Lessons of love and loss
rendered in song.
Soundtrack of nostalgia.
Concert of memories.
A wistful reminder of
the story so far.
Infinite possibilities
lived and unlived.
The Ark of one life’s tale
digitally remastered.
Christopher Brennan is the founder and publisher of www.fireservicewarrior.com, author of The Combat Position: Achieving Firefighter Readiness (2011), and co-author and editor of Fire Service Warrior Foundations (2012).
The problem is my blood, they say.
There’s too much of it.
In other words, I have done this to myself.
With their signatures I am delivered tiny pills,
hundreds of them, metoprolol, valsartan,
hydrochlorothia—I don’t know, until
I am no longer a man but a sheath
into which pills can be poured
but it makes no difference. Blood begets blood.
I can feel them, the cells copulating in my arteries
their birth a newness forced on this old body.
I get dizzy.
On Thursday I find myself on the floor at the grocery.
It is a kind of death; no one seems to notice.
They say the pills are working, but I don’t believe them—
they do not hear the factory whirr of my bones,
my overfilling heart. I know my blood’s spoiled,
lost to me now, like the wife
you can no longer stand touching. You know
she means well, and isn’t her fault—she just isn’t what
you thought she’d be. But neither of you is going anywhere—
you’ve made your choice, there’s no time for anything else.
by Anna Moore
Anna Moore is an editor, poet, creator of small fictions, and inarticulate pursuer of the ineffable. Major interests include books and their futures, reading and the brain, literacy and psychology, the collection and dissemination of information, and the construction and structure of meaning. Anna is from Denver, Colorado, has lived in Mérida, Venezuela; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Los Angeles, California. She currently resides in both Providence, Rhode Island, and Brooklyn, New York.
We stopped speaking to each other
sometime in the day to day montage
of going to work and coming home from work,
of writing papers and grading papers,
of aligning calendars and mis-scheduling whole days,
of dirtying dishes and washing dishes,
and of taking the dog to the park,
of saying “I love you” and meaning it.
We do “mean it,” but our language has decayed,
and verbs without nouns spin uselessly
until they fall. Gaps and gasps have become
our rhetorical structure, and the dog seems
more articulate, but only because our tongues lull,
hang sideways from our lips, thick with disuse.
Angelina recently finished her MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and is currently a lecturer at Clemson University. Her poems are forthcoming or have been published in various journals including Yemassee, Cold Mountain Review, Italian Americana, Louisiana Literature, and Southern Indiana Review.
Sylvia’s not dead-
I saw her,
Just the other day.
She was wearing Converse sneakers
But her eyes were made of clay.
I asked her to say “rubber crotch”.
She laughed inside my head.
How can I say words you ninny,
When I’m good and dead?
But Sylvia
I pleaded,
I’ve got that fever too,
And I know it didn’t kill you,
Cause that’s not what fevers do.
See my son once had a fever,
His whole body burning hot,
But the doctor said the fever kills,
The virus that he’s got.
I heard you speak on YouTube,
And your voice was strong and
Fear
Did not creep inside it
But then,
You died within a year.
It had to be the virus
Not your fever like they said.
And now I know who you thought
You’d made up inside your head.
They all think
You wrote about,
A man that you once knew.
A man who must have let you down
And made your breath go blue.
But Sylvia just told me,
Not a man
But her instead,
That she thought she might have made up,
Inside that burning head.
Say one good thing,
I’ll do it right.
I’ll crack my throat
And let my heart beat through.
But it must travel first
Down roads best left unspoken,
Of lately freed
And broken
Out their shackles,
To burst
Into the light.
I can say one good thing
If I just move past,
And let it come,
From the hide of my soul.
But good’s not good unless it’s best
Of bad I’m good at making worst.
What’s gray turns black
Most ’fore the white,
When my heart’s left
To speak through its veins.
These good things wait,
Most patient.
What’s good is paper,
Plain and true
Made up of all the good we do.
It’s paper made more
By the pen,
And never woken,
Never sent.
But read aloud it catches fire,
And makes even
This damn wretch
Rise higher.
The paper
White and smooth,
Puts words to all my wishes.
Of love and joy, eternal life,
Of children, telephones,
And Satan running-
He’s scared of me.
For good is great,
When good can be.
Enter to the right toward a candy dish.
Behind which there’s a small ladder
That reveals people,
Coming and going from a donut shop on a sometimes busy street.
When I’m older the ladder becomes a novelty.
How sad,
A useless ladder.
The television plays the local news,
Or Days of Our Lives,
Only,
Ever.
And for lunch
We eat nothing good like at Grammy’s-
Crabs, cookies, and the most moist cake,
More moist than my own tongue.
Here we eat peas or crackers
Next to the long, thin hallway,
Like my Mommer’s fingers.
And we don’t often go downstairs
Where the dead live.
by Karen Costa
Karen recently received an honorable mention for her short story “Charlie Shea” in the Glimmer Train Short Story Contest for New Writers. The Philadelphia Inquirer published her essay, “I Am an Island,” in their November 1st edition.
First Afternoon
There are a million pebbles beneath my feet.
A small riverbed sleeps eight feet in front of me,
The wind circles my small chest.
First Morning
I rise to a full forest and a hungry belly.
A long haired father with three caught fish,
two Trout and one Steelhead.
First Night
Limbs of Red Cedars move at night.
I hear the Tree dream particles come out from underneath us.
Father wakes me and feeds the fire outside,
The trees then move again.
No one comes. House lights burn
in the empty street, white oaks
shudder in all these silent yards.
She stands in October moonlight,
leaves swirling at her feet, opens
her eyes to another gravity’s
magic pull. How strange to feel
that pale yellow bath on her cheeks
and painted smile. She drinks
the darkness as an owl floats
by, its alien face round as another
moon dotted with black
stars, rush of wings and from
somewhere breath and a beating heart.
Maybe you’ll meet her some night
on the moonbeam road, when
careless dreams push you toward
the margins of a tired life. Feel
your own swimming arms pull
a body through surging sky.
Don’t fail to greet her with your
eyes at least, or if your tongue
unfreezes, speak to her in the unlocked
language of your weightless blood.
She might take your hand
then, lead you home to secret
pools where wolves lap
at secrets with their scarlet tongues.
Steve Klepetar teaches literature and writing at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. His work has received several Pushcart nominations and his chapbook, Thirty-six Crows, was recently published by erbacce press.
