January 2015 | back-issues, fiction
We lay in bed and smoked cigarettes. She wasn’t allowed to smoke in her apartment, but figured she’d find a way to cover the smell when the time came to move out. The future never concerned her much. Untouchable, unknowable things never did. Her naked leg rested on my stomach as we talked about the past, about music, about films. We both vowed to re-watch Twin Peaks, this time with each other. I worried that I’d never make it as a writer. We discussed this while listening to something like goth music, something she liked and wanted me to like too.
She said, “Hush. Don’t talk that way. Bukowski didn’t publish his first book until he was fifty-one.”
I said, “But Bukowski wasn’t serious literature. Philip Roth won the National Book Award at twenty-seven.”
She laughed and blew smoke in my face and said, “You can’t break out of prison and into society the same week.”
“What?” I said.
“John Wayne,” she said. “It’s from a John Wayne movie.”
“You don’t seem like the type.”
“I wasn’t born with black eyeliner and lace. Besides, Bukowski is twice the writer you are.”
I shut up and we made love. Later, she apologized about the Bukowski remark.
by Jason Christian
Jason Christian traveled for more than a decade, first with a carnival, and later in search of adventure. He is currently studying creative writing at Oklahoma State University and plans to pursue an MFA after that. He has published in This Land Press, Mask Magazine, Liquid Journal, and has a story forthcoming in Oklahoma Review.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Tulips
for my sister (Hep C Series)
Just as they have aged,
seven days within the vase,
Just as yellow turns
onto itself
to view the summer’s
guttural dreams,
And red has let loose
its fiery skill,
turning heart’s layers
to flames and film,
They now curl up
as most delicate friends,
or fingertips brushing
within a woman’s drawers
against that which lives
clung to skin,
Or the fine
dust layering a crystal
bowl left for weeks,
then months, then years,
within a womb of mahogany.
They all speak
quietly within the room,
of riotous life
and boisterous boom,
of raucous youth and blooming
almost off the stem.
So hard it was
to be contained.
So now, dear sisters,
let me near
to see grace swirl,
then rest
into a withered edge,
How its deepening
bends each head
on stem,
how green thrusts summer
against each bloom,
then dances, childlike
in the air.
I’ll stay, I promise,
as each petal turns
into closed hands
and prays for sleep,
so soft, so real,
Forgets all form
before this.
POEM 2014
There is no escaping—
wine glass
shot glass
poem.
You walk down the hall
to the chair
to the door
to the chair
to the bed
eat some fruit
glass of wine
poem.
Birds are cackling
giddy beaks
rays of late
it is spring
a plane-
like bird
flight unseen
only heard
blue sets its hem
fading silk
along the seam
of the hill.
Legs up now
bent at knee
rocking back
to the heart
and then forth
the one pump
that can keep you
in place.
A ticking like the lost
owl in the pine
every night
every hour
sending blips
desperate search
for a mate.
You cannot be contained
nor released
cocktail glass
Lexapro
tongue now numb
house asleep.
Find a pen
then poem.
by Jean C. Howard
Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, performance poet Jean Howard resided in Chicago from 1979 to 1999. She has since returned to Salt Lake City. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Off The Coast, Clackamas Literary Review, Harper’s Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Eclipse, Atlanta Review, Folio, Forge, Fugue, Fulcrum, Crucible, Gargoyle, Gemini Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Painted Bride Quarterly, decomP, The Tower Journal, Minetta Review, The Burning World, The Distillery, The Oklahoma Review, Pinch, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Penmen Review, Pisgah Review, ken*again, Chronogram, The Cape Rock, Quiddity Literary Journal, Grasslimb, Rattlesnake Review, Concho River Review, Spillway, Spoon River Review, Verdad, Wild Violet, Willard & Maple, Wisconsin Review, Word Riot, and The Chicago Tribune, among seventy other literary publications. Featured on network and public television and radio, she has combined her poetry with theater, art, dance, video, and photography. A participant in the original development of the nationally acclaimed “Poetry Slam” at the Green Mill, she has been awarded two grants for the publication of her book, Dancing In Your Mother’s Skin (Tia Chucha Press), a collaborative work with photographer, Alice Hargrave. She has been organizing the annual National Poetry Video Festival since 1992, with her own award-winning video poems, airing on PBS, cable TV, and festivals around the nation.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
My grandfather snapped
fish spines off the coast of
Tel Aviv. Slick carcasses
slipping through his coltish
grip as though they were still alive
and thrumming, kicking in the Adriatic.
Latent instincts for survival sparking through
the only dormant muscles in the desert.
Stripped to his tawny chest he would wade
knee-deep in the algae & water pooling
under the orange groves, catch the rainfall
of citrus in skyward arms.
His soles thickened to leather from
skittering across the baking streets,
parched & shriveled like denied lips.
In the gravel he gathered you,
palms coarse, desiccated, groping
for your final strains. You escape
in relieved exhalations, lifting from
the earth at intervals wider than
floodgates.
Saba tugged Shoshana’s umber
plait, twined it around his enchanter’s
finger. They were twelve when they met—
she, staggering in from Jerusalem, caked
in Masada’s dust. Eighteen when they
holstered guns & swallowed smoke.
I do not know this place, embedded
as it is with the bodies of my ancestors
& their enemies, dyed in blood hot,
livid from the midst of battle. I scrawled
my prayers once on notepad paper
& twisted it within the crevices of the
Wailing Wall but can’t remember its contents
or whether it rests there still, atrophying.
