Elegy With Vultures

January 2022 | nonfiction

On the day Scott passed, vultures soared the gray skies in dozens. When they first came

down to me in the yard, nearly to my roof, I could hear their wings fold like water.

I have found no evidence of a carcass.

*

This morning I awoke from a dream, the first one of him since he died, but I lost it in

a sunlight that rose and fell as if he were toying with my dimmer switch. Prankster. (He would

warm coins with a lighter to sting me awake from our hangovers.)

*

Home from college my first fall, we were driving with our windows down. Leaves adrift

crimson across the hollow, testing the wiper blades of his most recent car. Junkers that would

always break down before the next one.

*

I was making fun of the music blasting from his cassette deck when he started to cry. Just

one tear. Was he sleeping in his car again? Cut off from parents, all his siblings except a sister?

Lured into another dicey scheme or on the run from someone with a code?

*

Is this samsara? he asked me once, after I had given him my copy of The Tibetan Book of

the Dead, which I had only skimmed.

*

The pages of his old letters, some on the backs of court-order forms, float from my desk,

filing cabinets, rise from junk in random drawers: ghosts I’m only now answering, a loneliness

I so easily set aside as if it were my keys.

*

Written from jail, Scott’s last letter came with the Prayer of St. Francis. (Animals were

always following him.)

*

Vultures have gathered in the pines. Batting their wings in the dark conifers as if the trees themselves desired flight, held back in place by their roots. Each bird shoves the next into air. They flap, then glide, for a time.

But I don’t think that they’ll be coming back.

 

B.J. Wilson

B.J. Wilson is the author of two poetry collections, Naming the Trees (The Main Street Rag, 2021) and Tuckasee (Finishing Line Press, 2020). His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Frogpond, Gravel, The Louisville Review, New Madrid, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University, a writing fellowship from The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, and a Pushcart Prize Nomination for his poetry. B.J. lives and teaches in Jacksonville, Alabama.

Watching the Bats Fly Out

January 2022 | poetry

This time, I will begin at the ending.

That house burned in the fire

along with all of the others

in Larkin Valley.

 

But by then, the bats were gone.

 

I keep returning to this poem

that draws me to a late autumn afternoon

when my niece and I sat in lawn chairs

facing her house. Just after sunset,

 

a dark shape appeared

from a crack under the eves,

grew larger and left

on its jerky flight.

 

Then came another

dark shape

and another until

the bats had all flown out.

 

We pulled on our sweatshirts,

poured white wine

and waited for the stars

to begin their display.

 

Patricia L. Scruggs

Patricia L. Scruggs lives and writes in Southern California. In addition to her poetry collection, Forget the Moon, her work has appeared in ONTHEBUS, Spillway, RATTLE, Calyx, Cultural Weekly, Crab Creek Review, Lummox, Inlandia as well as the anthologies 13 Los Angeles Poets, So Luminous the Wildflowers, and Beyond the Lyric Moment. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, Patricia is a retired art educator who earned her MFA at California State University, Fullerton.

Paul Rabinowitz

January 2022 | visual art

5252/Constellations

 

Paul Rabinowitz

Paul Rabinowitz is an author, photographer, and founder of ARTS By The People, a non-profit arts organization based in New Jersey. Through all mediums of art Paul aims to capture real people, flaws and all. He focuses on details that reveal the true essence of a subject, whether they be an artist he’s photographing or a fictional character he’s bringing to life on the page. Paul’s photography, short fiction, and poetry have appeared in many magazines and journals including New World Writing, Pif Magazine, Courtship of Winds, Burningword, Evening Street Press, The Montreal Review, The Metaworker, Adirondack Review, Bangalore Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Oddville Press and others. Paul was a featured artist in Nailed Magazine in 2020, nominated for Best of the Net in 2021 for his Limited Light photo series, and also nominated for the Maria Mazziotti Gillan Literary Service Award. Paul is the author of Limited Light, a book of prose and portrait photography, and a novella, The Clay Urn. Paul is working on his novel Confluence, and has completed a poetry collection called truth, love, and the lines in between. His short stories, Little Gem Magnolia, Villa Dei Misteri, Indigo and Half Moon and Poems in Morning Light With Cat are the inspiration for 4 short films. Villa Dei Misteri won Best Experimental Film at the RevolutionMe International Film Festival in 2021. Paul has produced mixed media performances and poetry films that have appeared on stages and in theaters in New York City, New Jersey, Tel Aviv, and Paris. Paul is a written word performer and founder of The Platform, a monthly literary series in New Jersey, and Platform Review, a journal of voices and visual art from around the world. Paul’s videos, photography, and poems appeared in his first solo show called Retrospective With Reading Glasses at CCM Gallery in New Jersey. He is currently at work co-writing a television series with author Erin Jones called Bungalow.

