October 2014 | back-issues, nonfiction
In the beginning the air was cold and sweet like a backwards mausoleum. Cameron said this was the kind of sky you could drink, and then the wind picked up soft-armed and rolling. Listen: the rain rhythmic bent and streaming. The rain forming a film. I talked about half-truths and we couldn’t count how many clouds were in the sky anymore. We walked slow and made everything ours, pretended the city block was a house and we could have stopped anywhere we wanted to.
by Emily Zhang
Emily Zhang is a student. Her poetry appears in theNewerYork, The Louisville Review and Word Riot.
October 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Nuwara Eliya
We almost ask each other questions. Is there a curfew? At what time? Do we need to run? Do we want to? How many dogs make up a pack? How many smoking men make up a crowd? Is the pack dangerous? Sinister? Broken? Sad? What about the crowd? Why do the smoking men smell like fish? Why do they wear sarongs even when it’s cold? Why are they awake when everyone is asleep? Why is the cool air so tender upon my neck? When they yell out do we cross the street? Do we still look back over our shoulders and gently wave? Do we say hello? Do we bow? How do we say hello in Sinhala? Ayubowan. What do we say then?
Dinner
Dinner is braised rabbit with fennel and mustard. The rabbit meat, Dad says, reminds him of Iowa in the winter. He removes his glasses and asks me to help him tell a story about a rabbit in Iowa snow. Is the rabbit pretty? I ask. Is his hair hapless? Stiff? Is there snow caught in his tiny eye? Do we cut off his feet to carry in our pockets? Like he is all ours? The rabbit looks like death, Dad says. The rabbit is just a metaphor, I say. No, Dad says, you’re wrong. The rabbit is just a rabbit.
by Dylan Fisher
October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
His memory
was a mortuary
for the time capsuled
thoughts that
recessed – to erase
the condescension
that presided
over the torment,
that buried beneath
the sulfured
insubordination.
Their sardonic
disposition
grinned
as they froze
like winters
remorse,
while their
malevolence
anointed
fiction and
constructed
the masquerade
of fabrics built
within his presence.
Their thoughts
were pistols,
but they
shot their trite
under their
muscles,
where
they pinched
like needles,
and sedated their
fallacies with
laughters
beyond the
steel curtains,
where grinders
decimated
his heart.
When he
pleaded
for help,
they vanished
like spirits,
but when
they called,
he stood
there like a
stubborn weed,
refusing to
be torn from
the graveled soil,
as animosity
vanquished
their sanctioned
apparitions.
In his presence,
he may not
feel the taint,
even when
it surrounds him,
but when they
depart they
grab their
scissors
and cut
through
their honesty
and saw
their truths
as if authenticity
had dissipated,
and resentment
reigned
until he felt the rain
of suspicion
linger like
a lobotomized
incision.
Images
project their
sardonic
smiles
and they
resurface
like debt,
with deception
smeared on
the lies
they closeted.
They departed
after their shifts,
but their
bodies rifled
stronger signals
than the cell phones
they possessed.
by Christopher Ozog
Christopher Ozog is a 22 year old poet residing in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He Has previously been published in Burningword Literary Journal and The Commonline. To learn more, visit his twitter at “@expressiveozog.”
