Don Antenen

Don Antenen lives in Philadelphia with the love of his life and two cats. He is the editor of Hey Small Press!, and his fiction has appeared in the Used Furniture Review and Weekday Journal.

In no other religion or mythology do the two intersect under a single deity’s domain, with the exception of monotheistic religions where the god is the god of all things.¹ Hoarder of all our favorite intangibles. Does this give the poet a role as more than an honorary thinker. Does Odin value both war and poetry equally, and for that matter knowledge, of which it is also a god. Maybe it lists the hanged before poetry and knowledge, because the hanged demand so much love. Can a god lack respect for that which is his domain, and wouldn’t this be required of a monotheistic god and therefore evidence that monotheistic god might not care about us at all.² Does it open the gates of Valhalla for the poet, or for those who died in more metaphorical ways. It is Odin. Odin is the argument. And then I’ve no bruises, none from the drifters in floppy hats lobbing oranges into the river, and none from the one-eyed clown who throws darts at the fairground. And you can watch. Five minutes for $1.50. Maybe that is the argument within the argument, often misconstrued as the answer. No. It is just another in a long legacy of arguments without questions. How does the clown hit the mark. I would tell you, but it would be stealing $1.50 from the grifters who paid to find out. Ultimately, too, it has nothing to do with the immortality of the gods, who don’t exist except on earth as assholes hunting immortality. $1.50 for five minutes. It’s the argument in the argument. That this all has nothing to say but that there may only be one question that is unanswerable for us. We wind up at the beginning once again, shouting at bleached clothes and crackled plaster, Hey, it’s me, the hanged. Pretty sure I’m yelling at bleached clothes and cracked plaster and the neighbors who never say hello to me in the hallway. Knock twice if you are there. Do you hear me, god of war and poetry or cornstarch and Fritos. The argument has been made, and we will sit in pods of four, cross-legged in the grass waiting for you to respond.³

¹ In the author’s experience this is a fact.
² This in the same fashion children care not really for toys.
³ Look down, that is us withering in place.

Dustin Luke Nelson. Photo by Jacqueline Ouanes.

Dustin Luke Nelson is the founding editor of InDigest and InDigest Editions. “The Argument is Odin” come from a collection called Activity, Group. He has been a writer and producer on Radio Happy Hour and Geocachers. His writing has appeared in Bookslut, Powell’s, Tiny Mix Tapes, Monkeybicycle, H_NGM_N, Shampoo, Guernica, and elsewhere.

Reopen your mouth
there were a lot of girls
swooned by your tongue
once

now they just
spill drinks and cry
because
of what happened to you

when you decided
no
not tonight
not in this city
again

Kelly Michael

Kelly Michael is a writer and he lives in Hamilton, Ontario. He was once an undergraduate sociology student at the University of Toronto and now he is not an undergraduate sociology student at the University of Toronto. He thinks knitting would be a useful skill to have. His poetry has also been published by Spork Press.

Ryan Mohr

About the author:

Ryan Mohr lives in the Rust Belt of N.E. Ohio. His work appears or is forthcoming in PANK, Rubbertop Review Volumes 2 and 3, and a few other places if you get extraordinarily bored and wish to Google him. He loves to discuss Postmodern theory, Social Constructionism, Howard Stern, and the NBA. He is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Now throat
a lily pad, breath
an oversize frog.
No wonder
night & day
are such enemies,
take as long as possible
to relieve each other:
the new shapes
of everything, exhausting,
resentful.
Hours, taut, stretched,
turning the mind to
spandex or elastic or
different stressed,
breakable thing.

These are the knowable hardships.
But of the others:
dreams, at least, cannot
be stopped. Alternate
dooms. Alternate
un-dooms. Alternates,
dooming.

It is disgusting, one
might reasonably think,
the smallness
one        present
past
future.

They might also
brood into their coffee cup
after a long dark
of if’s. It is understandable
if their spouses leave them.

But this didn’t have to happen,
they chant until their very teeth
hop out of their mouths
and clatter together
towards some hilltop or mountain
to form a strange monstrous
chorus line. Like this could force
a god.

Ruth Baumann

About the author:

My name is Ruth Baumann. I hope to attend an MFA program someday, but until then, I’ll work in a million restaurants. I graduated from VCU in 2010 with a couple Bachelors, and live in Richmond, Virginia. I like all things poetry, cats, and cheese.

(read Part 1)

