October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
The Grim Reaper sits in a tire swing
hung from the branch
of a huge old maple
set back thirty feet from the sidewalk;
his scythe abandoned casually on the ground
near a rose bush
growing around the trunk of the tree.
Lazily swinging back and forth,
he’s humming softly to himself,
the tips of his deep purple boots
just skimming the bare patch of ground beneath the swing.
“ Nice night,”
I offer, hoping to sound neighborly.
“Indeed it is,” he replies magnanimously.
“It’s my night off,” he adds,
as if he feels an explanation is in order.
“Well, you’ve got a great night for it,”
I answer, doing all that I can to keep
from picking up my pace.
“What’s your name, by the way?” he asks,
seemingly as merely an afterthought.
Pretending not to hear,
I then do pick up the pace a wee bit.
I hear his guttural chuckle,
but don’t let myself turn around.
Instead, I throw up my right hand
In what I hope will be construed as a
“See ya, have a good one” wave.
“I’m Edward,”
I hear him shout after me plaintively,
causing a pang of guilt
to tug at my conscience.
The Grim Reaper likes to swing?
And his first name is…,
Edward?
by Roy Dorman
Roy Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for 60 years. At the prompting of an old high school friend, himself a retired English teacher, Roy is now a voracious writer. He has had poetry and flash fiction published recently in Burningword Literary Journal, Drunk Monkeys, The Screech Owl, Crack The Spine, Yellow Mama, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Every Day Fiction, and Lake City Lights, an online literary site at which he is now the submissions editor.
October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Pylons of hay prop up the sky.
A tower of straw as a model
for structure, and deep in its shadow
the very hands that made this image of field
permanent
reduce the field with a word, and the stars
collapse.
It seems we’re forever:
mining the soil for what it means to be flat
while being
flattened by dreams that believe themselves mountains.
In time everything green learns to grow
horizontal.
As we die in our image while the image
endures.
No closer to meaning, the light angles penitently
around,
enslaved by what it conveys,
aching to be nothing again.
by John Sibley Williams
John Sibley Williams is the author of eight collections, most recently Controlled Hallucinations (FutureCycle Press, 2013). He is the winner of the HEART Poetry Award and has been nominated for the Pushcart, Rumi, and The Pinch Poetry Prizes. John serves as editor of The Inflectionist Review and Board Member of the Friends of William Stafford. A few previous publishing credits include: American Literary Review, Third Coast, Nimrod International Journal, Rio Grande Review, Inkwell, Cider Press Review, Bryant Literary Review, Cream City Review, RHINO, and various anthologies. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
October 2014 | back-issues, nonfiction
In the beginning the air was cold and sweet like a backwards mausoleum. Cameron said this was the kind of sky you could drink, and then the wind picked up soft-armed and rolling. Listen: the rain rhythmic bent and streaming. The rain forming a film. I talked about half-truths and we couldn’t count how many clouds were in the sky anymore. We walked slow and made everything ours, pretended the city block was a house and we could have stopped anywhere we wanted to.
by Emily Zhang
Emily Zhang is a student. Her poetry appears in theNewerYork, The Louisville Review and Word Riot.
October 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Nuwara Eliya
We almost ask each other questions. Is there a curfew? At what time? Do we need to run? Do we want to? How many dogs make up a pack? How many smoking men make up a crowd? Is the pack dangerous? Sinister? Broken? Sad? What about the crowd? Why do the smoking men smell like fish? Why do they wear sarongs even when it’s cold? Why are they awake when everyone is asleep? Why is the cool air so tender upon my neck? When they yell out do we cross the street? Do we still look back over our shoulders and gently wave? Do we say hello? Do we bow? How do we say hello in Sinhala? Ayubowan. What do we say then?
Dinner
Dinner is braised rabbit with fennel and mustard. The rabbit meat, Dad says, reminds him of Iowa in the winter. He removes his glasses and asks me to help him tell a story about a rabbit in Iowa snow. Is the rabbit pretty? I ask. Is his hair hapless? Stiff? Is there snow caught in his tiny eye? Do we cut off his feet to carry in our pockets? Like he is all ours? The rabbit looks like death, Dad says. The rabbit is just a metaphor, I say. No, Dad says, you’re wrong. The rabbit is just a rabbit.
by Dylan Fisher
October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
His memory
was a mortuary
for the time capsuled
thoughts that
recessed – to erase
the condescension
that presided
over the torment,
that buried beneath
the sulfured
insubordination.
Their sardonic
disposition
grinned
as they froze
like winters
remorse,
while their
malevolence
anointed
fiction and
constructed
the masquerade
of fabrics built
within his presence.
Their thoughts
were pistols,
but they
shot their trite
under their
muscles,
where
they pinched
like needles,
and sedated their
fallacies with
laughters
beyond the
steel curtains,
where grinders
decimated
his heart.
When he
pleaded
for help,
they vanished
like spirits,
but when
they called,
he stood
there like a
stubborn weed,
refusing to
be torn from
the graveled soil,
as animosity
vanquished
their sanctioned
apparitions.
In his presence,
he may not
feel the taint,
even when
it surrounds him,
but when they
depart they
grab their
scissors
and cut
through
their honesty
and saw
their truths
as if authenticity
had dissipated,
and resentment
reigned
until he felt the rain
of suspicion
linger like
a lobotomized
incision.
Images
project their
sardonic
smiles
and they
resurface
like debt,
with deception
smeared on
the lies
they closeted.
They departed
after their shifts,
but their
bodies rifled
stronger signals
than the cell phones
they possessed.
by Christopher Ozog
Christopher Ozog is a 22 year old poet residing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He Has previously been published in Burningword Literary Journal and The Commonline. To learn more, visit his twitter at “@expressiveozog.”
October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Bad reviews and criticism at every turn
But it catches on, and it’s repeated
Because it’s good, and it creates desire.
And we never noticed our congeniality
Answering what we looked up to
Along with any semblance of uniqueness.
Nurturing our urges, inspiring our dreams,
No, it’s not original, should it matter
Now that we have embraced it?
Making us love it, and imitate it
Masking our truest intentions
Milking the creativity we used to have as kids.
Asking us to believe what ever
Average people love and sing and read
Accepting without questioning motives.
Not realizing that we have power though
Nothing allows us to become self-aware
Never understanding that we write the books.
by Saul Blair
Saul Blair is a student that recently graduated (2014) from Lee College in Baytown, Texas, with four A.A.’s in Literature, Humanities, Social Science, and Liberal Arts. He is an aspiring poet who has written academic papers that have been accepted and presented in Utah, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C. as well as outside the U.S.A. in Wales, Romania, Spain, Sri Lanka, and China. He will be enrolling at the University of Houston in the fall of 2014.
