January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Sleep,
a place for magic tricks and dreams
and romance after yes stands a
chance hearing.
Sounds in Shuffled Minor, a Three-girl-Monte,
we dance to b -flat cries,
keep the us pressed together/awake,
in places bed.
The marriage of our AM bodies parallel now,
two bullets awake,
our shared spotlight softens us to
packing, hugs and snacks for daughters,
sliding a curved heart across tables,
past our eyes,
we press send.
To separate buses,
go Daughters, go
grooming for distance,
hearing no in subjects Magic,
they learn to pull missiles
out of a hat.
We hang on
to hoops and rings
still-worn,
vanished,
our open circus stilts carry
us in years,
we romance in hallway plaque.
Transcripts in places bed silent,
kept pond-safe as our Forward Daughters
march the us to
sleep.
by Jamez Chang
Jamez Chang’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in FRiGG, Prime Number, Lines + Stars, Boston Literary Magazine, Poydras Review, Marco Polo, and Yes, Poetry. After graduating from Bard College, Jamez went on to become the first Korean-American to release a hip-hop album, Z-Bonics (1998), in the United States. He lives in Englewood Cliffs, NJ with his wife and 3 daughters. Visit www.jamezchang.com
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Lessons of love and loss
rendered in song.
Soundtrack of nostalgia.
Concert of memories.
A wistful reminder of
the story so far.
Infinite possibilities
lived and unlived.
The Ark of one life’s tale
digitally remastered.
by Christopher Brennan
Christopher Brennan is the founder and publisher of www.fireservicewarrior.com, author of The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness (2011), and co-author and editor of Fire Service Warrior Foundations (2012).
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
We stopped speaking to each other
sometime in the day to day montage
of going to work and coming home from work,
of writing papers and grading papers,
of aligning calendars and mis-scheduling whole days,
of dirtying dishes and washing dishes,
and of taking the dog to the park,
of saying “I love you” and meaning it.
We do “mean it,” but our language has decayed,
and verbs without nouns spin uselessly
until they fall. Gaps and gasps have become
our rhetorical structure, and the dog seems
more articulate, but only because our tongues lull,
hang sideways from our lips, thick with disuse.
by Angelina Oberdan
Angelina recently finished her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and is currently a lecturer at Clemson University. Her poems are forthcoming or have been published in various journals including Yemassee, Cold Mountain Review, Italian Americana, Louisiana Literature, and Southern Indiana Review.
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
The problem is my blood, they say.
There’s too much of it.
In other words, I have done this to myself.
With their signatures I am delivered tiny pills,
hundreds of them, metoprolol, valsartan,
hydrochlorothia—I don’t know, until
I am no longer a man but a sheath
into which pills can be poured
but it makes no difference. Blood begets blood.
I can feel them, the cells copulating in my arteries
their birth a newness forced on this old body.
I get dizzy.
On Thursday I find myself on the floor at the grocery.
It is a kind of death; no one seems to notice.
They say the pills are working, but I don’t believe them—
they do not hear the factory whirr of my bones,
my overfilling heart. I know my blood’s spoiled,
lost to me now, like the wife
you can no longer stand touching. You know
she means well, and isn’t her fault—she just isn’t what
you thought she’d be. But neither of you is going anywhere—
you’ve made your choice, there’s no time for anything else.
by Anna Moore
Anna Moore is an editor, poet, creator of small fictions, and inarticulate pursuer of the ineffable. Major interests include books and their futures, reading and the brain, literacy and psychology, the collection and dissemination of information, and the construction and structure of meaning. Anna is from Denver, Colorado, has lived in Mérida, Venezuela; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Los Angeles, California. She currently resides in both Providence, Rhode Island, and Brooklyn, New York.
January 2013 | back-issues, fiction
Have you ever tried to listen to the footsteps of a cat walking through snow? He takes gentle steps, as usual, but the top layer of snow – like the crust of crème brulee – betrays him. I watched the cat walk across the yard this morning, after five inches fell last night. The yard is a wide expanse, barren of anything but grass during the other months. This morning, it was a canvas of snow, and I watched the cat from down the street walk slowly across my yard. In another universe, one where you stayed, you hate it, sad to see the pristine snow get ruined by small footprints.
You, with your morning coffee steaming your glasses, call me over to the window and ask if I think we should chase him off the yard. I say, “No,” and put my hand on your shoulder. I stand here in this universe, without you, and I let him walk undisturbed across the Siberian landscape standing in for a standard suburban yard.
The cat makes slow and steady progress across the yard lifting one foot gently and then patting it down until he takes another step. I try to figure out the pattern of how his legs move but just watching him transfixes me, hypnotizes me. By now, you are outside with a broom yelling some kind of profanity and I am inside crying at your cruelty. But, without you, the cat is safe to cross the unknown spanse of winter desert, gingerly and silently stepping, feeling his way across what is at once familiar and completely new.
by Tim Fredrick
My writing has been published in Circa, TC Record, Changing English, and R&W Quarterly. I’m also the editor of Newtown Literary, a semi-annual journal dedicated to publishing and supporting writers living in Queens, NY.