Bill thought of taking her picture as she stood on the shore of Sylvan Beach. Sarah had removed her sneakers and socks, rolled up her jeans, and stepped into the dark gray water. “It’s sooo fucking cold!” He was standing five yards away when he framed her in the viewfinder and focused. She looked down at the miniature waves breaking around her ankles just before he took the picture.
     “Why were you playing a role?” Bill asked. Sarah’s shoulders were covered with gooseflesh, “I guess in some stupid way I felt that if I couldn’t be fulfilled by one person then two might make me feel,” she stopped herself from saying happy, “the thing is I could never convince myself that it was true.” He shifted on the bed, “That what was true?” She frowned, “That I was unhappy,” shrugging her shoulders, “or I was just really lonely,” then looked closely at his face, “or maybe I had finally convinced myself things would never change and I would never have another chance with you.” Bill examined their entwined fingers, “When did you start sleeping with your boss?” comparing their mismatched wedding bands. “In December.” “That wasn’t very long ago,” he sighed, “you made it sound like—” “December of ’94,” she bit her lower lip, “it was three years ago . . . right after I started taking Prozac.” “And you’re still working there?” When she smiled and said, “I just got a raise,” he noticed how white her teeth were. He took his hands away and stood up. “Where are you going?” He stood on the gray carpet, “To the bathroom,” and crossed the room.
     Dearest Sarah, She saw him in the teacher’s parking lot and ran over to his car. We have had the very real pleasure of each other’s company for more than a year now, but this relationship cannot continue any longer. She got there just as he was turning the key in the ignition and breathlessly asked, “What’s the matter with you?” I know this will not be easy for you to understand and it wasn’t easy for me to reach this decision but I need you to be strong for me and for yourself. He rolled down the window and gave her the letter. I have carefully thought through the plans we have made and the dreams we share for our life together and I honestly feel that I will be nothing more than a blight on your future. When she asked what was wrong, he replied, “I think it’s time to move on.” The love and passion we have shared has been a real blessing and you have helped me rediscover a part of my youth that I thought I had lost forever. “What,” she pressed her hands on the car door, “what are you talking about?” I am ashamed to admit that I could never be willing or able to leave my wife for you. He revved the engine while asking, “How is this being discreet?” And instead of living a lie that would have only created greater unhappiness for us in the future I think it’s best we come to our senses now and honor the secret love and friendship we have shared. The car pulled away as she stood there. I will never forget you and I will always be devoted to the memory of our time together.
     With much love and gratitude,
     Bill
     She was smoking when he returned. “Does it bother you that I’m on anti-depressants?” He stood at the end of the bed, “Isn’t everyone in America on Prozac?” She exhaled, “I’m being serious,” while scrutinizing his torso. “Well,” shifting his feet, “is it helping?” She said, “Sometimes,” before placing the cigarette between her lips. “Then it doesn’t bother me,” the mattress sagged beneath him, “I didn’t know that you smoked,” as he sat next to her. “Maybe a pack every other week,” she noticed a tiny bit of flesh-colored wax on his earlobe, “why were you looking at me like,” picked it off with her index fingernail and flicked it onto the floor, “like you were afraid of me.” Bill shrugged, “Did you hear about that cult in California?” Their clothes had slipped off the back of the wooden chair and formed a pile on the floor. “Heavens Gate?” The smoke from her cigarette swirled above the lampshade. He nodded, “It was all over the news again tonight.” She cleared her throat, “They thought the comet was coming to take their souls away,” and placed the cigarette between her lips. “And maybe it did,” he turned to her, “you know it’s flying above our heads right now.” She exhaled slowly, “Hale-Bopp,” and the smoke was pushed beneath the lampshade, “that is just so sad,” where it lingered in the yellow light, “they claimed their bodies were only temporary vehicles holding in their souls and when Kate and I saw that clip on the news she said all of those bodies, the way they were all dressed up in those uniforms, made them look like envelopes.” “I really loved you Sarah.” Her eyes were downcast, “Then why did you end it?” Bill shook his head while saying, “I wasn’t.” She reached over and crushed the cigarette in the ashtray, “You used me.” “That was twenty years ago.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, “Can’t you just apologize for hurting me?”
     “Why have you victimized yourself over this?”
     Clenching her jaw, “I want to know why you took me for granted.”
     “The risks were just impossible.”
     She placed her hands on her knees, “Just tell me why you gave up on us.”
     “Answer my question.”
     “It’s not like I could have gotten pregnant anyway,” she looked at him uneasily, “I was on the pill….Remember? That was your idea.”
     He nodded, “Weren’t you on the pill in college?”
     The off-handed way she said, “I really wanted to have your baby,” stunned him. Bill shook his head in disbelief, “I wouldn’t have given you that choice.” “You’re an idiot,” she looked away, “I wanted to spend my life with you.” “That’s not what I thought was best for you,” he examined the tufts of hair below his knuckles, “that was a mistake on my part, a selfish and—” “Is this a mistake?” “No,” he didn’t hesitate, “no it isn’t.” She stretched her long legs out on the bedspread, “I’m going to see you again?” He nodded before asking, “If we had married do you think we would still be happy?” “Why,” she placed her hands on his shoulders, “wouldn’t we be happy now?” and kissed him on the cheek. He closed his eyes before saying, “That’s an interesting question.”

This cathedral we are standing in front of might collapse and become an acorn pile. All of its statues might dissolve. Expanse and ownership. So should I steal Constantine’s toe. The toe is too heavy to transport in hands. Seems cannibal to transport in mouth. Why are you turning. Why is your chest collapsing. Maybe from those cinder chips we ate; we thought they were crackers of origin. We needed a center again. Could we agree it is good to have a landing spot. A body of bread. Plaster torsos split by light.

Caroline Davidson

Caroline Davidson sang in a metal band in Ohio, sold cupcakes in South Carolina, and currently lives in Denver. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she also teaches creative writing. She is the poetry editor of Timber Journal.

I was born at the meridian of two autumn mornings.
I was born far from here,
where they nail husks to the door.

I was not born in this sweetgum flower desert.
I was born during a battle
of birch trees in the New England woods.

I was born at a neap tide
and smelled of scallops and sand.
I was born in rain.

I was born loudly.
The nurse said, He is trying to forget.
I was born to forget.

