Morels ………………….For Tom Proutt In my latest unsuccessful hunt for the unicorn of the woods, I found a two-point buck skull, a square of soapstone, a 1952 Mennen bottle, and a foxhole. Lots of fiddleheads, lots of May apples, and an ant floating in a pool of water in a leaf. A snail slugged its way across the duff as birds and squirrels sang and chittered in the branches above. The dog ran chasing sticks and splashing through the creek bed. I think I may have discovered a spring, but I am not certain: water … Continue reading Morels and Fun, 2 poems by Stuart Gunter→
A soldier brings his torn field jacket to her “So much blown to pieces,” he says. She carries the heavy scent of tobacco and you can almost see the charred buildings in her eyes like gravestones. “There’s always someone who wants to break the world,” she answers. She leads him to her bed again where he can take her to the forgetting places and he strokes her hair and his lips trespass all along her breasts as he claims her for his inviolate country. And later when they share a cigarette —even as a bomb … Continue reading The Ukrainian Seamstress by Gary Beaumier→
Masterpieces are hard, manifestos, conversation pieces are easy. Here’s a woman who does sculptures of babies popping out of toasters, the whole thing drenched in a combination of blue and yellow paint— her statement. And here’s a painter who paints weird purple birds distinctively; he’s good with his brushes, we recognize his paintings, but who needs purple birds? What purpose do they serve? I know we’re not supposed to ask these questions— instead critics will praise the artist’s unique subject and style and people will buy her toasters, his paintings, prominately display them on their … Continue reading Purple Birds by William Heath→
This is the place that emptied my father, sucking him through the tunnel of its straw. Four days into a farewell visit, I’ve overdosed on sunlight, rousing the insomniac within. The grass is gravid with alligators; the air poses as sand; cars scaffold a melted wax of spent bugs. Everywhere, I see darkness edging, shadows twitching to keep pace—the gloom that magics the glass into mirror. Jessica Noyes McEntee is a fiction instructor at Westport Writers’ Workshop in Connecticut and a graduate of Amherst College. Her debut chapbook, Jackie O. Suffers Two Husbands, was published … Continue reading Florida by Jessica McEntee→
….1. France. Poppies blooming blood. Hedged by four sheets strung on wire, my grandparents spent their wedding night, December 1917: a New York married-barracks, moans muffled the night before the men shipped out. Three faces to a porthole on a transport ship. “Fish in a barrel” riflemen would say, sometimes with pity. Who would notice a patient in an Army hospital with a different kind of cough? ….2. Tennessee. Fields overflowing corn. As a girl, my wife heard it from her grandfather. Elmer could bear to tell it only once. He’d turned 18. After morning … Continue reading Pandemic, 1918 by Eric Forsbergh→
“Lose something every day. Accept the fluster . . .” (Elizabeth Bishop) Every once in a while I open one of too-many, tiny boxes, and there you are, bright stab of memory: My brave lover from long ago. I see you exactly as you were then, because time took care to preserve the details, the same way amber traps an insect for eternity. One could almost map the genome from this fossil: golden ring with its garnet chip. I used to wear it on my little finger. There are things we find that were never … Continue reading Reliquary by Annie Stenzel→
It’s wrong to feel lucky when a poplar blooms. …………Branches spit out slender pinks below low clouds. In fields here, we find arrowheads. Ancient whispers on the ridge. One death begs another. …………Axe, arrow, bullet, bomb. A siege of poisoned bolts. Up the road, old battlefields sit surprised, suddenly covered in grey blankets …………of stinging dust. Charming fencerows buried. Once, old soldiers sold poppies, tried to warn us. Some rode to save us. …………Yet Zeus swung back and slung his fire. Capitol’s newly fallen: an ugly man of bare ambition, youths who rose through thunder, … Continue reading It’s Wrong to Feel Lucky by Marjorie Gowdy→
Vigil Outside the nurses’ station, third floor east, twilight spreads its white canopy over the busy avenue of bright buildings. Down the hall, an orderly lofts a pale sheet over a vacant bed. In the next room, the ventilator pulses on, pushing a steady breeze through the cracked wall of a failing lung. In the dim light, the old woman tethered to a fever floats under the fluorescent aura shimmering above her head. Beneath shuttered eyelids, night pools. Right up to the edge. Work Gloves Nothing much to look at lying on the shelf, one … Continue reading Vigil and Work Gloves, 2 poems by Ron Stottlemyer→
Cottonmouth As the boat eased out on the pond, there was just enough light to see pale ribbons of sky rippling in the water. Dad paddled ahead with slow, heavy strokes, but the lives watching from trees, listening in the grass knew what had just arrived. As he rested the paddle on his knees, the boat glided on as if it knew where it was going, pulling a wide scarf of quiet behind it. Then the first deep croak sounded in duckweed near the far bank. When he dipped the paddle over the side to … Continue reading Cottonmouth by Ron Stottlemyer→
Like Portland or is it Austin I am also trying to keep weird. Nobody says keep Oakland weird. It’s got a gentrifying mix with floaters on top and busted bits settling on the bottom and curious pieces swirling suspended. According to Ferlinghetti simile and metaphor make poetry. Ferlinghetti whom I once saw at Brandy Ho’s getting lunch as was I at the counter after having just bought Carlos Fuente’s Terra Nostra as I needed a novel the size, shape and weight of a brick to give my MFA bildungsroman some DNA like Moby Dick, or … Continue reading Master of Fine Arts by Robert Detman→
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