Issue #59
Eliza Gilbert
As Quiet
It’s the oldest dorm on campus, and the floorboards
have lifted, he says. Risen, mouth open,
crooking caulk and gypsum. It’s cold out,
he reminds us. They have nowhere else to go.
In the service request form, I tell the text box
about the BB-gun pellets of shit in our closets
and cupboards and that we are afraid
they will chew through our souls once they finish
with our socks. The exterminator comes back, tells us again
about the floorboards, the lifting, the warping, a funhouse mirror
of baseboard. We show him the three neat droppings
they left in our favorite shot glass. He laughs.
I do not know much
about war but the buzz
of another kill is war
enough for me.
Come dark they throw bacchanals beneath the radiator,
the night shivering with vermin joy. My sock drawer
is a shack of Dionysus, full of life, full of holes, honeycomb
-punched wool. We forage
through Google for humane resolutions
because Madi hates violence and we wish
we were as good as her. The floor grows slick
with peppermint oil—Quora says they hate the smell
of Christmas. December. Doily frost
webbing the windows. We wake in the night
to find them lapping at the pools of peppermint. They chew
through Madi’s Woman Against the Patriarchy tote bag
and we realize they are misogynists. Even Madi cedes to cruelty.
We Google bloody phrases, line our walls
with small black box theaters,
and in the night we no longer wake
—What is war if not a sleepwalker?—
to merrymaking but to the banshee-screech
of a kill, another
kill, another kill. I dream about someone baiting me
into my coffin with a dab of peanut butter.
Count the dead. Sepultures at the communal trash can.
They return, we kill, they return, we drop
the departed off at the black plastic morgue every morning. I whisper
to their little bodies to make them understand
that we are not safe, we’re killers
with access to the Internet,
and the peanut butter is a noose, one of many,
and the bread crumbs lead to the witch, and oh,
poor children of the woodcutter,
I am the witch.
Eliza Gilbert is a freshman at Vassar College who is currently working on her BA in English. Her poetry is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic.
Holly Day
Midnight
He calls me in the middle of the night and wants to talk about serious things,
asks when I’m going to leave my husband, asks if that’s still the plan
says he has space for me in his house, this place I’ve never visited
halfway across the country. He says there’s plenty of room for me
I just have to come.
It would be so much easier to have this conversation if, instead of a person,
this voice was coming from a tiny man inside my phone receiver
perhaps sitting at a desk in a teeny-tiny chair, his hands cupped around his mouth
as he shouts these things into my gigantic ear.
Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Appalachian Journal, Analog SF (Vol XCII #1&2), Earth’s Daughters (forthcoming #95) and her recent book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body, and Bound in Ice. She teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.
Michael Sandler
Toddler Drinking Chocolate Milk
We notice the fingers first, young tendrils
curled round the plastic cup as they might cling
to a trellis, pinkies groping for a limb—
what chance this vessel risks slipping away?
It covers his nose—amazing he can breathe, swills
ruffling those cheeks as if aware he’ll soon let go
of sweetness, that it doesn’t pour from every rim—
what chance this vessel risks slipping away?
After it’s empty and he flickers a smile,
a mustache remains. Loath to wipe it off, we gaze…
until, lured by a toy, he recedes into a distant room—
what chance this vessel risks slipping away?
Michael Sandler is the author of a poetry collection, The Lamps of History (FutureCycle Press 2021). His work has appeared in scores of journals, including recently in Stickman Review, River Heron Review, and Stirring: A Literary Collection. Michael lives near Seattle.
Rich Murphy
Immanent Courage
Such guts that clamber to climb out
from flesh rattle at the bone cage
for a glimpse at the whole picture
for touchstone and background sound:
A taste from the boreal,
a sniff over a genome dome.
The futility inspires hat-tipping
by the few veterans who pass by.
Most hip joints, accessorized
even with heads, assume without
question and stroll to the bus stop
where the 8:40 arrives on time.
The illusory snapshots
or pixeled hormone movies,
recording a momentary locale
for the family entertainment
and edification, settle in emotion.
Stuck within five senses and galaxies,
the made-up minute in breath
heaves to adjust for the sun and moon.
Rich Murphy’s poetry has won The Poetry Prize at Press Americana twice (Americana, 2013, and The Left Behind, 2021) and the Gival Press Poetry Prize (Voyeur, 2008). Other books include Space Craft (2021) and Practitioner Joy (2020) by Wipf and Stock, and Prophetic Voice Now (2020) by Common Ground Research Network.