I was born to give last rites to fallen nuns.
I was born near a shallow pond
that fed tadpoles into frogs.

bones are shining and the grass
is wild, warm. Her laugh rises
frail in the night, beats like blue
bird wings, makes you eat your

fear of pillowed sounds. Lean
into it. Swallow her thin chortles
and let them throb against your
bare-beveled ribs from the inside.

Suzanne Marie Hopcroft

Suzanne Marie Hopcroft is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Yale University and writes from New York City, where she also teaches composition at Hostos Community College. Suzanne’s poetry is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Breakwater Review, The Coachella Review, decomP, The Catalonian Review, Spork, and PANK Magazine.

Inspired?
Hardly.

Another evening.
Another ode to Bourbon.

It’s played out.

I broke
To one bar.
Wild Turkey.

And another,
Pabst Blue Ribbon.

And finished another night
With a chili-cheese-dog.

And I don’t have to tell
you
The rest.

Brian Tibbetts

Brian Tibbetts is a writer, musician, print-maker and painter, currently living and working in Portland, Oregon. His writing has appeared in Unshod Quills, Gobshite Quarterly and Housefire. He is currently constructing a website regarding all of his various pursuits: briantibbetts.com

About the author:

Author of the novels, A Still Small Voice (Delacorte), Snowball’s Chance (Roof, an SPD Bestseller), and The Whole (MTV Books/Simon & Schuster); author of the play All the World’s A Grave: A New Play by William Shakespeare (Penguin/Plume), and the illustrated, non-fiction cult story collection, Tales of Woe (MTV Press); more at JohnReed.org

This man you’ve only met tonight,
who is wearing fake glasses and a black tank top
in a dive bar in Manhattan, has made you laugh
eleven times already. He is teaching you
how to download apps on your new iPhone.
He is opening one and using his fingertip
to scribble his name across the screen
so you will remember it,
and you are allowing your body
to become a song that says,
Move closer.

When it first appears,
you don’t know how to name love, so it is
nine fingers deep into the phone
even though I called yesterday,
it is losing your other numbers
until five months pass, and it is just you
and this man laying in your bed on 25th Street.
Your hand slung across his chest, nearly asleep.
There is a James Bond movie finishing on the TV,
and just before your eyes are meant to close,
his body is an electric current in tight underwear
out of bed and dancing, pirouetting
nearly into the television, an interpretive
spy dance that is not stopping, but blossoming
to the music of the credits, and your body is now
in tears from a profound laughter. It is no longer
just a joke, no longer just a beautiful dance.
It is the truth from a body that only occurs
in a bedroom between lovers that says,
When you are happy, I am alive. Without you,
I am not me. It does not matter that it will take weeks
to name the love that sits inside you
stable as a new house.

He is the arms of each man to hold you
and assure you were beautiful.
He is not just dancing
perfectly around your dresser and curtains
in his underwear, he is doing it
for you.

You do not need to know love is a word
which will travel free between you like a flock
of sparrows. That you will deliver yourself to it,
across an Uptown C train, a fire pit in Boston,
the wedding aisle in a library on the west side
of Manhattan. That there are years between this day
and the day you say no other word
can communicate what we both know.
When you say:

Husband—because my life
is my own and I wish to give it to you.
Because I wish to apologize and to forgive,
and to come home to you each night.
Husband, because it was true in a dive bar,
and in a bedroom that we shared, on a street
where I walk around the block
because we’ve just had a fight
and I am coming home to you calm.
I name you my husband to receive you.
True today and tomorrow. My husband
because I have spent my entire life
climbing toward your name.

About the author:

Jon Sands’ first full collection of poems, The New Clean, was released in 2011 from Write Bloody Publishing. He is Director of Poetry Education at the Positive Health Project (a syringe exchange center in Midtown Manhattan), an adjunct with the City University of New York, as well as a Youth Mentor with Urban Word-NYC. He reads and facilitates workshops extensively, both nationally and internationally. He starred in the 2011 web-series “Verse: A Murder Mystery” from Rattapallax Films, and his work has appeared in The Millions, decomP, kill author, Suss, Muzzle, and others. He is a featured contributor with Union Station Magazine, conducting a regular interview column, and has represented New York City multiple times at the National Poetry Slam. Say yes to jonsands.com.

About the author:

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State. His work appears widely in print and also online at such places as The Literarian, Moon Milk Review, PANK, Elimae and others. Every few days he shares his thoughts about writing and life at lenkuntz.blogspot.com

the aloe doesn’t like the sunshine, but today,
it likes her. the gold dots in the air agree,

wheeing and whooping. the rocks in the soil
are foundation, not obstacle.

the green leafy sprouting we swore was basil
is a purple flowering weed. i hacked down

the dry stalks from last year’s crop
and they’re permanently reaching,

taking up space. the wind
is supposed to throw seeds

and the plants are supposed to spew pollen
and the vegetables are supposed to grow and

grow and feed us—but everywhere else is stone,
a bundle of dried sticks, mossy dirt between concrete blocks.

everywhere else says no. her name is probably
Naji and i don’t hate her, but I want to sing

like her, like a bottle of wine and
i want that awful hesitation, that click,

before i wrap my arms and legs around you,
and i want you to shrink back

into another language, the one
you invented that has the same

exact word for yes and no.
i want to repot the jade plants.

i’d skip town in a car,
return to a jungle,

pick a pepper, whoop
like a hungry bird.

