January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
We’re sitting at an outdoor table
on the Broadway sidewalk watching
the rhythmic pause-and-go of traffic
through the Saratoga streets,
the hum and squeals of engines and brakes,
the hydraulic groan of the 473 bus as it unloads
its cargo of townsfolk and tourists,
their chatter filling the summer air
in the absence of birds. A boy sits
at the bus stop with a silent guitar in hand,
ignored by those coming and going.
We watch people board the bus
as you sip your Bloody Mary,
savoring the olives in your mouth,
turning them over like words
you’d rather hear than speak.
The waitress brings our food
and sets it down like the silence
between us. The small pink creatures
of your shrimp cocktail remind me
of the things I’ll fail to say––
laid out before us, untouched
and wholly intact yet
so obviously dead.
The boy still sits at the bus stop.
His guitar is still silent, its case
open at his feet like an empty wallet.
Passing pedestrians pay him no mind.
No one is giving me any money
he complains to no one in particular,
but he isn’t playing anything.
by Ariel Francisco
Ariel Francisco was born in the Bronx, New York, though he’s lived in Florida for most of his life. He graduated from Florida International University in Miami with a B.A. in English Lit. He’s also studied creative writing at the New York State Summer Writers Institute at Skidmore College and film at Charles University in Prague. He currently resides in Miami, Florida.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
My fingernail, your pancreas,
your palm, starving tribes in the Sudan.
My esophagus, Joan of Arc’s enflamed hair.
Your mother’s lungs, La Brea.
Your neck, a lighthouse’s spiral staircase,
my eyes, a beacon over turbulent waters.
Your conscience, below the surface;
my fingers, holding it there.
My heart valves, the locks along the Erie Canal,
reining things in, keeping things from getting out of hand.
My lungs, an orchard ripe for plucking,
my genitals, coals from the bottom of the fire,
my uterus, invasive, like mint, getting its fingers everywhere.
My disappointment: the iceberg, a lightning strike, a barbed hook. A super nova.
Yours: the Titanic, the Gulf oil spill,
a family of beached whales. No—a black hole.
by Emily Hockaday
Emily Hockaday’s first chapbook, Starting A Life, was published in June 2012 with Finishing Line Press. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The North American Review, Newtown Literary, Pear Noir!, The West Wind Review, Plainspoke, and others. She received her MFA in poetry from NYU and has served as a judge for NEA’s poetry out loud program.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Requiem for an Empire
“Always, always you recede through the evenings
toward the twilight erasing statues.”
—”Clenched Soul,” Pablo Neruda
I remember you with my soul clenched,
realizing the ground has given way.
This façade crumbles, a life envisioned
becomes a ruin before its construction—
our vast empire founded on untruth and decay.
I remember you with my mind blockaded,
every exit patrolled by the ghost of us.
Trapped within this hostile land
I hide in the shadows of monuments
dedicated to a god that no longer exists.
I remember you with my body broken,
blood that would have spilled for you
wasted on barren earth, boiling in the heat
of the sun that once polished your face,
but now blisters my eyes as I remember.
As I gaze upon our remnants,
sand claiming what was once ours,
I recall those earth-ending words—
they caught like bones in your throat,
until they lurched out, laying waste.
I stand here, in remembrance of our empire,
devastation ruling my heart, your name
treading the edge of my tongue
as I force myself to stone, yet crack.
I am all that has survived—
A crumbling statue at the center of nothing.
by James Thomas
Reconciliation
They wake despite themselves,
backs still turned, each spine an abatis against intruders.
First-sleep is broken by the witching
time of night; Circadian servants rebel against their ruler.
Neither remembers why they’d fought,
or is certain that they ever had, confounded by dreams.
Wheel and pinion turn in unison:
mechanical precision, oneiric delirium.
Wordless mouths blindly advance,
mashing together with sacramental stress.
Hands pass over skin like braille
their serpentine bodies in blissful anguish.
Order’s simulacrum born
of bedlam: zealots under goose-down.
They offer sacrifices
to each other, prayers, seeds.
Unburdened and disarmed,
they end, captivated, entangled,
And drift
to sleep—their spirits cleansed, their flesh unclean.
by James Thomas
Post-Mortem
I dream of a corpse lying before me—
rigid and staring, eyes fogged over,
mouth tightened to a grin—
a warm gesture from my dead-ringer.
I smile back at this cold me, my knife
sliding down his chest like a lover’s
hand, lustful precision arousing flesh
to reveal its taunting secrets.
He opens up to me—a host of maladies
malign my inquiries—each adamant
about their role in my friend’s demise.
So I ask my corpse, “what killed us?”
