when I need to leave.”
I can still hear the corny music on the jukebox, the clinking of the glasses. The barkeep heard our chiming, collected his money, a too generous tip. We left, bade each other platonic adieus, walked separately to our separate families. How I miss my travelling days!
At home, always the same or nearly the same scene: I open the door, panting after my three story climb, my wife at the range frying or boiling something. “About time you got back.”
“I was delayed.”
“I bet,” smelling my breath, it’s cheap vodka, not kissing me. “Did you pick up the bread?”
“I forgot. I can go get some.”
“Don’t bother, it’s late, you may get delayed again, besides bread makes me fat. Do I look fat in this?” She twirls away from the steaming stove.
I say nothing or say something mollifying. My expression does or does not give me away, I can never tell with her, besides she isn’t fat. We eat in silence, our son long gone, the damn TV still on, a carafe of mineral water our only splurge. I pick at my meal, not wanting to mix drink and food, that’s why I’m too thin.
“If you drank less, we’d both eat better.”
I rise, clean off my plate, return, put my arms on her shoulders, nuzzle her ineptly, we don’t kiss. “But we wouldn’t be so happy.”
by Clyde Liffey
Clyde Liffey lives near the water.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
I roll him out to the Water Lilies, break
away one foot at a time. I watch
my father from across the room, bald
head angled up, swaying under eight
by eight feet of psychedelic purples, blues,
and living greens. I read once that water
lilies are always hungry, and I’m thinking
this when my father is pulled out of his
chair into the pond, his morphine pump
drifting away, his body turning, nerves
cooled, smile soft. Poppies cover his skin,
their leaves cocoon him in costume. He
begins to dance among bamboo, reaching for
feathery willows, losing himself in himself
until he realizes he’s all alone, twists his neck
to find a daughter. As the last leaf spins
imperceptibly on the water, my father rotates
his chair around, his face shocked with the
light. He searches for me, a confusion
in his eyes: Why did you leave me? My
red purse ridiculous on his lap.
by Janine L. Certo
Janine Certo is a poet and associate professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University. A former public school teacher, she has long advocated for more attention to poetry writing and performance in U.S. schools. Her poems appear in The Endicott Review and The Muddy River Poetry Review. Her work has been supported with a grant from The Spencer Foundation.