About the author:

Kimberly Ann Southwick is the founder and editor in chief of the literary arts journal Gigantic Sequins. She lives in Philadelphia and adjuncts at Rowan University and the University of Phoenix. She has a poem forthcoming in Barrelhouse. You can visit her blog at giganticsequins.blogspot.com

About the author:

Mark Hage is a writer and visual artist based in New York City. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in Pear Noir! Emprise Review, Contrary Magazine, Corium, LITnIMAGE, Prick of the Spindle, InDigest, Metazen and others. His artworks have hung in those big white walled rooms where the receptionists never raise their heads. Two of his stories were nominated for the 2011 StorySouth Award.

I’m today, part of what’s passing. I ask booths who they are anti-meridian. I’ve met people who do not facilitate pillows. I am not out of first person sentences. Now as far as I know: don’t.

I Am Close To Myself More

Everything is sentimental marries a trash can, puts beers emptied in, sits on a sofa someone else paid several someone elses for, spellchecks hearts, looks up looking at anything touching something reminding, remembered, as now as gone.

Fast Floor

I tremor The microwave’s awful, perpetuate refrigerators I can’t dial for numbers. Elevator sex twines We’re seeing each other angled. The middle of a sentence is not.

I’ve Driving

Let’s sit down to sex. Share three sides, belly ten dollars. I’m on the square less than once a future room. You kiss the way I knew my mouth.

Parker Tettleton

Parker Tettleton’s work is featured in &/or forthcoming from Gargoyle, NAP, The Catalonian Review, Spittoon, & PANK, among others. His chapbook SAME OPPOSITE is available from Thunderclap! Press. More or less is here.

About the author:

I am an Indian writer residing in Kolkata (Calcutta).

I have written a non-fiction best-seller The Mind of Swami Vivekananda for Jaico; my children’s novel The Fantabulous Fens has been published by ireadiwrite Publishing, Canada; and I have recently co-authored two volumes of essays for Macmillan India. A 5,000-word short story of mine features in Prizewinning Asian Fiction (Hong Kong University Press). My writings have been published in various magazines including Lunarosity (USA) and The Cynic Online (USA).

I’m sorry that my mouth is like
quicksand

I will try to throw you
some rope
before it’s
too late

Don’t say please
There’s not enough time
for that

Kevin Sampsell

Kevin Sampsell’s first several (now extremely rare) chapbooks (in the early 90s) were poetry collections. Nowadays, he mostly writes fiction, memoir, essays, and haiku. He’s currently making a “poetry comeback” and has had poems published on Everyday Genius and The Fanzine. His books include Beautiful Blemish (Word Riot Press) and A Common Pornography (Harper Perennial). He lives in Portland, Oregon and runs the small press, Future Tense Books. His audio track was produced by B. Frayn Masters.

About the author:

Vincent Peiffer lives in Iowa City, Iowa.

Morning fog in bay windows pulse
thighs
gooseflesh wall
I hold with you.
This wooden floor
echoes
the room crowded
with American history. Anthology of
your marrow. You want
transformation.
You want to change your mind.

Joseph Mains

Joseph Mains was born in the Sonoran desert. Now living in Portland, Oregon, he co-curates the reading series Bad Blood and is a founding member of Milk/Shop.

We walked out on the salt-slimed jetty
With crabs shuffling around our feet
Then I took the knotted rope of my intestine
Which squeezes like a snake when her lips touch me
And put it out to sea

“It looks like chewed sausage links,” she said.
“It looks like a swollen garden hose,” I said.

Then she took her traitor’s lungs
Lungs still lined with hooks
That catch when I move her hair from her face
And they fluttered into the oil-slick water

“Gutted balloons from birthdays,” she said.
“From funerals,” I said.

Our hearts were at the very bottom
Sticky with blood and congealing decisions
We gave them a Viking burial
Watched the cardboard coracle bob and bob
And sog
And sink
By inches into the greasy saline
Then the flesh floated on
Drifting slowly equidistant on the waves

We walked back along the jetty
And sat in phosphate-soaked sand
With our hands not touching
Our faces thickening
And above us the sky grew dark
And each of us watched our own allotment of stars
Blink out

Rich Larson

Rich Larson is a 19-year-old student living in Edmonton, Alberta. His novel Devolution was selected as a finalist for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. When not writing, he is a productive member of society. More of his work can be found on Figment.com

you awake and it’s nine past your time. nothing to do but drive where disturbed people stand by
the side of the road holding hands with themselves and staring at the

headlights as they eat the gravel, walk into the field muttering about odometers and not caring,
splashing neon lights on their stones and watering hydrangeas till sick rants

of madmen cease only when no one listens, water flows sideways when nobody looks and
the sky is yellow when dylan sings that it is.

Walter Bjorkman

Walter Bjorkman is a writer, poet and photographer from Brooklyn, NY, now residing in the mountains of Pennsylvania. His poems and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in issues of Scrambler, Poets & Artists, O&S, THIS Literary Magazine, Wilderness House Literary Review, A-Minor, Blue Print Review, amphibi.us, Metazen, Dark Chaos, OCHO and MiPoesias. His collection of short stories, Elsie’s World, was published in January 2011. He is Associate Editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal and THRUSH Press.