Emily Polson
Home in Time for Sunday Service
—Des Moines, IA
I bring Evangeline to church with me, because I’ll make more sense to her in my original context, against the backdrop of my creation myth. We start off easy. I introduce her to Jack Zimmer, the elderly door greeter who drives a mustang and likes all the photos she tags me in on Facebook. Then into the maw of the sanctuary, where Pastor Marty leads praise and worship with an evangelical fervor I almost thought memory exaggerated: Lord, write on our hearts the name of the exact person you most want us to reach. I whisper my own name, call after the child who danced down the horizon of these halls until she was a speck of herself in the distance, who wrote her name on the concrete foundation of this building, who gave everything that was taken. The congregation shifts when Pastor Marty gives the altar call, Lord, I will do whatever it takes to reclaim myself for myself. I’ll confront the wolf in sheep’s clothing if I must. Pastor Phil takes the podium for the sermon, and I brace for heat and hellfire, a lecture on sin, submission, and bloody sacrifice; instead, he talks about being from Memphis in the 60s, admits the place buried prejudice he must work his whole life to undo. Surprised, I look at Evangeline, my witness to this tear in the veil, the crack in the glass. A door I can now close gently. Pastor reminds us that seeking is a two-way process; pursue the light already given.
Emily Polson’s poems have appeared in Epoch Press, The Daily Drunk, Capsule Stories, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. Originally from Iowa, she now lives in Brooklyn and works as an editor at Scribner. You can find her on Twitter @emilycpolson.
Kalisse L. Van Dellen
The Bird & the Buffalo
She worries the wound, frays the edges
to drink her own fill of dark oxblood. She drags
bug bites into open, festering gashes along
shoulders and spines.
And like the bird, I studied him until I could measure
the repeating pulse: his mind turning. Now I intercept
his intrusions, pull at the hurt I can see until I expose
lifeblood. I take his time.
Just another predator.
Kalisse L. Van Dellen writes about where she’s been and what she’s lost. She graduated from Belhaven University and currently resides as a Canadian expatriate in Greenville, SC. Her work has most recently been featured in Capsule Stories, Sage Cigarettes, 3 Moon Magazine, and Mississippi’s Best Emerging Poets.
Dawn Rhodes
Sleep Thief
shadow creeps
across my ceiling
lingering fingers
claw my linen creases
nudging senses
her earthen scent
heady droplets
her rattling cackle
pecks scalpel tip
to shoulder blade
till my eyes ping wide
– a hippo yawning
screen-stained
gnawing at a loose skein
she swings hypnotic glances
echo
vie
multiply
my shame swollen
by unticked lists
forgotten emails
trophies of failure
surging firefly swarms
into another day
and I press replay
Dawn is a poet, screenwriter, and voice over agent based in Hastings, England. As a screenwriter she is co-writing a six-part comedy drama and co-writing her second feature film. As a poet she is collecting poems for her first pamphlet.
Nathanael O’Reilly
Reprieve
At twelve twenty-five on a Saturday
I walk east in my laceless Converse
from the Discount Tire store on the I-20
frontage road, my bank balance four-
hundred and ninety dollars lower, uphill
through the vacant lot, climb over rocks,
step around cactus through dry brown
grass past empty thirty-two-ounce Styrofoam
Whataburger cups, a prone For Lease sign
and tangles of Texas barbed wire, through
the strip mall parking lot by Mattress Firm,
the Cotton Patch Café and Great Clips,
across expanses of cracked concrete baking
in ninety-seven-degree heat to the Starbucks
on South Main, seeking iced coffee, Siggi’s
Icelandic skyr, a reprieve from Texas
summer heat and a quiet place to read
poetry, listen to Pearl Jam, peruse the latest
report on the India v. England test match,
check email, scroll through Facebook, Instagram
and Twitter, catch up on the lives of family,
friends, colleagues and strangers
while bearded, tattooed workers in grey
shorts, shirts and caps install four new tires.
Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet residing in Texas. His books include Boulevard, (Un)belonging, BLUE, Preparations for Departure, Distance, Suburban Exile and Symptoms of Homesickness. His poetry appears in journals & anthologies from fourteen countries, including Anthropocene, Bealtaine, Cordite, The Elevation Review, The Madrigal, Mascara, Ponder Review (vol 5.2), Sheila-Na-Gig and Westerly.