April 2012 | back-issues, poetry
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The fifth of November, I remember dark nights
Of frost, bitter cold, biting winds, clad in
Winter’s warm woolens with fur-booted feet.
Into pitch blackness, a wide gulp of my heaven,
The aroma so sweetly inhaled as we stride
With the moon as our constant companion.
Rockets and wheels spinning and whizzing, while
Heaped pyramid fires rise higher, great pyres
Of wood and Guys we all made, with faces
And arms and legs, so real, sat atop the tip
Stuffed with straw and old papers, last week’s news
Up in flames, and we stare as we bite
Into our blood-red toffee apples clutched tightly
In mitten-less hands, and with quivering fingers
We sip on steamy, hot, oxtail soup. Excellent!
Smoke-filled Bonfire Night with its snapping
And crackling and “Oohs” and “Aahs” that expel mists,
Floating mists, of icy cold air into night’s lighted sky.
Night’s Truth
Staring into pure night’s nothingness
I am the only attendant in this static world
Even as a weighty arm bears down clumsily
Claiming its place across my stiffened torso
In the stillness the restless wind rattles and stirs
Accompanying the hollow, soundless space
With its sporadic howls and whistles
Unnerving the shaken, flimsy window screens
And drumming rhythms on fragile panes
Into a tempo of mesmerizing melody
Immersing me in a yawning, restful slumber
While enticing the hidden, hushed, neglected
Thoughts once entombed in the brazen light
Let loose to conviction under hypnotizing darkness
And clandestine revelations are finally at liberty
To throw off the white veil of day’s deceiving hours
Sincerity surfaces exposed to torment and candor
Fabrications find no welcome in night’s shadowy murk
The wail of the wind laments sadness and sorrows
Laid bare in the dark shroud is my solemn truth.
Top Deck, Friday Nights
Seizing the cold, metal pole flanked by folding doors
That snap back fast and beckon us as he brakes
We leap up the single steep step in our high-heeled stilettos
Out of breath, giggly, and silly and showy
Dropping our loud, clanking silver in the waiting slot
And snatching tickets as they churn out the noisy, red box.
The good-looking driver throws a wink and a grin
Unlike the few straitlaced, po-faced passengers below
Teetotalers, night-shifters, glaring in unanimous annoyance
So we make a swift, mad dash up the winding, narrow staircase
Holding fast as the double-decker picks up speed
And finally falling hard on the seat in an ungainly heap.
Laughing and panting, resembling a tossed pile of laundry
Bearing floundering legs, we sit barely upright
Becoming part of the upstairs crowd, rowdy and wild
As they chant and they cheer and they hoot and they holler
And in silence at the back some exhale sailing smoky circles
Which we deeply and delightfully and dizzily inhale.
Like clockwork, the same swarm piles on Friday’s last bus
Done with dancing and drinking until dark’s early hours
So young and adrift in this English inner-city
Where up top we belong at the unruly after-party
Among drunkards and cursing and fighting and spewing
Rebellious and clueless, we make our way home.
by Carla Ingram
April 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Caleb
plastic necklaces strung pretty
dusty in his eyes
(luminosity dulled by dime-store display)
you skip around
crinkle leaf sidewalk play
you roll your eyes
green to yellow to orange
ink scratch-out paper
hiding behind your grin
what was there before?
what did you never allow?
sodden ground
thoughts & secrets threaded
dead grass tangled
thriving weeds
and I’m drowning beside you
Sarah Lucille Marchant is a Missouri resident and university student, studying literature and journalism. Her work has appeared in publications such as Straylight, A Cappella Zoo, and Line Zero.
April 2012 | back-issues, fiction
I’d Rather Die
by Kim Farleigh
Enrique Ponce had been hit by the first bull, a blood-stained, white bandage wrapped tight around his right thigh, his awkward short steps placing despairing lights in his eyes. There was a white tear in his pants over his left hip and red patches smeared over his legs. “I’m going back out there,” he had told them in the infirmary. “Are you sure about this?” he was asked. “Of course!” So he was limping towards his second bull, each step like being barefoot on boiling sand, the crowd roaring with admiration. You’re mine, bull, Ponce thought. One horn can’t stop me. I’d rather die than be stopped by one horn. And the ring blurred, the sharpening bull now exquisitely in focus, man and bull uniting, the sword protruding out of the bull’s back, its legs folding, bucket-load spurts of stringy red shooting from its mouth, Ponce collapsing, the crowd roaring, men running to pick Ponce up, carrying him to the infirmary, Ponce wincing: “Now you can plug up the holes.”
April 2012 | back-issues, poetry
when I say something witty –
out, because your insides can’t bear
to be in. Whatever you pulled inside
I deflated. I didn’t even need a pin.
I saw you. When you were under the fig tree
I saw you.
While you loaf,
I’ll be under lamplight
tracing the shadow of my hand
on the table.
All I am, the pitcher of thought
without the thought
of preservation.
Unlike you,
unlike salmon,
my back will break
the surface. You are the ahhh
of eternal dimension. I am the oh
of a punched stomach.
by Stephanie McCauley
April 2012 | back-issues, poetry
I. The Garage
Knelt beneath the staircase
my skin hummed against the threat
of discovery, the shock of her
blonde hair, the string of his guitar,
the damp silhouette beneath my thin
cotton dress. Clouds of laughter
and smoke swung between us, a circuit
of pungent electricity rocked
with soft delirium. She kissed
my lips with curling halos
of marijuana and strawberry, blew
dandelion-seed wishes for a boy.
II. The Carnival
The arc of the Ferris Wheel winked
above crowns of swaying pine,
causing us to drift off track.
It was an asylum from the empty road ahead of us,
a catalyst for the drug, so we shoved
crumpled dollars into fat hands
of grey-haired ticket vendors, stumbled
arm-in-arm across straw-thatched grounds,
red-eyed, howling, lost in ourselves,
rapturous, discomposed–limitless.
III. The Launch
We crawled inside the bench seat,
a metal bar strapped across our laps,
pinned to sweat-stained vinyl and faith in numbers.
The engine lurched and the machine gyrated
satellite shuttles into streams of brilliant
red and canary shrieks. Our bodies were fused
together in pools of marrow and spun-sugar.
My brother and sister, we were reborn
in mongrel gravity, the vicinity of three,
rendered invincible
by bastard youth.
by Rachel Lake
