October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Deep in summer drought, most songbirds have split,
maybe flew north to the lake country.
One skittish cardinal flits about in the shrubs
protecting her nest, but the rest have left.
The pair of catbirds that chirped liltingly
in a halting sequence of whistles and whines
in the dogwoods and pines all through June
became restless after the fourth of July, mewed
menacingly for a few days, then hit the road.
Now a flock of glossy black grackles rules the yard,
iridescent, boorish, raucously chucking and reedie-eeking,
thrashing at the bird feeder, scattering seeds,
splashing wildly in the bird bath, bullying
chickadees, finches, chipmunks, and squirrels.
Yet across the parched yards, ditches, and fields
of tawny straw, march wispy armies of Queen Anne’s Lace,
undaunted by dry heat, nourished on adversity,
swaying delicately, chanting–blessed are the meek for they
shall adorn the mass graves of the human race.
— Jerry McGinley
Jerry’s work has appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies. He is currently working on his sixth book, tentatively titled “Lake Redemption.” It will be a collection of stories and poems.
October 2013 | back-issues, fiction
That last image of you from college was enough to undo me right there. Parked nudging the curb of the lot, you sat alone in there, staring down between your naked toes, a fat camel, the trendy ones that year, the ones you turned me onto, squeezed between your clinched fingers, which hovered above the open window as if anticipating a need for escape. Your eyes were distant, nodding against the broken rhythm of my voice, trying to make you see me. We hadn’t spoken in close to two years, which seemed then like something made up, an improbable youth conjured from death and hope.
To be back there again, I thought, to that ecstatic newness of escape from family, the shock of lips I’d longed for. The discovery of drunken autumns.
That would make things better.
A misunderstood melancholy boiled with the heat in that faded green Civic, and my inelegant words were scorched and mangled by it upon arrival.
The solipsism of me, unable to see in your shocking eyes that what you longed for was a return to a time before you knew me, when your father was still alive, and when guys like me never mattered enough for friendship, our insistence laughable and easily disposed of, like the ash-filled cups lying on your passenger floor. I was a part of those meaningless things gathering around you, things you have since thankfully swept away.
It’s taken me awhile to understand the truth of what I was then, and why your distance was just another part of your strength in coping, and why, as I walked away from you that day, I felt as though I had never seen such sadness; such beauty.
—Adam Cheshire
Adam is a writer living in Hillsborough, NC. His previous work appears in The Broken Plate, Boundoff, and Vine Leaves Literary Journal.
October 2013 | back-issues, fiction
Be a child. Have dreams. Ensure those dreams are undefined, transitory – always out of reach. Reach out a doughy, puppy-fat hand to touch them anyway.
Continue to be a child, even when your body misbehaves by aging. Remember to attend university, even when you have no idea why.
Realize that your dreams are bigger than you thought, that the world is bigger than you thought. Most importantly, be aware of how small you are.
Ignore the lines around your eyes. You are not older, just wiser. Be wiser. Decide to leave everything behind.
Find yourself in a place you never imagined. Wish for the place that you left. Accept that you can’t go back.
Conclude that you could be anywhere in the world, and your puppy-fat hand will always reach out for something else.
— S. M. Colwill
Sarah Colwill-Brown is a British expat studying for an MA in English at Boston College. Her poetry has featured in Poetry & Audience (UK), and last year I won the Seaton Scholarship for graduate creative writing at Kansas State University.
October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Today, the clouds fell,
and a crow built his brown nest
high on an oak’s branch,
beneath the fresh, pink mountain,
which faded with the sunset.
— Shawn Jolley
Shawn Jolley is an up-and-coming author currently studying creative writing at Utah Valley University. Aside from writing, he enjoys making his wife smile, and falling in love with new stories.
October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
In Air
I remember how easy it is
to be swiped from the world
like an ant from a page.
Traversing the third line–
flowers are blooming everywhere–
and then falling,
like the wings of a bird in glide,
I remember
how inappropriate it can be.
But I never quite knew
what went through the ant’s mind
as it was catapulting into the
frantic whiskers of grass
and I don’t quite know what
will go through mine
when I’m resting in a chair
one day
and my book flips facedown
a page before the end.
When You Gave Me All Your Books
for Julia
Steadying my weight over the cold, olive shelf,
I cleared the toy rabbits. The books and small stack
of quarters from off your picture.
I was careful not to feel your face with my
middle finger, not to punch in your dimples
like the plastic of a water bottle.
There were three of us behind the ripe orange
of the frame and my head slumbered its way
to your shoulder. All skin & cloth, cheek & bone.
Your hair, which had tumbled its soft auburn
onto my arm during the time of the picture,
now cropped out my left half.
But I understood: it was hard for you
to talk about things like cheese and show off
all thirty-two of your teeth at the same time.
I noticed our nice clothes,
how our smiles displayed the same, contrived happiness
as those people who spend hours awake at night,
ruminating on some rapture
so that by the time their eyes do close,
their mouths are already anchored in a heavy & dumb smile.
All the while, I was listening at my desk
for the brilliant sounds you’d make
and then forget early the next morning.
— Alex Greenberg
Alex Greenberg is a 14 year old aspiring poet. His work can be found in the November issue of the Louisville Review, in issue 17 of the Literary Bohemian, in the upcoming issue of Cuckoo Quarterly, in the upcoming issue of Spinning Jenny, and as runners-up in challenges 1 and 2 of the Cape Farewell Poetry Competition. He has won a gold key in the Scholastic Arts and Writings Awards and was named a Foyle Young Poet of 2012.
