January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Two censuses back
Our home held three:
An infant was added
To you and me.
A census ago
We counted more:
Persons in household
Numbered four.
This latest census
Our data was new:
Three residents remained,
But where were you?
by Barth Landor
Barth Landor has had poems in Clapboard Journal, Spectrum, Inscape and Grey Sparrow Journal (named the Best New Literary Journal of 2011-2012). His poem ‘Tree’ was a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize in 2011, and the online journal Lowestoft Chronicle published two poems in 2012, including ‘Grotte de Niaux’, nominated by them for a Pushcart Prize.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Weird Scenes Beside the Chevron
The two next to
the blue dumpster
cradling drums
of Steel Reserve,
greasy with worry
– you’ll find them anywhere
When we slow down for gas and caffeine
It’s the defiant palms I’m looking at
a second time, in towns
with names I’ll never know, settled
around redundant strip malls
blistering along the Pacific Coast Highway
These wild-haired beasts tower, they loom
We admire them on TV from afar
but, slashed through with their shadows,
we’re reminded of sands
slipping quickly through an hourglass
of some Endless Summer’s possibility
This holdover Boomer hokum persists, somehow
even while actual people live, here,
walk to work here, buy milk, here,
guzzle malt liquor next to dumpsters, here,
give up on whatever dream we could name, here
I turn my eyes straight ahead- the road, turning the key
by Chris Middleman
Arc of Dreams
Each time I sold Donald Passman’s
All You Need to Know About the Music Business
I saw the copy as a perfect-bound totem;
Here was another set of bloodletting parents
financing their gauge-eared Meredith’s
vague Vans-sponsored notion
of graduating to a stage where action
burns brightly; a stage shared by heroes
where she could act out her love
The love, of course,
never turned out to be creating, or
even helping finance good art;
nor was it a taste for dismantling a system
stacked so stupidly against vision
One way or another, at rainbow’s end
was typing mass PR emails,
answering phones for deceiving dinosaurs
wearing t-shirts instead of suits,
sitting in on “rap sessions” discussing the
optimization of monetization of YouTube clicks
While never having listened to Television
Never having heard Cybotron
Never getting played on freeform FM
Never getting crowned a hero by some kid
after a show, in a parking lot, at the bar
And one day, she’ll have to bow out
of the all the excitement of free merch,
festival passes and promos
for the birth of her little Emma, whom
one day, shall be enrolled in the School of Rock
by Chris Middleman
And in NPR, We Are Redeemed
A sheep rancher whispers into a
microphone held out in some dappled pasture
that the United States lost its taste for mutton
after so many canned rations were slavishly
gobbled during World War II; we dress ourselves
in December with a mess of shredded Sprite bottles
Though the market seems to have
bottomed out for this man whom the mind’s
director casts as an epileptic caterpillar of a
moustache wriggling beneath a brown-brimmed hat,
the hope is that immigrants and parents
in poorer neighborhoods that can’t afford
the food they prepare at work could be enticed
to make mutton a staple of their diets
With parting clouds, the dollar value of
this potential market is recognized
and we finally understand them as human
by Chris Middleman
January 2014 | back-issues, nonfiction
The brightest star in the constellation Cancer is beta Cancri, or as it is commonly referred to, Al Tarf.
The biggest bruise was just above my collar bone on the left side.
The second brightest star is Arkushanangarushashutu, the longest name of all stars in the galaxy. It means, “the southeast star in the crab.” It is sometimes referred to as Asellus Australis.
I couldn’t see his face. My eyes had begun to swell from the brick wall I was slammed into. I don’t remember that hurting.
The constellation is often referred to as the dark sign as its stars are so pale.
For months I was silent. My therapist told my mother I was in a walking coma.
The fourth sign of the zodiac is Cancer. It represents the home.
My boyfriend didn’t believe that I was raped. He told everyone I was a slut.
Cancers are ruled by the Moon. The Moon, astrologers say, dictates the mood as well as impulsivity.
I ran away. The bruises on my skin were gone but my insides were still swollen. I went to the Sea of Cortez.
The element associated with Cancer is water.
I lived on a beach called Los Cerritos outside of Todos Santos. I slept in a tent. I ate plums for breakfast, fish for lunch and rice with Italian dressing for dinner. I read Henry Miller. I married a Colombian man
Cancers are not compatible with Capricorns.
I left my husband in the middle of the night. I needed to go home.
Karkinos, the giant crab who helped the serpent Hydra in the battle against Hercules, was crushed beneath Hercules foot. However, as a reward for the strength, and willingness to fight, Karkinos was given a place amongst the stars.
by Jacqueline Kirkpatrick
Jacqueline Kirkpatrick is currently an MFA in Creative Writing student at the College of Saint Rose in upstate New York.