I do not know this place, though I
am derived from its crumbling dirt
as my classmates do not know my
name was snatched from a city
on the West Bank, not from Plath poems
& air spirits, though sometimes I wish
that were the case.
I will not tell them.
Mother caresses my chin to tell me
I am my name—Ariel, the Lion.
Yet my grandparents’ steps
still thump in my ears, the bombs
will always shudder and rattle
my white-washed bones. I dart
back into my burrow, and I know
their smoke lingers.
by Ariella Carmell
Ariella Carmell is a senior at Marlborough School in California, where she is Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine and Head Copy Editor of the newspaper. A Foyle Commended Poet of the Year and a recipient of Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, she has work published or forthcoming in Cadaverine, Crack the Spine, Vademecum, Crashtest, Eunoia Review, and Canvas Literary Journal, among others. She also blogs for The Adroit Journal about the intersection of film and literature. Come next fall, she will attend the University of Chicago.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
wrapped in headscarves and blankets
you wait on your wooden rocking chair
sky black with the stars falling
around you like leaves of autumn
for it is that season where change
is inevitable and the air carries cold
and new riches to your nose and mouth
with dawn approaching as fast as it does
you aren’t sure which birds speak first
though a cacophony sets your spine
more erect in that sitting position
so you begin to release yourself against
the covers you’ve brought and suddenly
your body shivers with the first sight
breaking the horizon at eye level
a shriek of color sends vibrations
through your ears and down to your toes
with the birds wailing and the sky brazened
like you’ve never before felt
so that lake ice before you begins to melt
and the release of methane shoots
in all directions to mirror that light
so you unfasten your layers to the ground
for our sun’s enduring warmth
by Andrew Gavin
Andrew Garvin completed his undergraduate degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California. He now lives in Wilmington, North Carolina taking Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Jacuzzis are holy.
Garage door openers are holy.
Back-up cameras and recycle bins—all holy.
Putting the red flag up on the mailbox, waving at the elderly
getting my toes wet with dew—holy, holy, holy.
Keeping my eyelids open and trying to sleep like fish,
signing my name with less letters and more scribbles,
counting crows feet, counting yellow toenails,
counting haircuts, counting plucked whiskers,
counting constantly.
Bookshelves are holy.
Missing dust covers are holy,
magicians and black and white T.V. shows,
Penn Jillette theories and Andy Griffith justice,
Uncle Walt songs and Ginsberg poems—holy, holy, holy.
Drinking beer before noon, drinking liquor right after,
drinking it warm (or on ice) with a friend (or not).
Waking up drunk, waking up sober,
waking up tired, waking up hungry,
waking—always holy.
Table wine is holy.
Candle sticks are holy,
dishwashers and cloth napkins,
the folk art cricket made from wire and a railroad nail,
rock salt from the salt flats in a salt cellar—holy, holy, holy.
Opening an empty cedar chest to still moths and crumbs,
staring at stretched cobwebs immersed in the sun,
swallowing nests, swallowing nectar,
swallowing chimes, swallowing saliva,
swallows—always holy.
Self-portraits are holy.
Ceramic urns also are holy.
Tape recorders and keyboards,
drawing pads and gold-plated ball-point pens,
calligraphy and stipple—holy, holy, holy.
Unfolding a letter, unfolding a chair, unfolding
into downward dog, from child’s pose, into corpse pose.
Picking apricots, picking green grapes,
picking out a husband, a shower curtain,
selection—always holy.
Twist-off caps, dresser drawers, remote controls,
carpeted stairs, revolving doors, product recalls,
keycodes, passwords,
restaurant reservations,
last-minute invitations,
cell phones, voice recognition,
land minds, and secrets—holy,
holy word, holy water, holy book,
holy soap boxes, bathtubs, soap dishes—holy,
holy drains and draining, empty.
—originally published by Chagrin River Review online journal, Lakeland Community College, Fall 2013. Online.
by Trish Hopkinson
Trish Hopkinson has always loved words—in fact, her mother tells everyone she was born with a pen in her hand. She has two chapbooks Emissions and Pieced Into Treetops and has been published in several anthologies and journals, including The Found Poetry Review, Chagrin River Review, and Reconnaissance Magazine. She is a project manager by profession and resides in Utah with her handsome husband and their two outstanding children. You can follow her poetry adventures at trishhopkinson.com or on her Facebook page.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
ju·ve·nes·cence ˌjo͞ovəˈnesəns/noun: juvenescence
The state or period of being young.
Hours unrequited in coils round the orb
Fled skins ride slip shod over freshly mown lawns
A hiccup, a sneeze, a tongue clipped by the shut door
Beyond reach of recovery in the suburban predawn
Bottle fed hours a morning worm tried down throats
Hands and often mouths washed out with soap
Saturday morning, rug burns, quest for the lost remote
Fatherless but not unwilling to cope
Nestling the soft belly asleep in the garden weeds
Sprung from the rain dark soil in beds
Wild and abundant fury of split seeds
To roost and rabble rouse to apprehend
Inspires ancient capillaries to shine out blue
Or purple abloom with new bruises
by Tina Garvin
Tina is currently completing her BFA at the Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago. Her poetry has most recently been published in Blueline Literary Journal and Shoe Music Press.