July Westhale

July Westhale is a nationally awarded poet, activist, and archivist with a weakness for botany and hot air balloons. She was recently named a 2011 Emerging LGBT Voices Fellow in Poetry by the Lambda Literary Foundation. Her poetry has most recently been published in Blood Lotus Review, Generations, Literary Journal, Hinchas de Poesia, Word Riot, 580 Split and So to Speak: A Feminist Literary Journal. A graduate of Mills College, she is currently an MFA Poetry candidate at Lesley University.

When you lean and tip
with your feet sliding over metal
You fade
And I choose not to call out

You were dead years before I met you
but recently
your body has looked better than ever
So I might kind of miss that

About the author:

Robert Walton is a Canadian writer living in Hamilton, Ontario.

Every bite
of an apple—
the rotting
process fervors.
It’s a race.
The red flesh
disappears
but the white
insides look
a little more
yellow in the sun.

A ticking clock.
Text messages
that mean nothing
in a sweaty pocket.
It just vibrates,
reminders. Some-
one still thinks
it’s worth being here.
If I’m hungry
enough I’ll finish.
Sometimes,

it’s too sticky.
I give up. Gums
too sensitive, they
bleed a little. I
taste nothing
but texture, the complete
absence of sweet.
Not bitter, either.
The apple
is a chore, one
that’s nourishing

the place that thinks
it needs more fruit. Every
now and again,
it’s actually worth
it to wind up with
a victory toss of the core
across the road. The end.
The apples a skeleton,
so weak compared
to when I bit the flesh. That
apple never
stood a chance.

Former Girlfriends

Wanting to stay

in touch

is just like

            doing heroin:

            If you’re not

            almost dying each time

then you’re not

doing it right.

About the author:

Zack Harlow was born in Lansing, MI in 1987. He received his B.A. in Creative Writing at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo in 2009. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, Mi tutoring young would be writers and works when he gets hungry.

Jacob Newberry

Jacob Newberry is pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing, with an emphasis in poetry, at Florida State University, where he holds the University Fellowship. He was recently awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in Creative Writing and will be spending the year in Israel as a result. His poetry and nonfiction have been published or are forthcoming in Granta, The Iowa Review, The Crab Orchard Review, and Best New Poets 2011, among others.

save for motion
and radiation
that disperse me
but can never dispel me

That is the law
for I am energy
standing for identity
in this equation

or a stalk, swaying in the wind
brittle and defiant
hiding the hollows of the self

erect just to scatter
a few seeds
that’s me unyielding

my reptilian soul
lulling in the warmth
of a human bosom

ready all the while
to make war or flight
persistently insisting
that I am alive
and never want to die

‘tis me alright
my dual entity
held upright
by some strange tension
of cells that form a spine.

Jukka Ylisuvanto (Photo by Heidi Stålnacke)

I’m from Finland, more precisely from a very small village 93km north from the Arctic Circle. I currently live in Oulu, Finland studying English philology as a major and literature as a minor subject at the University of Oulu. I’m also a chef by training and work in local restaurants as a temp. I’ve been writing lyrics for a Black-Metal band that’s been more or less active since the late 90’s (www.wrathage.com) and in Black Metal are also the roots of my writing. In addition to lyrics and poetry I write prose fiction and essays. William S. Burroughs, Kafka, Albert Camus, Mihail Bulgakov, quantum physics, biology, blastbeat, politics… I still haven’t lost faith in communication.

Less gentle than drought
and downpour, it’s genocide every year
just for one chance of bloom.

I buried their seeds as in graves,
lost them in soil
and watched them drown.

Stems once sturdy
caving in on themselves
denting and bent,
skinny as arms with disease.

I cupped the seeds in my palm,
pouched them into pots,
wanted possibility for every petal
so I used them all.

They sprouted suffocating,
every leaf its own coiled noose.

Phillies

After Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks

They have come to the corner bar,
hoisted themselves onto stools.

Have not slept in unison
for weeks since it happened,
take turns as if the littlest
might still need them.

He pinches the flesh
on his hand red as her dress
hiding her breasts, still heavy with milk.

*

Tonight, she woke to find him
by the window, cheeks stained hollow.

He walked to the door,
slipped her coat off the rack, held it open.
She slid her shoulders in, hanger framed.

The bartender avoids the percussive slam
of their straight-ahead stares,

but you can see them through the window. Coffee
cups full. Three o’clock in the morning.

Rachel Snyder

Rachel L. Snyder received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in The FictionWeek Literary Review, Bird’s Eye reView, and Quick Lucks, and is forthcoming in Big Lucks. She teaches writing at SUNY Purchase College, and spends most of her time outside in New York, listening.

About the author:

Allison Wilkins is a graduate of the University of Nevada Las Vegas International MFA program. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming with STILL, Broken Bridge Review, The Georgetown Review, The Adirondack Review, Platte Valley Review and others. Her article “through the beautiful red”: The Use of the Color Red as the Triple-Goddess in Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, was published with Plath Profiles (August 2010). She currently lives in Virginia with her husband and dogs. She is an Assistant Professor of English and Associate Editor of the James Dickey Review at Lynchburg College.

all piled up on a bus stop bench
like a pale old hound
the lips quiver & the legs kick
a bit
   chasing a dream/a hunt/a war
far gone
   lying only in the old bones
   an old beast
sleeping & waiting
sleeping & waiting

& if that is a man
than i am the old stones
under the cold mountain current
sleeping & waiting
sleeping & waiting

KG Shea

About the author:

KG Shea lives, works, writes, and will probably die in Winnipeg.

