October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
I never told anyone but
I’ll tell you.
About the fire
Folding up my tongue,
The last counted hour
With my stomach shrinking
Toward my graveyard spine.
My body wanted to be pins
And needles,
Balancing voided meals with
Cigarettes. Burn marshmallow
Fat like burning up
S’mores,
Campfire chocolate,
Childhood knobbles
In my rounded knees.
My body was statistical.
It was burned and tarred
And feathered. Monster me,
An under-the-bed story.
Cool dinnertime untruths,
Tamed, lightheaded.
Bless
The daily dizzy shrivel, the
Ribby abdomen poke, the
Airbrush collapse. Spark,
Sear, scissor open
The new pack.
by Alison Lanier
Alison Lanier is a Boston-based writer and graduate of Wellesley College. She recently joined the editorial team at The Critical Flame. Her fiction, reviews, articles, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Atticus Review, Counterpoint Magazine, and The Wellesley Review, where she also served as editor.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The ticks I pick from your flesh
have the verve of John Donne’s flea
but much more adhesive
with the fervor of Lyme Disease.
The garden’s a death trap,
the primrose and forget-me-nots
funereal and dungeon-breathed.
Spreading composed mulch to conceal
the yawn of a hundred open graves
I tire of myself and slacken
almost enough to lie down
and allow the grubs to engage me
in their shy waxen petulance.
Meanwhile in pale innocence
you punctuate yourself with ticks
by kneeling to yank the weeds
eager to elbow out the flowers.
Something about our seasonal
bloodletting lingers. Sprains,
torn tendons, even broken wrists
spike the long dark winters. Blackflies
riot in spring, summer features
splinters from stacking firewood
to season before the cold arrives.
But the ticks linger all year long—
their hard metal bodies, springy
eight legs, driven by blood-thirst
ripe as a rage for celebrity.
Arachnids, not insects, they deploy
their motivation so adroitly
we feel them crawling through our sleep.
In the north, they gang up on moose
and kill with a quarter million
individual nibbles per pelt.
They stick to us both, but lately
you’ve been sporting them the way
ex-smokers sport nicotine patches
on parts of the body that matter.
I flush them into our septic tank
where they probably thrive and plot
a future so bloody no one
but ticks will survive, draining
the blush of sunset to leave
a fog-gray landscape writhing.
by William Doreski
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
She believes the snow is a mirror
Turned upwards toward her face,
A catalyst for the frigid light
Burning in the old, dappled pines.
She believes that love
Is one or two canoes
Drifting in soft degrees
Over dark, polished waters.
She believes the young boy
Carrying his notebook beneath her shadow
Is a lost star following home
Her wintry beckons.
She believes we will one day remember
Her cold serious heartbeat,
Sending up bright untethered rockets
She pretends are prayers.
by Seth Jani
Seth Jani currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). His own work has appeared throughout the small press in such places as The Foundling Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Gingerbread House and Gravel. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Her first word was material.
The adults wondered why she skipped
all the warm-up words like mama and daddy.
So odd, they commented.
Why did that word emerge first
from the buttery spread of childhood?
Her home smelled like codfish balls and beer.
The Mona Lisa, torn from a magazine,
hung on a wall.
Pickpockets and drunks stopped by
while her uncle looked for coins on the sidewalk.
Her other uncle worked nights as a jailer.
He locked up family members as a joke.
Her grandmother had no teeth.
Her aunt thought Jell-O was alive.
When the girl grew up, she seldom uttered the word material.
She did not build things or sew things.
She lived simply and was not materialistic.
Maybe as a child she knew that her family would provide
colorful material for her stories.
