by Wendy Barry From the busy street, full of tourists and their hosts, students and shoppers, I open the door and step into the hallway with the exposed brick painted pale yellow.Cooler than the street, almost subterranean, narrow and long, in a building erected over a century ago, it digs back to the beginning. My…
Category: Uncategorized
Sound Check
by Dominic Dimapilis My heart speaks through my right foot, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, the bass drum pulses through the room. I swing the ride cymbal, tickling it with my right hand, backbeating with my left foot, ting, tsing, ta-ting, tsing, ta-ting. And my soul pours out of my left hand, comping crazy as…
Health and Human Services
By Molly Gustafson Today, one measles death tomorrow, deep-bleached veins then, a leach wrapped on your wrist then, the quiver after punches to the gut then, drips of poison in the water supply then, buried coffins of professors of history then, the unviewed Vantablack television screen. Sallow in rot; it begs to start again. …
Quake
By Molly Gustafson We shouldn’t have earthquakes inChicago. But my mother carries me down to the basement, becausethat’s what you do in an emergency. Ships are freed from their bottles asshelves crash around us, and she covers her head, as if she were under the waves that the ships sailed. I remember hearing a storyof…
At a Lecture on Modern Fiction
By Ihor Pidhainy “Still?”Quiet as I swimin the spin of that one wall(Are you coldhungrydead?)My head bobbing asa buoy in the waterwatching for the kickof those legs,center of warmththis roomboth womb and tombof thought and beingLet me escapethis frigid heat, this lossof a word:this blood and bones,this flesh. About the Author: Born in Canada,Ihor Pidhainy…
Clean
By John Leonard Bullwhip anger, the gravitational pull of tender veins. Steel-purple,like an iris of dawn as I watchyou vanish.Constellations and lovelessness,carved like runes in the pulse of your neck.Draw the Lord’s face in angel dust. Your faith, buried in a hotel nightstand. No conscienceleft to devour, no alarms when the rivergrows teeth and the…
No Sanctuary for American Children
by Lisa M Kendrick In the houses where I grew up, there were battles which volleyed from the wilted grass in the parched backyard of a grey house; onto the faded, brown sofa in a double-wide with a tiny den; and through countless other nondescript spaces I try not to remember. The fights between my…
Endangered Lives
By Ihor Pidhainy mad words, mad words, mad wordswhy don’t you curse me more than you have otherswhy must I bear witness?this cold, cold winter – return to days of my youth when winter lasted well into the spring and snow could be found lurking in summer declivities –you are bringing the children of your…
Volume 2 Issue #1
Poetry Health and Human Services by Molly Gustafson Quake by Molly Gustafson Oniomania by John Leonard Clean by John Leonard Therapy by Wendy Barry Indiana by Pawel Grajnert Thiaroye 44 by Kyle Williams Endangered Lives by Ihor Pidhainy At a Lecture on Modern Fiction by Ihor Pidhainy Fiction Sound Check by Dominic Dimapilis The Pastor’s…
The Pastor’s Wife
By Matthew Wood Carol-Ann was watching the rain run down the window: the paths it cut, the way streaks ran together. The shifting mosaic of it. She held a coffee mug in her left hand, a towel in her right, slowly turning the mug, polishing away the printed logo. Her head throbbed. Then she stopped…