The World As Water

Each bird began as a fish
but disagreed on the sky.

Each tree began as a fish too,
but grew stubborn.

Each stone began as a fish
and saw the future.

Each god who forgot the human tongue
and each daughter that knew her father,

that walked atop empty, shallow graves
retreated as a fish.

Each man who stole potatoes
from the edges of gardens

and each woman who forgave him
and married him, understood the fish.

Each butcher who chases children
from his windows will know fish well.

Each city building and each city block
that stands forever in concrete

and the trains and the buses
will have their share of fish.

Each theater packed with echoes
was once a fish.

Each briefcase filled with numbers
and carried throughout the lungs of buildings

means nothing to fish.
When the secretaries lean their chairs back

from the dry typewriters
and when the men outside raking leaves

sit for that sacred part of time
when no words are welcome

and the body is heated in the sun
and not by leather handles or leather seats,

someone will say their child brought home fish from the carnival
and none are expected to live for long.

There are no Winter Gods

They blow that heavy air across their knuckles
before grabbing the thin ends of billiard poles.
The coffee smell stains the room
a trucker yellow. Gray streamers rise
from ashtrays that keep the old language
in smart little piles. A TV hangs.
They come to their seats alone
in their fur and plaid hats.
The radio is eclipsed by the clearing of throats.
There are no smooth faces beneath the slouching.
I know the snow has begun. They come
with snowcapped shoulders. I will need the heaviness
of their hands if I am to leave here, to be pushed
over the mounds the plows are building out in the streets.
But now is their turn to drink themselves warm
and put the terrible flavors into their bodies.
Now, they are playing a game in a small group.
It ends in laughter and begins again. They talk
the way gods do—of the large beasts, of the places
I can’t know, the virgins and their fires. They talk
and I hear the collisions of their game.
One says, the best way to die
is to die naked, running out into traffic
and the laughter is beaten down
by coughs that sound deep
as if even the chills in their lungs crowd
the low, still deeper fires.

About the author:

Zachary Burkhart has spent the last several years earning his MFA from GCSU. Aside from poetry, Zach works as an editor and is an avid photographer.

Deceased, it was obvious he did not want to do what he did.
Industrious, peaceable, sober, frugal, he sat in a blue serge suit.
On the tray beside him, they found a leather book,
bookmarked by an extinguished cigar and an apple core.
On page 55, where the book was opened, were the underlined words,
“The children converse around the campfire.
I am glad we have stayed a second night.”

A Polar Question Posed

One morning, I looked out of my kitchen window.
The biggest baby in the world sat with a shipload of dimples,
treble the amount of an average baby.
It is a mighty mean sort of man who abandons a baby,
but meaner would be to deny a child was gnawing
an unsold hoe in my garden. It would be a stiff one soon.
Wide indeed had been the growth of the boy,
for by the time I stepped outside, the immense fellow
had turned to Soda and tackled her in the tomatoes,
biting the bitch. I’m not crazy about striking babies
and surely this was a difficult proposition.
The world is of broken numbers and an honest Jerseyman
as myself, and not crazy too, I found myself reaching
for the stone instead of the chivalrous tissue.
I tried to catch a soul but my hand slipped
and perhaps he may die.

Masin Persina

Some of Masin Persina’s poems can be read at elimae, Everyday Genius, InDigest, Leveler and Sixth Finch. He lives in Oakland.

dripping sediment stalactites
that the moths watched,
drooled at, eyes swallowing

a wealth of royal light. These pale
moths, dressed to seem butterflies,
were taught to be hounds, were

herding humans into mountain caves.
Daily their blood would stream out
silver, flow to the monarch

and his glistening lips. The men’s hands
are raw from burying themselves,
their mercury mouths beseech gods

but the prayers blocked
by wings above them, unfolding
to spread pollen and reveal

colors arranged like a coat of arms,
images of men lying in mines and
choking on flowers.

Brandon Amico

Brandon Amico is a writer from Manchester, New Hampshire whose poetry has been featured in or is forthcoming in several literary magazines, including Amethyst Arsenic, Northern New England Review and Borderline. Brandon is an editor of Aegis, the University of New Hampshire’s student literary magazine. He is an undergraduate business student there as well, and spent one semester studying abroad in Osaka, Japan.

There was the night we splashed our way to waters deeper
than we cared to measure, unfazed by the seaweed
tangled in our toes, the absence of light on the shore,
the hesitant proximity of our lissome bodies.

There was the time we hurled a fistful of rocks
over the roofless wall of the building we claimed
was haunted, hoping to stir our blood, jitter our skin,
rile our breaths to euphoric exhaustion,

that physical residue of unabashed imagination.
Back then we believed in made-up stories,
enhanced their details as we passed them on,
new versions that were always their own truths.

Today my truth lies in those childhood moments,
the dark warmth of the ocean, the jagged edges
of the rocks, the dripping line of sweat above your lips
as we ran from ghosts—images that morphed throughout the years
yet somehow rest in my mind as untouched memory.

Silent Hours

What are we to do with these hours
of clacking and ticking and waiting for a break
in the rhythm of our breaths?

What are we to do with the air conditioner’s hum,
the grandfather clock’s pendulum swinging
like a child’s leg from a tall chair, fooling our eyes
away from any kind of introspection?

No a-ha! moments in the droll creak of the stairs,
the expanding and contracting of the doorframes.
(If only we dared to remember they’re food for termites.)