His grin is less welcoming now, ribcage
glistening in fluorescent light, I dig
for answers. My knife nicks his liver,
like an eagle’s beak, over and over.
In the silent room I hear my own heart
beating back the stillness of death.
For an instant, it seems his heart beats
in time with mine, but no. I continue.
I grasp his heart, press it in unison
with my own—a last-ditch effort
of a man wishing to become
Lazarus, but my prayer falls unheard.
I set my tools aside.
I glance back at my pale face—the eternal
grin mocking my fear,
happier dead than I will ever be.
by James Thomas
James Thomas is a Senior at the University of North Texas studying Creative Writing.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
She mumbles into tubes
and silver scissor.
They cut
her hair:
on the floor old dull needles.
I think of my mother
braiding my hair
half-asleep, her fingers weaving
in the dark.
Above the floor are
a mother’s fingers moving in and
out of the silver hair. The nurse sweeps
it into a bucket, the hand’s ghost,
the girl’s hair, their endless
inexorable braid.
by Brittany N. Jaekel
Brittany is currently studying communication disorders at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and hopes to pursue a PhD in the field. She graduated with a dual degree in creative writing and psychology from Northwestern University in 2011, and writes poetry when she has a moment to spare.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
If there was a new way to dance, I hope
the first step is to give your last dollar
to a stranger. That you firmly hold
your partner’s hands and hips
while talking softly in the shower.
Instead of tapping your feet,
you’d pray for someone who isn’t eating enough.
You wouldn’t learn to breakdance, pop-and-lock, twerk:
but you’d savor a fresh cup of green tea and honey,
get sand beneath your toes while practicing
handstands on the beach, and take time for naps.
A new kind of dance, where there are no missteps
because there is no wrong way
to laugh heartily at a good joke,
kiss lovingly in a downpour after missing a train,
or watch a child learn to read.
In this dance, the music never stops
because cats don’t stop purring,
the wind will always blow over the grass,
while mothers coo at their babes, brothers argue
over who gets to be which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
as sisters joyfully sigh.
And in this new dance, no one is sitting. Everyone dances.
Every young man too shy to move
is greeted by a pretty smile.
Every elderly couple who thinks that
their dancing days are long behind them
find themselves singing while making
cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving with perfect rhythm.
And every girl who is timid
because they’ve danced with boys who have stepped on their toes
will find someone to write poetry with on planes.
by Max Henderson
Max Henderson is a doctoral student in physics at Drexel University. Originally from Coatesville, Pennsylvania, he researches neural networks and quantum computation when he’s not too busy watching Adventure Time. His poems are about making mistakes while drinking a good, dark beer. He has been published online in Black Heart Magazine, Crack The Spine, the Ampersand Review, and Citizen Brooklyn, and has work in Crack The Spine’s Spring 2013 Anthology.
October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Self Non-Explanatory
When anyone asks me,
I invoke the great-great-uncle
with the walrus moustache
who was lost among the wilds of New Guinea,
believed eaten by cannibals.
Sometimes I even recall a movie I once saw,
retelling it so dramatically,
hands waving, voice loud,
I’m all the characters at once.
If people wish to know who I am,
I divert them with fading photographs in albums,
books about Europe in the nineteen century,
a piece of music played the night before
an army went into battle.
Do they really want to know
the places where I scratch,
the baseball team I root for,
my favorite character in “Friends”
Dig up that great-great uncle if you will
but I prefer to remain buried.
Wait for that movie to be rerun on TV,
just not the one where my leading role
was reduced to a minor character.
I’m indifferent to the soliloquy,
prefer the conversation of others.
There’s so much that isn’t me
and that’s a great place to start.
In Cell Phone City
The woman driving the car is on her cell phone.
She’s in heavy traffic, at least all but her voice, and her ears.
Her hearing is well out of reach of the blistering horns.
the grinding engines, the guy beside her streaming
cuss words into the smoggy air.
And her tongue has no interest in making comment
on the world around her: the rear bumper of the
Nissan crawling a foot or so ahead, the lights
swaying above, as slow to change as Galapagos turtles.
“Yes, I’ll be there at eight. Mandy’s baby is due any
day now. Roger doesn’t want to make a commitment.”
Suddenly, her accelerator foot makes the wrong choice.
Her Toyota thumps into that unfortunate Nissan.
It’s 7.30 in the morning. The accident occurs on time.
The other driver is hovering over her car, waving his fist.
Could be his way of making a commitment.
— John Grey
John Grey is an Australian born poet. Recently published in International Poetry Review, Sanskrit and the science fiction anthology, “Futuredaze” with work upcoming in Clackamas Literary Review, New Orphic Review and Nerve Cowboy.
