rust

After Iowa flood:

New shades of brown.

First shade of brown: dead grass

Brunettes giving up

Lying prone in parks.

Second shade of brown:

Outdoor metals

Prisoners of iron oxide

And empty museums. 

Dark second skins grew and spread

Into scar tissue.

Third shade of brown: the enemy itself-

The Iowa River.

Now the color of

Everything that wasn’t supposed to be there.

A tree lay on its side: roots unable to grapple

Earth aid.

Brown: the color of death.

Smell is alive and well.

So much dankness.  Which sounds like stank.

Being green is too much work.

The sun, so uncaring.

 

by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens

 

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens is an emerging poet who was recently published in Issue #10 of Superstition Review and has poems forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal , Red Savina Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine and The Apeiron Review.

Sara Clancy

mid century

 

novelty shifts the angle

of what passed for innovation

and libels the new millennium

in shades of modern avocado

and simple teak

 

what was a keen nostalgia

for an egg shaped elegance

and those clean primary

reds is now a blink

in the machinery of connection

 

a paper lantern nodding yellow

concessions to the exposed

beam of your adolescence

 

as if lighting up all that spent

relish will leave you no choice

but to lean into the pecan wood

console and lift the sound arm

 

to retire that wall of 33⅓

memos to yourself

track by track

  

Haunt Me

 

Half a century gone

and the Ouija board is still

uncertain. As if the whole

neighborhood of ghosts

traversed my geographic

map from outset to reason,

exiting its own expired alphabet.

  

Power of Attorney

 

I don’t think we should speak

until I can shore up my resolve

against the optimism that rides

 

me like a shadow, loots my own good

sense and folds a feeble charm

into my reply. This repudiation

 

is overdue, but what should ring

like iron truth pitched against your latest epic

fable falls to a silent incantation,

 

a hiss in the apparatus

of our conversation, a grace note harmony

to the myth you love to repeat.

 

That you now hold the lady in the tower

is new to both of us and though I cannot weave

her escape into any believable advantage, I see

 

now that you are a fairy come to defraud me

in both worlds and I must be Switzerland,

chilly, dispassionate and unarmed.

 

by Sara Clancy

 

Sara Clancy is from Philadelphia and graduated from the writer’s program at the University of Wisconsin long ago. Among other places, her poems have appeared in The Madison Review, The Smoking Poet, Untitled Country Review, Owen Wister Review, Pale Horse Review and Houseboat, where she was a featured poet. She lives in the Desert Southwest with her husband, their dog and a 21 year old goldfish named Darryl.

Angst and the iTunes Librarian

You said you felt under the weather. I suggested soup and you replied tomato. Tomato with grilled cheese. While I blanched them, you put on Van Morrison and scrolled through my songs. You considered yourself an expert.

 

“You need to clean your music library. Doesn’t it annoy you? How do you know what you have, what you don’t have?”

 

I shrugged.

 

“Why don’t you at least keep the genres organized?” you pressed.

 

“Why put songs in boxes? Why label them?” I was being ornery.

 

“Angel Pop? What the hell is that? Rainy Day Rock? Sci-Fi? What kind of musical genres are these?” You sounded sick.

 

I shrugged. It was all downloaded. Some legally, some not. The music came from pretentious blogs and Russian websites and some place called torrent. Data mountains from Korea, Morocco, mouth-breathing basements.

 

“You know that’s stealing,” you lectured.

 

***

 

It was Veteran’s Day when we decided to call it quits. It was raining. We called it quits, whatever ‘it’ was. We had never labeled it.

 

“I can’t make you happy,” you said.

 

“I can’t give you anymore,” I said.

 

You got out of bed, even though you hate the rain. I started scrolling through the songs by genre.

 

Afropop, Avant Folk, Crossover, Death Electro, Ethnic, Forgiveness Rock, Future Roots, Gracenotes, Merengue, Mexican Summer, Noise, Progressive, Surge, Trip-Hop, Tropical.

 

I x’ed out. There was no use. You took everything and left me with a head cold. 

 

by Sonya Bilocerkowycz

 

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