October 2023 | poetry
Back there, someone crowned me.
Yes, me! — Where do you think
I got these carnations?
I’d like to unclaim candidacy,
but there’s already a Klimtish woman
threading my hands with rings while
someone calls for shin ribbons.
A man cradling five pincushions
coaxes my sclerae to bloom.
I enter on a bridge of hands.
Dozens, it seems, press my midriff,
and thumb my hair.
What’s this? Only halfway
to the stage, and they’re dragging
dimes from my curls. Too much
tugging, clinking,
I feel myself kick —
When I find my way home,
you’ll have many questions, like:
Out so late? Tea, my love?
Darling, where are your shoes?
I’ll promise to explain later,
complain of a headache —
could be the cold, or the hour,
or maybe the wind,
rattling the coin slot
wedged between my eyes.
Christianne Goodwin
Christianne’s chapbook “Oracle Smoke Machine”, a collaboration with painter Stephen Proski, is forthcoming with Staircase Books (Cambridge, MA). Her work has been published by Rust + Moth, The Lakeshore Review, Fahmidan Journal, and Panel Magazine. She is a graduate of the Boston University MFA program, the recipient of an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow.
October 2023 | visual art
Boom
Knock Knock
Universe of Thought
Lila Byrne
Lila Byrne’s passion for art began as early as she could hold a pencil. She has since taken many art classes, including programs at RISD, Pratt College, and Stamps at the University of Michigan. She has designed logos for various businesses in the area and has been an assistant teacher for an art school. She is always looking for ways to learn more about the art world and is excited about this opportunity. She creates her pieces using as many mediums as possible to help her learn exponentially.
October 2023 | fiction
I once was the hot new thing. You too? The new kid who stirred the id. I had some cheek; the classroom and rehearsal hall were my geek. If hot was or is your lot, some snot lives who wish you were not. They snide and snark, hide in the dark seeing if our bite is as good as our bark. You and I have fans we won’t declare, who check us out, but all us chickens are so very devout. It’s a bubble with an X, a Y, and Ziminy ways it can break into trouble. Bearded and trim, they take a pass and check to see my hipless ass. Start the music playing, make it rock to kill the clock, or every head bye-bye says and cuts us dead. What a game we had with that bit of fame, excited, jotted, and besotted carved up and knotted. Boo hoo, ca choo if we put you in a stew because here comes the sun, and there’s more will to be done. It was a time so round, so fresh, so fully packed. Do it, take it, crate it, or fake it, juice the flavor, let it roast and coast, mature and savor before any boast. A quantum window flew upward in the day, and we tumbled in full to the brim. Six-winged seraphim busted out glory and joy on the In-Fi-niTE AM radio. It was the Hour Of The Word on a ’56 Chevy heard rumblin’ down a dirt road by the old quarry. That’s the story.
Jim Linnell
After attending schools on the East and West Coast, Jim Linnell taught theater and dramatic writing at a university in New Mexico long enough to be a chair and a dean and to have a play festival in his name. He published Walking on Fire: The Shaping Force of Emotion in Writing Drama, then had a catastrophic accident that, for a period, rendered him a quadriplegic. After gaining function with a walker, he published Take It Lying Down: Finding My Feet After a Spinal Cord Injury. He lives and writes in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