Eucalyptus

January 2022 | fiction

A full moon turned the tops of the coastal dunes blue and shone silver off the Pacific. Alex sat next to Sophia, not touching, silent. They stared into the bonfire fueled by creosote bush and sage. Its smoke filled the air with a musky, earthy scent. Sophia’s shoulders shook. With her head bowed, her long blonde hair hid her face.

Alex turned, reached out and raised her chin. He leaned forward and lightly kissed each tear-filled eye, tasting the salt. Her trembling lips felt as soft as he remembered from months before.

“I’ve gotta go,” he said.

“Not yet.”

“It’ll get easier.”

“Easier for whom?”

Alex dropped her hand and struggled to his feet in the deep sand. “Goodbye, Sophia . . . sorry.”

He moved along the trail and into the nearby trees, using his cell phone light to guide the way. The eucalyptus rustled in the onshore breeze, their scimitar leaves rattling. Don’t look back. Whatever you do, don’t look back. Don’t look.

But he did.

Sophia sat cross-legged before the fire, still close enough for Alex to hear her sobs. She beat her legs with her fists and rocked back and forth. A night heron called. Alex stared at his cell phone screen.

With trembling fingers he texted, “Sophia, are you all right?”

Her cell buzzed and she dug into her purse and retrieved the phone. She stared at it for a long time before answering, “No.”

Alex’s cell buzzed when he received her reply. Sophia turned and stared toward the trees where he hid. She struggled to her feet, the curve of her belly mirroring the curve of the moon. She faced him across the darkness, a ghostly silhouette rimmed in soft blue. Alex felt that exquisite pain, that internal compression that can bend iron. He took a step back into the trees and breathed in their fragrance. The eucalyptus rattled even louder.

He moved forward, toward the fire and Sophia.

 

Terry Sanville

Terry Sanville lives in San Luis Obispo, California with his artist-poet wife (his in-house editor) and two plump cats (his in-house critics). He writes full-time, producing short stories, essays, and novels. His short stories have been accepted more than 440 times by journals, magazines, and anthologies including The Potomac Review, The Bryant Literary Review, and Shenandoah. He was nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes and once for inclusion in Best of the Net anthology. Terry is a retired urban planner and an accomplished jazz and blues guitarist – who once played with a symphony orchestra backing up jazz legend George Shearing.

Before Winter Exhales

January 2022 | poetry

Is death a seed born in us, growing unseen

ripening at some pre-determined moment

a heart stops, a car strikes, cancer takes a final bite

 

Is it possible to die a little slower or stretch time out

like a sleeping lion

or salt water taffy

 

Can you bargain with Time, haggling and hammering

out deals like a summit meeting

but holding hardly any chips, only a few memories

 

Like her first cry or moments of tidal love

that comfort you during the lean years

memories you are willing to exchange

 

For a minute, an hour, a day

can you wear Time down until, totally exhausted,

setting his scythe aside, consulting his ledger

 

fiddling with his abacus, doing the math

like your granddaughter struggling with algebra

making sure it adds up, nothing extra

 

Nothing left over

he looks at you with tunnel eyes, his brow

narrowed and gnarled

 

I am an old man he sighs, twirling

his white beard, scratching his ears

where rogue hairs have begun to sprout

 

He brushes away ash from a burned out star

before handing you a scrap of paper

three days

 

You write your lover’s name on it

postponing phantom pain

written in the black glyph of forever

 

Claire Scott

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.