January 2016 | poetry
A morbid fear of guns
whose array of co-morbidities
encompass
suppressed rage
post-traumatic stress disorder
delusional disorder
and panic disorder
this complex specific phobia
and avoidance
displacement
and transference
Or how else do hoplophobiacs
get from point A
to point B
without a gun permit
with a gun
without a firing mechanism
and without bullets
and the hallowed halls of Congress
clogged with lead?
by Patrick Theron Erickson
Patrick, a resident of Garland, Texas, a Tree City just south of Duck Creek, is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself, a former shepherd of sheep, a small flock with no sheep dog and no hang-dog expression. Secretariat is his mentor, though he has never been an achiever and has never gained on the competition. He resonates to a friend’s definition of change; though a bit dated with the advent of wi fi, it has the ring of truth to it: change coming at us a lot faster because you can punch a whole lot more, a whole lot faster down digital broadband “glass” fiber than an old copper co-axial landline cable. Of late Patrick’s work has appeared in Poetry Pacific; Red Fez; SubtleTea; The Oddville Press; Literary Juice; Poetry Quarterly; and will appear in the Fall 2015 issue of The Penwood Review.
January 2016 | fiction
Hot in the schoolhouse we study mathematics, geography. We are told many times that the maps teach history too. We learn of the African Union; we learn of the Empire of Mali, and are told that it was long ago. We learn of Portugal, and of the British in swathes of dull red. Sometimes the sea sweeps into the mangroves, and sometimes the forest bears fruit.
Stephanie, my pen friend, writes that she is entranced with the idea of the hippos, and asks me to send a picture. Hippos are hard to draw. Last summer I saw a fisherman too close to the water: he was torn in half, one part disappearing into the frothing pool and one part spat into the mud. Occasionally we make masks and pretend to be animals: cows, sharks and other harmless beasts. To like a hippo you must have to be very far away. In the mud and the water, I thought the colours of the half-swallowed man looked like the map in our schoolhouse: red, blue, brown.
I try to imagine where Stephanie learns geography; I try to see what a city would look like. Stephanie sends pictures with buildings like picked-clean whalebones thrown into the sky. Outside the schoolhouse, our mathematics rulers double as weapons, sometimes as spades. Later, in the evenings, I like to carve, carefully working at a new mask while the red sun falls into the sea.
by Phil Robinson-Self
Phil Self lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and considers the weather to be not as bad as people say. His fiction has featured in Flash Fiction Magazine, Paragraph Planet, The Pygmy Giant, Apocrypha and Abstractions, and elsewhere. On balance, he would probably like to be your friend.
January 2016 | poetry
In this late-autumn dusk
trees discard their leaves
like August’s junk lottery tickets.
She stands before the pool,
long since drained of water,
arms raised high, toes curled
over the edge of the diving board.
What makes her want to swim now?
Where was she all summer?
The quiet, clockwork stars
spin on their eternal vinyl sphere
as she closes her eyes, bends her knees.
She’s grown fat with sweet wine
she can no longer taste.
Her suit fits like a catcher’s mitt.
Grass grays in patches like stubble
on an old man’s face,
so she looks skyward, heavenward,
and launches herself into frigid night,
into emptiness cold as a new grave.
by James Valvis
James Valvis has placed poems or stories in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Ploughshares, River Styx, The Sun, and many others. His poetry was featured in Verse Daily. His fiction was chosen for Sundress Best of the Net. A former US Army soldier, he lives near Seattle.
