Beasts

April 2023 | poetry

I killed the boar above the low rise with strewn sagebrush.

The breath in his punctured lungs continuing to wheeze out

as his feet kicked into the earth looking for an escape.

A tidy murder. Clean, they said, not bad for a first time.

They tore into our bellies with a buck handle knife.

Fistfuls of tacky fat dumped on the dirty scrub. Bloody meat

produced from the cavity. Membrane and muscle cut away.

The knife occasionally glancing off my ribs as they cut away

the last parts of me.

Villaraigosa looks over to me, blood specks like fine pins

tattooing his face and he asks how I’m feeling…

How can I tell him that I have ascended a stairway,

making sure not to look back to the landing

below that is being consumed by the pillar of fire.

Paul Macomber

Paul Macomber earned his BA in Literature from Cal State San Bernardino and his MA in Management from the University of Redlands. He currently teaches at a public high school in Redlands, California. Outside of the classroom, he loves to travel with his wife anywhere that has buildings older than the ones in California. His poetry has previously been published in The Pacific Review.

Obviously, This Dreams Means I’m a Bad Mother

April 2023 | poetry

It rains and rains and rains.

Bodies and tea pots, couches and beds, hammers and dishes

washing up in town. When it stops, I’m busy drying out,

busy shoveling out, busy salvaging what I can. So busy

I don’t notice, at first, my kids’ long absences from home.

I think they’re afraid to stay indoors, afraid they’ll again

be trapped by water, that they don’t want to linger in a house

where so much was lost. Books, games, stuffed lovies,

the dog, two cats—all gone, swept away by flood waters.

I follow the kids down the dirt road, across the bridge,

up the ravine still muddy from the storms. I can’t see them,

but their voices carry through the woods. They stop in a clearing

and I creep across a felled tree, drop to my knees and crawl

closer and closer to peek through the leaves. The children

are circled around a stump, focused on a green mossy nest

of miniature babies, maybe four or five of them,

three-inch wriggling squeaking tiny human beings swaddled

in torn bits of blankets from our linen closet. My kids

are holding and shushing and rocking. I feel dizzy, afraid

they’ll see me, afraid they’ll turn to me for help, afraid

they’ll ask to keep them, and I stumble back over the log

and I run, and I run, and I run.

Victoria Melekian

Victoria Melekian lives in Carlsbad, California. Her stories and poems have been published in print and online anthologies. She’s twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. For more, visit her website: https://victoriamelekian.com

Assessment

April 2023 | poetry

After “Litany” by Billy Collins

I’m a broom and its dustpan, the sharp tip

of a long knife, watermelon, cool side

of the pillow on a muggy night. I’m the red

squirrel scrambling up a screen door, a dandelion.

I’m not gingerbread or lace of any kind;

not on collars, tatted doilies. I’m not the ocean,

prick of a cactus, a long-stemmed glass, bottle

or carafe of red wine. I fancy myself Egyptian

turquoise, a Paul Klee painting—geometrics

in soft pastels, hung on a plastered wall.

I’ve never been whiskers on cats, gerbils.

Not an apron—clean, maybe, never smeared

with flour, tomato sauce, greasy anything; not

the moon, though its craters are my thoughts.

I would love to be, but sadly not, the sounds

of Thelonious Monk, Johnny Mathis’ croon, Barbra.

I am a branch scraping a tin roof, fall from

a skyscraper, never hitting ground, a ripe

banana turned brown overnight, coffee without

enough cream. I am, in my dreams, a queen-size

bed in the center of a room—impeccably made,

four crisp corners, blue cotton spread, a throw,

mattress firm enough to hold a life of secrets,

soft enough to burrow in, fall slowly apart.

Hari B Parisi

Hari B Parisi’s (formerly Hari Bhajan Khalsa) poems have been published in numerous journals and are forthcoming in Thuya Poetry Review, The Blood Pudding, Two Hawks Quarterly and Inklet. She is the author of three volumes of poetry, most recently, She Speaks to the Birds at Night While They Sleep, winner of the 2020 Tebot Bach Clockwise Chapbook Contest. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband. Website: https://haribpoet.com

Night Blooms

April 2023 | poetry

Dig down deep enough and you’ll find night blooms—

blue-dusked petals casting runes under forgotten

garden reaches, ink-black petals spooning clotted soil

into ever-shrouded stars, an ever-blackening sun

wheeling through dark spines and peat-stained teeth.

Lift dirt-caked, delicate slips.  Lift mold and root.

Their voices promise neither clarity nor opacity,

offer only a clearing aside of what’s given, what’s

taken away.  Their faces mirror each other and yet

are never themselves, never others buried further

down the road.  Dig them up and take them home.

Sit on moon-filled porch steps cradling ochre and

vermillion pooling on your skin, and they’ll bloom

the simple hierarchies of heaven—untouched

and unseen, tasteless and silent, back to the deepest

shadow under the loam, back to the first still breath.

John Robert Harvey

John Harvey’s poems have appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Gulf Coast, The 2River Review, Weave Magazine, and others.  He received his doctorate in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston (UH) and taught in the UH English Department and Honors College. He lives near Stockholm, Sweden with his wife and son.