One would almost hope for snow,
then there’d be a reason to plop our minds on the rug
since there’s no escaping winter.

Instead, the shades must be drawn, the kettle
left empty on the stove, the clothes strewn
like shed skin in the closet because what are we to do
but wait for these hours to hush themselves into slumber?

Finding Muses in Key West

This corner Key West bar feels like a movie set
shrouded in breeze cocktails, unbuttoned shirts
and dirty sandals, a set for palm tree-shaded tourists
to invoke their tropical dreams: tempt improbability
with a smile and the measured raising of a glass.

Amidst this scene you stand deliberately
in a corner, your hair covering too much of your face,
the cigarette in your hand moving through your fingers
like a helpless dancer. The leftovers of your conversation
play in my ears like a jukebox tune I’ve chosen

and I can’t help thinking you are momentary,
a vision to make poets of us all, to unshackle our desires,
make us hope you are real and believe
we have finally found our muse.

Dariel Suarez

Dariel Suarez was born in Havana, Cuba, where he lived until 1997. He’s currently an MFA candidate at Boston University and will be teaching creative writing at the Boston Arts Academy this fall. Dariel’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Gargoyle, SmokeLong Quarterly, The 2River View, Versal, The Coachella Review, Midway Journal, and JMWW, among others. Dariel was the featured poet in New Mirage Journal’s latest Spring issue, and his work has been included in the book Tigertail, A South Florida Annual: Florida Flash, due for publication in October, 2011. He’s currently completing a collection of stories set in his native country as well as a poetry chapbook.

Lane Falcon

Lane Falcon recently received her MFA in poetry form Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been published in SOFTBLOW, 2 River View, 42 Opus, Pebble Lake Review, Holly Rose Review, Wicked Alice Poetry Journal, and more. She lives in New York and grew up in Chicago and Virginia.

Amorak Huey

Amorak Huey recently left the newspaper business after 15 years as a reporter and editor. He teaches creative and professional writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, and his poems have appeared recently in Indiana Review, The Southern Review, Right Hand Pointing, kill author, and other journals. You can follow him on Twitter: @amorak.

Ari Feld

Ari Feld was born and grew to young manhood in the Midwest. He got his MFA from Umass Amherst and moved to Barcelona. This summer he’ll be back in the states.

when a stream of yellow blurs
startles our designs as they
streak in and out of a magic hole

what are these yellow-black flies
defying our childish ken darting in
and out              luring us closer and closer

and of course one of us tosses
a half-eaten apple it plops over the hole
the yellow current jams and swells
before our astonished eyes

when a distant shriek

and the booming of giant steps
breaks our spell and we’re snatched
into the air in frenzied embrace
and we zoom away like a rocket
from an exploding planet

the billowing yellow cloud
was never seen again
the rest of that summer

but as we tramped in red and orange leaves
we never tired of stopping and staring
at that empty hole                  wondering
when the striped darts
would again
arise.

Peter Venable

Besides college publications, I have been published in Chrysalis, Crucible, Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum, The Roll-Schola Contemplationis, American Vedantist, The Christian Communicator (5-11) and in forthcoming issues of The Christian Communicator, The Penwood Review, and Ancient Paths. I’m 64, happily married, exercise, work as an addiction and mental health counselor, and trust the Messiah.

About the author:

John Kuligowski currently lives and writes in the the core of the Midwest, otherwise known as the Armpit of God.

This woman’s only got one boot.
This man’s got two boots but only

one foot. This is how the story ends:
everyone gets married.

Later, everyone dies. In between
the pony delivers its secret payload

and the war is won,
but still in the night

the great noose tightens
and even the birds hunker down,

those whose instinct
is to fly. Even the dodo.

Even the chicken crossing the road
to its doom-laced punch line.

Every good joke requires
something important be left out:

the poison-tipped rapier,
the blank page at your eulogy.

Slowly and without much fuss,
you’re reborn as a white whale –

I think someone’s looking for you.

The Long Goodbye

The strangers meet on the train,
which is one familiar way
to begin the end.
In between is a great love affair,
a midnight run to Mexico,
slighted children who grow up
knowing a true thing about the world,
how it rushes away from you
while night rushes in
though that too ends
before you want it to
and you’re left to sort through
all the ugly, jarring new lingo.
Straight talk for teens
includes telling them about
the nasty sex germs they already have
and the difference between
its and it’s. Stay, you say
to the leaves turning in the rain,
to the woman who has already left
in the quiet hush of snow
that was being built
while you had your back to the sky.
Next thing you know
no one meets on trains anymore.
This isn’t even your house.

Brad Liening

Brad Liening is the author of Ghosts and Doppelgangers (Lowbrow Press) and several chapbooks, including We Are Doomed: Dispatches from the City of the Future (InDigest Editions). He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two cats.

Big belly
Open hands
Brown eyes
Laugh lines

No shoes
Not very tall
Ponytail
Wrinkled robe

The kind of person
who gets frowned at,
whispered about:
Is that a woman or a man?

CABBAGE CURE

Stuff the leaves inside your bra
to dry up breastmilk.
They’re shaped just right to cup your boob.
Feels like a frozen underwire.
Green ruffles might peek out: this is not the day
for that little black dress.
Pull your sweatshirt
over the wrinkly lumps, and pray you don’t
get in a car wreck.
Those nice EMTs have seen
every brand of dirty
panties, but never the likes of you.