Maybe her first word was a warning to them to behave.
by Suzanne O’Connell
Suzanne O’Connell lives in Los Angeles where she is a poet and a clinical social worker. Her work can be found in Forge, Atlanta Review, Blue Lake Review, Crack The Spine, The Manhattanville Review, G.W. Review, Reed Magazine, The Griffin, Sanskrit, Permafrost, Foliate Oak, Talking River, Organs of Vision and Speech Literary Magazine, Willow Review, The Tower Journal, Thin Air Magazine, Mas Tequila Review, The Evansville Review, The Round, Serving House Journal, Poetry Super Highway, poeticdiversity, Fre&D, The Tower Journal, Silver Birch Press, The Louisville Review, Lummox Press, The Four Seasons Anthology, and Licking River Review. She was a recipient of Willow Review’s annual award for 2014 for her poem “Purple Summers.” She is a member of Jack Grapes’ L.A. Poets and Writers Collective.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
When war draws people into positions
Where they face the unfaceable
Tired after toiling or driven to their demise
Outpacing the wish for life
When mortality has no returns
Beyond reluctant excitement
And fear of terror erupts
Tightening chest and claustrophobing tranquility
Until patience runs out and death or revolt become options
And anxiety reaches in to squeeze your heart like a loving octopus
That might just take your life
Away from you
by Josef Krebs
Josef Krebs’ poetry appears in Agenda, Bicycle Review, Calliope, Mouse Tales Press, The Corner Club Press, and The FictionWeek Literary Review. He’s written three novels, five screenplays, and a book of poetry. His film was successfully screened at Santa Cruz and Short Film Corner of Cannes film festivals. The past 5 years He’s been working as a freelance writer for Sound&Vision having previously worked at the magazine fulltime for 15 years as a staff writer and editor.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Cigarette butts and the ash of Salem Lights in never-emptied
glass ashtrays. Crumpled take-out paper bags from Wendy’s piled
next to the couch. Mold growing on the pink rubber mat
in the bathtub. Cardigans, size M, in heather, taupe, and buttery yellow
with mother-of-pearl buttons heaped on the dresser. A letter
dated 1967 from a newly married friend tucked away in a drawer.
Paper and plastic bags packed with unopened groceries
picked up just because they were on sale
down at the Stop n’ Shop: crackers, grape juice,
garbage bags, detergent. Childhood photographs fallen
from albums. Recipe books splattered with pasta sauce
and bacon grease. A green Singer sewing machine bearing
a tangled spool of navy thread. Rotting food
on dishes in the sink. Cobwebs.
Still-soaked storage containers from the flood of last year’s
hurricane. A Polaroid camera in its canvas case. An engraving
machine with tiles reading “Shuneka Harrison,” my sister’s best
childhood friend, in the font tray. Spiders’ egg sacs dangling
from ceiling corners. Family videos on microfilm. Receipts
for child support for a boy named Donnie we’ve never
heard of before. The smell of cat urine. Four eyebrow curlers.
Boxes of shoes that have never been worn. Shoes that have the soles
worn through. Ziplocked packages of meat long expired
in the basement freezer. Every cancelled check ever written
for mortgage, taxes, cable T. V., and the lawnmower man. A child’s
red plastic barrette. One thousand nine Harlequin romance novels
in dusty paper shopping bags. The skeleton
of a small animal. A rusty projector.
Flies that avoid the sticky-tape traps that have been set
for them. Rolled-up half-used tubes of Denture Grip. Hundreds
of dollars in loose change. A white leather jewelry box containing
the baby teeth we left for the Tooth Fairy in exchange
for a quarter. Empty prescription pill bottles for high
blood pressure. A tube of MAC coral lipstick.
A stray ketchup packet that has exploded onto the wall. Piles
of department store clothes, most with tags. The exoskeletons
of insects. Mesh laundry bags filled with nude-colored
Maidenform bras. A Newport High School yearbook stuffed
with autographed picture cards. Bags of polyester shirts
that my father wore before he died. Rusted curling irons
and a burnt-out blowdryer.
Sweaters that smell like Bath and Body Works’ vanilla-sugar
lotion. Depends Undergarments. Handwritten recipes in elegant
script. A manila envelope containing our elementary school
report cards. A silver hoop earring without its mate.
When the dumpsters are full and the floors are bare,
it no longer feels like home.
by Christine Taylor
Christine Taylor resides in her hometown Plainfield, New Jersey, and is an English teacher and part-time librarian at a local independent school and the mother of several poorly behaved cats (and a couple dogs). Her previously published work appears in PeaceCorpsWriters and Modern Haiku.
