I had to move more
on my own before
the wind would ever
consider me a ship.
I was born far away
from the ocean. I
had to break myself
to spill into the sea.
Darren’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Diagram, and the Colorado Review.
car
blood slither, vomit, road shoulder, broken
car
antlers, up a hill, looks eighteen, frosty grass,
shivers, entrails, air like needles, hyper ventil
car
late cameo in glass, commuter, brake musing,
nausea, back road helplessness, call the police?,
grounded, mom’s breakfast, sausage goo,
failure, puffs of air, coalescence, coughing,
car
another payment, another day, another dollar,
dad’s glare, bruises, schoolhouse rumors,
irresponsible, grandma’s prayers, doctor visit,
whistling wind, ashen clouds, naked trees
I see an excited man standing, everyone else sitting,
in the fourth row through the tobacco haze
He looks at his card, finger tracing,
eyes looking up down up down while a
toothless man somewhere in the back lifts
a bottle to his lips
The plastic balls click in the drum like
forgotten change at the laundromat
The man, hand raised, shouts over
four laughing ladies and the room
hushes to hear his case
R.M. Cymber is a graduate student at Fontbonne University in St Louis, Missouri. Some of his works are featured in Scrutiny Journal, The Provo Canyon Review, and Crack the Spine Literary Magazine. His poem “Manna” was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. He is also an editor at River Styx Literary Magazine. Currently, he is writing poetry and short stories.
The power saws of my childhood
sneak into the wind, great whirling
motors spitting dust, soft
and clinging to the hair of my arms,
transforming me from child
to Nordic beast, wild curls of blonde
lumber blurring my edges.
My father’s leather-pouched belt
hovers by my ear, smelling of nails
and sweat, and the chalk of a snapped line
hangs in the long air behind me, marking
the path from here to the place
where I once placed fallen screws
in a blade-scarred hand, certain
what I offered
was needed.
Alice Pettway’s work has appeared in over 30 print and online journals, including The Bitter Oleander, The Connecticut Review, Folio, Lullwater Review, Keyhole, and WomenArts Quarterly. Her chapbook, Barbed Wire and Bedclothes was published by Spire Press in 2009, and her full-length collection, The Time of Hunger | O Tempo de Chuva, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Pettway is a former Lily Peter fellow, Raymond L. Barnes Poetry Award winner, and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Currently, she lives and writes in Bogotá, Colombia.
Issue 113, Jan 2025
Burrdowning Media, LLC
54 pages, perfect bound