About the author:

My previous publication credits include Edgz, RiverSedge, Kansas City Voices, Lucid Moon, and several other print and on-line magazines. I’m the author of a chapbook, Waiting for Miracles (Village Books Press, 2007).

Judith Skillman

Judith Skillman is the author of thirteen collections of poetry, most recently
The White Cypress, Cervena Barva Press, 2011. She is the recipient of awards from the Academy of American Poets, Washington State Arts Commission, and other organizations. Her work has appeared in Poetry, FIELD, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, The Midwest Quarterly, and many other venues. Skillman holds an M.A. in English Literature from University of Maryland, and lives in Kennydale, Washington. For more on her work, please see www.judithskillman.com

Crimson lines
kiss
my pale flesh,

a river works over
my ribcage.

Birthmarks,
moles,
other imperfections
re-rendered
once washed and healed
rest upon me
as a new snowfall.

About the author:

I am a poet based in Edinburgh, my writing has appeared on a number of blogs including (most notably) New Wave Vomit and (most frequently) my own (jdawinslow.tumblr.com)

because the cauterized top will bend to you, and because you
             destroy something whole. And I think: they have not

visited your grave, if they use dessert as a way to grasp what
              you did. If they had felt with their knees the living

grass, they’d know it is not entirely unlike anything, would be
              lost in the words, as we’re meant to be, in this language

we created. This labyrinth we escape into when words to ask
              for what we want fail our lips. These days I want only

chocolate layer cake. Not because life is layered. Not because
              they have the same smooth finish. Not because of sugar,

nor poetry, nor because metaphors can be scraped from every
              surface. Simply, it was the last sweetness on your tongue.

Your suitcase sways on the porch swing.
Even the house seems to list,
as if it were built of driftwood
instead of deadwood.

We have a daughter in college and a mortgage.
Your body can no longer work. All night, I hold you
like dead leaves in my fists
until the moon gives up on the last breath of yesterday
held in my lungs.

You say your return is as reliable as the wood ducks
who raise their babies every year in the pond grasses
across the driveway.

You take ten minutes to get out of bed,
pause, convince your joints you can walk.
I ask for one more day, you shake your head.

I help you down to the bay.
The day is unseasonably clear, almost tropical.
You perch on a log,
unclench in the heat.

The low tide has left a plain of wet sand and derelict trees.
I begin to build something in the hope of filling myself.
First a Kon-Tiki deck of driftwood.
Then, circular walls piled higher
that suddenly tumble down in a hollow rumble.

I build again, learn the tolerance of wood for staying in place—
finish an igloo of ribs and fingers
as the horizon harvests a pumpkin-sun.

I turn and you have crawled up a tangle of branches and trunks—
chasing the light upward from a darkened shore
your arms sunning out as if you want this brittle wood
to find buds and leaves.

Soon, my dome drifts out on the evening tide,
keeps itself intact as it twists.
The sun-burned Pacific promises
to set it on fire. I feel the breaking waves
at the bay’s mouth in my legs, my ribs, my teeth
as they splinter this home
I cannot live in.

Steve Williams

Steve lives and works in Portland, Oregon with a lovely woman who writes and edits much better than he but refuses to admit it. Together, they host a reading series, a critique group open to the public, go to as many poetry events as humanly possible and teach creative writing to seniors in assisted living.

my tumorous gland
call her Echidna
soft lumpy cold hairy beast
she is sitting in a lab
carved tissue thin
under glass slides
I don’t miss
my little beast
she used to growl at night
as she curled into herself
her spines flattening
against my soft skin
she’s not the mother of monsters
she’s an unwanted child
of my body
she’s under microscopes
pieces of her pink as petals

please say something kind
before you turn out the light

Lucy Simpson

Lucy Simpson lives in Seattle with her two children and husband. She teaches writing to adolescents at her local community center, home-schools her own children, writes and sculpts. Her poems have appeared in Harlot’s Sauce, Poetry Bone and Gargoyle, among other publications. Her website is One Thousand Days and Nights

If I surprise you, it won’t be on a Sunday.
It will be on a Monday when our blue laundered lives
yield to free space in overcrowded closets,
and we discover a gossamer possibility
spun across a wire hanger from the light
at the back of the mind. Everything else
will darken, and the starched white collars
of familiarity will melt, and we’ll pack
everything we’ve intended to look at
for years and years, at last finding room
in a small traveling bag. It won’t be easy
to forsake all the known quantities,
to say good-bye to your mother living
in the Deep South of everything
we’ve left behind. And it will not be easy
to write a final note of explanation
to those already on the Interstate
who’ve lost their bearings and who linger
at rest stops, stretching and calculating miles.
Three thousand thoughts away, you’ll call me,
forgetting what day it is, my voice sounding
as strange as a foreign climb up broken
lighthouse steps at Point Reyes. You’ll say:
Give me the light that just came on,
we’re the dispossessed now, I know it,
and none of the tailored suits fit any more,
and I’ve thrown away all the safety pins
that kept the visible invisible. And I will
say to you: Burn all the recipes and abandon
your home in the suburbs. Give up your friends,
give up your family, rename.

Justin Rouse

Justin Rousse holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama. He has written two novels, a collection of short fiction, and is completing a book of poetry. He formerly lived in Paris and is currently teaching at a college of health sciences in Saudi Arabia.