January 2018 | poetry
Sometime Too Natural Shapes
Four vultures sit in silent conference
It’s been observed they will not land
To pick clean
A carcass whose blood was let
In the shape of a spiral.
We should follow their example,
Being scavengers.
Constellations of Necessity
As children
We mapped the stars with peerless confidence
Charting elephants, turtles
And long-tailed snarling dragons
I’ve found, living in the city
I can do this with the lit squares of dim office spaces
Though the animals I conjure
Are altogether less inspired
But There are Dragons in this City
I may even be a part of someone else’s
I keep the lights turned bright for them
In hopes I’ll be its eye
Omri Kadim
Omri Kadim was born in London and has since lived in Paris, Tel Aviv, Athens, Vienna and New York. He writes both poetry and dramatic works, with several plays having been produced in New York and a recent short film he co-wrote having been accepted into the Cannes Short Film Corner 2016. His poems follow Pound’s dictum, “Fundamental accuracy of statement is the sole morality of writing’ and thus are often Spartan in their composition.
January 2018 | fiction
It was evening. We were standing near a line of trees that looked like conifers; the sky was darkening behind the trees. It was time to go back. This was the last crossing: our damaged equipment would permit no more. We had seen things that were almost impossible to believe. Ahead of us, our scientist turned a dial as her assistant busied himself next to her, attaching leads, connecting wires. Before long we saw the familiar blue flames, the portal hanging in torn space. One by one we stepped through. As soon as we emerged on the other side, we hurried down the corridor and up the stairs: it was necessary to conceal the equipment. We had already been away for too long.
In the small room at the top we worked quickly, boarding up the passage to the stairway, dragging bookcases across the room.
One of us stopped working. It was the scientist’s father. He looked around curiously, as if he had forgotten something, pushing between us, peering short-sightedly into the corners of the room. When he didn’t find what he was searching for, he looked at us, searching our faces for what we all knew, although none of us knew how to tell him. As his eyes looked up to one of us, that one of us would look towards another helplessly, who would then shrug and turn his own gaze towards a third, who herself would look away with a small gesture of impatience towards a fourth, and in this manner his terrible expression was deflected between us like a beam of light, until, with a sudden violent gesture he began undo our work, shouting and dragging the bookcases away.
But the bookcases were too heavy; he took the books down from the shelves, but the piles of books proliferating at his feet made it impossible for him to drag the bookcases away; and when we, taking pity on him, began to help, we ourselves only blundered, getting in his way and in each other’s way; and when at last we had removed the bookcases, it still remained to pull the boards away from the boarded-up passageway; and with every new delay, he became more frantic and inconsolable, and we milled around and watched him, hardly knowing what to do.
Then, quite suddenly, the way was clear. I followed him down the passageway and down the stairs. The portal was still open, burning at the end of the flickering corridor. It was difficult even to move through its blue light; impossible to actually approach it. Through it we made out, for the last time, the scientist and her assistant making an adjustment to their apparatus, preparing to close the portal forever.
The scientist’s father raised his hand. He was crying inconsolably. The scientist, glancing up through the portal, stopped and raised hers. They stood there for a moment, looking at each other through the burning doorway. Then it flickered and went out.
Tom Payne
Tom Payne lives in London. His work has previously appeared in Lighthouse and The Sun.
January 2018 | poetry
Here, this darker map of sand. Piss
and otherwise. There, your steel bowls—
water and dry food. The tarp
blocks the sun’s worst,
but you keep to the shadows
of your house. You’re a brooder—
no pacing, no bark, bite indeterminate.
From dark oblong of doorway,
yellow eyes give away nothing.
Sometimes you emerge, pad across
cage to watch the children
howling and wild. No tail wag,
no expectation, perhaps a longing
forgotten. Shepherd, pastor alemán.
Your master whistles past,
garden artichokes, sheets fresh off the line,
passes two fingers through links
for a quick scratch of forehead
and thick fur. From the balcony
of the ancient farmhouse, between
hills a tease of glowing sea,
blue promise. You can’t see that from
here, where days are numbered.
Gaylord Brewer
Gaylord Brewer is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and for more than 20 years edited the journal Poems & Plays. His most recent book is the cookbook-memoir The Poet’s Guide to Food, Drink, & Desire (Stephen F. Austin, 2015). His tenth collection of poetry, The Feral Condition, is forthcoming from Negative Capability Press.
