July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Cove
Where the
Black rock
Is soaked
In silver spray,
Moonlit
My guttural baritones
Are
Bowed strings of longing
Come in to my cove,
My black wings
Encircling
I cannot
Promise
A halo
But you and I, we
Could circle the fire
Let the howl
Of the wild
Rip the skin
From the waters
It will never
Tear the tears
From closed eyes
So please,
Burrow
And Settle
In the crook
The cradled bay
And I will set us in stone
If you will stay
Silence
There is no better sound;
the greatest opus
The caught breath
between thrusts
As her father calls
from beyond the walls
And a gulp slips away down a throat
The smoking gun
A peeling onion
and the tears of realisation
tearing out the truth talking noise clutter
It is guilt.
Pulled through in puppet strings
A thread long
A tight wire – line straight, an endless
unravelling of the mind inside
It is the music of tension,
the eternity of waiting
It is taking
the talking for a talking to
Away beyond the sidelines
Downstairs behind the kitchen door
and out through the garden, the garage,
the secret corner and the sly cigarette your father
will never show unto your mother
It is the monolith
in white block
One giant eraser ready
for the painting over
The one coat non drip glossing over a canvas
A cosmic napkin wiping the crumbing
of the messy eating of language
and the swirling amateur chaos of colour mixing
A palette trashed
A square punch to a whiteout
A collapse from a breakdown
And the blurring, the peaceful nothing
Of a hospital bed in morphine
With a sawn off shotgun
and a hearing all sewn up
A hearing
O, finally a hearing
without a judgement;
A hearing we don’t have to listen to.
by Greg Webster
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Wine Tasting
Breathe,
but don’t inhale.
Taste and swish,
but don’t swallow.
The experience
lasts a moment,
then discarded
into a silver bucket.
So dignified,
so proper,
delicate ladies
with perfect hair
spitting blood
red mouthfuls.
Falling in Love Outside a Ryan Adams Concert
Into a swirl of smoke and music,
awkward chatter fades away.
Cigarette smoke mingles with,
Just put your arms around her already.
A woman laughs.
Pretense of scalped tickets
falls away, as we move closer,
pressed together in the rain.
by Laura Baker
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Strange Trials
If you must drown or burn, please burn.
At some point, you must choose a scent
(ascent, descent) and go with it.
I’ve never seen why we shouldn’t put our bodies through
strange trials for no reason other than that freedom
is knowing perfectly and exactly all the walls of your cell.
Everything survives flames. Imagine
touching the nonexistent
top of the sky, your body in ashes on the wind’s wings.
Revelation, like all sensations
is for one person, time and place only.
If it is true, as Moses knew,
that the desert is God’s country,
the void speaks volumes.
The Visitation
In the event of a visitation—
some presumably all-knowing being
coming down to chat—my protocol
is to first ask, Is there a God?
So when God Himself appeared to me, I asked this
and He replied, in His unmistakable voice, No.
The sky turned green and chairs
collapsed under people all across the city.
All I could do to demonstrate my faith was walk
out on a frozen lake, tiny cracks following
my every step. Laws are governed
by miracles, and these can never be broken.
This was in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
late November. What an unbelievable name.
People had thrown rocks onto the ice
some heavy ones even broke partly through.
When I stepped back onto the dock, my hero’s
welcome consisted of a black sun-abandoned line
of trees standing behind a field of yellow
grass poking curiously out of the snow.
by Dustin Junkert
Dustin started writing in order to impress girls. Most girls aren’t all that impressed by writing, he has found. But here’s hoping. Dustin lives in Portland, OR. He recently had an essay published in the New York Times, and poems in The Journal, South Carolina Review, the Minnesota review, Weber, Georgetown Review, GW Review and New Delta Review.
July 2012 | back-issues, fiction
We drink until we become different people. Fuck each other stupid to see who gets the most injuries. There’s a tally chart on our bedroom wall. There’s a 911 dialed on a cell phone. There’s a dispatcher somewhere waiting to hear one of us say, “I don’t know how it happened.” Last night I went to the hospital. Two broken ribs and a plum eyeball. I was trying to be Angelina Jolie. He was Seth Rogan. I think we were going for the next cult classic. I have bark skin where my virginity used to hide. Instead of a heart beat in my stomach there’s a fist looking for asphalt. I don’t get knocked up. I get knocked out. I can’t remember what missionary position is except that one person is on a mission to find a tidal wave while the other waits for something to happen. And it never does. Who is this man lying next to me? His breath throws Irish car bombs into the mattress. They explode into nightmares. I see a ring and I don’t know what that means. I can’t remember what marriage is except someone stares at a wedding cake, wondering whether she is the bride or the groom, and the other person can’t find the knife. It’s between my hip and my uterus. Here. Take it.
by Jessica Farrell
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Thousands of leaves scatter toward us,
New Year’s confetti.
Icicles—test tubes,
bruised apples—a baby’s beating heart.
A needle pokes in and out in and out
sewing your name.
This is the season in between seasons.
Our paddles cut through water,
reminds me of my mother’s porridge
thick, lumpy, never the same consistency.
Your fishing line jerks, the fish escapes.
Your spinner stuck to a tree branch.
We had banged on the rack of bones that
was the canoe’s chest.
Mice ran out,
tiny blind bodies clinging to their mother’s
nipples, naked in the presence of the Red-Tailed
Hawk.
This is the funnel of nature.
I’m swept up between The Valley,
her hips straddling me
the explosions of artillery
from the Gap sound.
I feel the contractions
before she gives birth.
The earth’s blood pools
beneath my feet.
by Sarah Grodzinski
