January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Would you look at my beautiful
Skeleton broken in two, twice
The shell of a skeleton in a mirror?
You who cannot recognize the you
In me underneath my skeleton mirror,
The belly I am no longer approved in.
Swallow familiar shadows- not seen
Before my eyes; look down as your sex
Swallows me entirely, leaving me whole.
Look hard to see the secret hidden stars
When you find darkness in a shadow mirror,
Mirrored by twice the shell of a skeleton.
by Paige Simkins
Paige is a poet who lives with her dog, Sir Simon, in Tampa, Florida. She holds a Bachelor degree in English (Creative Writing) and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. She works as a Public Librarian and is very passionate about poetry, libraries, VW Beetles, and visual art.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Question mark meanders
like a curl of smoke ascending heavenward,
a supple supplicant, innocent yet insistent,
only to cool, drift sideways,
bend back under itself–
expectant and intrusive
its round, ripe belly
belies the truth
of what it holds–
then descending,
a dagger
ready
to
dig
in
deep
*
It was a simple question.
Is this your son’s coat?
But I answered an unasked question–
twisted, stained, bloody and ripped raw–
unmasking my horror and grief.
*
Years later, they stated it simply,
Joseph is still alive.
Standing among his gifts of wagons
and donkeys and food and riches
I added two words–My son–
forming a question that punctuated their tacit deceit–
a jagged gash
puncturing the tender trust between us.
by Alan Toltzis
Alan Toltzis is a strategic marketing consultant living in the Philadelphia area. One of his poems was published in Focus Midwest. He is writing a long series of poems that uses the Torah as a starting place.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The flame on the candle wick sways
The ghost has entered the room
and he looks exactly
like me when I was a child
by Ashlie Allen
Ashlie Allen writes fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in The Jet Fuel, The Screech Owl, The Crab Fat Literary Magazine, The East Coast Literary Review, The Squawk Back, Conclave: A Journal of Character and others. Besides writing, she has plans to become photographer.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
My Detox Distilled
Life radicalized,
into roots.
But fear loomed like
a stitched whale song.
Laying in the fetal position
wrapped in the arms of solitude,
worse than trapped, no bird songs—
under the cover of a static quilt,
with imprisoned hushed mind voices
beneath and their spun spiraling eyes,
whispers that cycle like lightning
along the trails, bolting down
around Remorse Passage, surging across Regret Line,
plowing straight into Resentment Way,
silent electronic surges boom,
amplified by the hollowed inner walls.
A steel wheelbarrow dumps pile after
pile of hot steamy hopelessness
into the echoing abyss, packing it tight
like a trunk, until it overflows.
Then light cuts down the stock,
and carries the whole heap—
back to the radical,
a mere pretext
without context
masquerading
in extremes.
Wayward Abolition
Dark spread across the land
in strange westward blows,
from the mouth of a Titan.
Black blanketed the forest,
the gray squirrels hid in trees,
the rabbits to their burrows.
An egg was left by a mother
in the middle of the forest’s
floor. Silent guilt oozed from
the egg toward its neglector,
suffocating her to death.
Night set in for the long hall,
weighing down the trees,
and the bushes longed to see
the sun dancing around the earth
with free food like Jesus.
The once pleased owl
grew tired of the perpetual
blackness, became depressed
as he stared out at the sky,
missing the absence of difference.
And the moon no longer shone,
it slinked back into the abyss.
The owl stopped hooting
and started to lose its feathers.
by S. Babin
S. Babin holds a BA in English Literature from the Ohio State University, and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He lives with his family, and works in Columbus, Ohio. His work will be forthcoming in The Wayfarer; Spark: A Creative Anthology; Bop Dead City; Cactus Heart; Star 82 Review; and many more.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The Old Dog finds its legs in the corner. He wants to take me for a walk, but I’m too weak. He knows that better than anyone. He’s been waiting.
We found each other the day I sank into my cups and carved up a drifter for sport. Together we buried the corpse underneath a wooden shed. I remember thinking how deftly his charcoal legs beat back mounds of frozen earth. Back then the Old Dog was only a pup with thoughtless marble eyes and fangs like sewing pins. He’s walked in my shadow ever since, placing paw after paw in my wayward steps. He’s seen me lie and cheat to cover up my crime. He’s watched me kill again and again. With each transgression the Old Dog took on weight and edges and heat. Now his claws glow like coals in a forge and his old bones land like anvils, cracking my ribs as he mounts my chest. His jaws close around my throat and I can taste his canine breath. The scent of eggs fills every cavity in my skull.
My Old Dog wants to take me for a long walk.
by Zach Lisabeth
Zach Lisabeth is a Los Angeles-based speculative fiction author. His work has appeared in the anthology RealLies (The Zharmae Publishing Press and he is a graduate of the 2014 Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Workshop.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
*
Here, there, the way silence
tows you below the waterline
and though you are alone
you’re not sure where her name
is floating on the surface
or what’s left
grasped by a single wave
that never makes it to shore
splashes as if this pen
is rowing you across the stillness
the dead are born with
–you are already bathing, half
from memory, half by leaping
from the water for flowers
growing everywhere –for you
this page, unclaimed :a knife
dripping with seawater
and your throat.
by Simon Perchik
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Osiris, The Nation, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
