ISSUE #18
Susan Jo Russell
Self-Portrait with Hands
When I grip the steering wheel
in traffic, or shut a window against
a cloudburst, my gaze rests
on the veined backs, fine-lined skin loosening
on the bones—…
Jim Henle
Nightbird
it is three forty in the morning and a robin
has begun to sing
I can hear it over the whirring of the fan I use
to soften the sound of trains and traffic
I can hear the robin singing nearby in the dark
or in what darkness there is in the city where
it is never quite dark…
Suzanne Langlois
Fruitless
Summer has barely begun and already
the grass is baked brown by the heat,
a wreath of dried flowers laid on a grave.
They’re removing names of flowers
from the dictionary to make room
for words that describe ways to die…
David P. Miller
Who Watches Over Me
The Angel of Good Enough Most Of The Time.
The Angel of This Will Do For Now.
Yes, they wedged the shower stall
into the kitchen. They’ll inform you
that plumbing
is plumbing. They shoulder-tap me
when two of my three pairs of jeans are torn…
Daniela Molnar
CHORUS 4 / ELSEWISE
If I can look
this morning at my eyes
what does the rest, elsewise
have to do?
Metronome beat of rain in drainpipe
creamy dogwood bracts pointing all
four directions
mourning dove mourning dove mourning
in the zinc-bright rain
a heron flies to the city’s last swamp…
Cynthia Dewi Oka
For Wanda Maximoff, Who Stands Accused of Necromancy
Yellow spills from her, weaves into the figure
of her beloved, proof
that abandonment is something the
abandoned can reverse. He is
indestructible as air inside the walls of
her wishing, …
Elizabeth Crowell
Your Browsing History
If you like this gray heather
sweater the color of the weather
you might also like it in light blue
with dark brown buttons,
like a line of birds in the sky…
Dennis Hinrichsen
[dominion] [Kroger’s] [with Godzilla and a Diamond Dog]
And then I fell in love. With you. All the precepts clicking
into place. It didn’t matter Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel”
was the Muzak—it was simulation. The gallery
of Kroger products like Warhol rip-offs—
miniaturized and stacked for ease
of replication. A Tik Tok challenge with meat—…
Dan Leach
Fist Fight With Older Sibling
blood back then
tasted like pennies
it was only red
in your mouth
once dried
on your shirt
it looked brown
as any mud…
Marita O’Neill
Arsonist’s Blues
The matches ask, do all crimes begin with a knot
in the stomach? I wonder as I stand, match in hand
and consider phosphorus, consider the scratch drag
of potassium chlorate itching for friction and light,
consider the house, its cerulean shingles, its tentative
walls, crooked drainpipes, and remember you inside…
REVIEW: Victoria Korth
Review of “clawing at the grounded moon” by Darren Demaree
Darren C. Demaree’s recent collection, the extended prose-poem sequence clawing at the grounded moon, opens with a syntactically and metaphorically breathless line that in its wildness gives a taste of what is to come. There is no stopping place in this collection and very little place to stand, no clearly emerging narrative or even sustained emotive arc to orient us. Dizzying, often entirely nonsensical, yet strangely compelling. I am reminded of the image of the poet in Plato as moonstruck, possessed by mania, filled with divine madness…