Issue #15

Sam Rose

Forearm

at the bar private booth he traces the inside of her forearm long lines
up and down runs slow circles just below the crook of her elbow she
closes her eyes and listens to the happy silence that rests in the
small gaps between them the space where their hands don’t
quite meet despite entwined fingers the space between
their shoulders where she considers resting her
head but doesn’t quite because she doesn’t
want to move realises she isn’t really
breathing doesn’t want to disturb
the world they have created as
he traces the inside of her
forearm with soft fingers
and the gaps between
them keep getting
smaller.

Sam Rose is a writer and editor from Northamptonshire, England. She is the editor of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine and The Creative Truth. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines. Sam is a cancer survivor and primarily uses her experiences with this to write poetry and memoir.

Marc Meierkort

CREATIONISM: IT’S A START

Adam sits idly under a tree,
one that he hasn’t sat underneath before.

The shade covers more of him,
keeps his thoughts crisp, unburnt.

He investigates the plants, runs his fingers
over their odd lines, ridges, imperfect points

of connection to the supporting limbs.
He reckons himself a modern Darwin.

He names the new shapes according
to his whims of preference. The tree

gives him ideas. He knows enough
not to question them.

Marc writes, “I am a life-long Chicago resident and currently teach English and Film Studies at Thornton Fractional North High School in Calumet City, IL, where I have taught for the past 19 years. I currently live in the western suburbs of Chicago.”

John Riley

How Much of This Is True

The man came to our sangha and died.
No one was prepared for it.
I was in a bad half-lotus, old hips aching,
when he toppled over across from me.
I saw it first, I’m sure. He fell forward
neatly, with no sound,
and before there was a response
it was as though a shadow rose . . .
or it was merely my breath
I saw lift from the circle
though my breath has never lasted so long
and comes much slower now.
I learned to measure each breath
not as a starving man measures his food
but as a careful child
caught beneath the lives that came before
learns the swiftest way to fold away.

John Riley works in educational publishing. His poetry and fiction have been published in Smokelong Quarterly, Metazen, Blue Five Notebook, Connotation Press, Willows Wept Review, The Dead Mule, and many other journals both online and in print.

Mike Davidson

REPOSE REGALIA

A harem of sooty saints
twisted sultry struts
toward heaven’s cage —
dancing Salome ascents
above flaming snakes
of working-stiff sanctity.

Windsor knot hangmen’s
nooses of smoke rose
from the flaming tangle
of neck-ties I burnt
upon alley pavement:
singed sanity sacrifice.

Mike Davidson is a former Public Defender, former bank supervisor, and former college English instructor whose poems have appeared in several journals. He is a past recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award in Poetry.

Aparna Pathak

Instincts

Every relationship loses its charm and dies, sooner or later. This death can be gradual or fortuitous.

thunderstrike —
the miasma
of his hair oil


Aparna Pathak is a freelance writer from India.Some of her achievements includes – Haiku Master of the Month” (April and November 2016) by NHK world TV program – Haiku Masters; 3rd Place, Samurai Haibun contest [UHTS] (2016); Shortlisted in Touchstone awards (2016), and 1st place in fourth Sonic Boom senryu contest.

Gervanna Stephens

Once upon a time there lived people minding their own business?

Sweltering like the melting of the wicked witch
What was wrong with her not wanting Dorothy in Oz?

The “villains” are misunderstood.
They are the indigenous faces
we forget about,
faces that we demonize, perspectives

left unheard because power comes with the new,
the curious,
the Columbus.

Somewhere an invasion is underway,
Middle Passage deemed acceptable transportation,
posh dinners and polite conversations
awakening sleeping truths
from the privilege of the other.

Somewhere, a fairytale is being spilled

a conqueror is called Charming and basic
rights embody props like Once Upon a Time.


Gervanna is a Jamaican poet and proud Slytherin with congenital amputation living in Canada. Her work has appeared/forthcoming in Montreal Writes, Mojave Heart, Empty Mirror, The /tƐmz/, Bone & Ink, TERSE, & WusGood.black. She hates public speaking, has two sisters who are better writers than her & thinks unicorns laugh when we say they aren’t real. Tweets @ gravitystephens

Tucker Lieberman

Readiness

Bits of wildflowers find their way
into my hand and into my dirt.
The purpose of the seeds: to become their parents.

I wish I were ready to swallow and survive
the future. Readiness is three:
believing in my courage,
laying myself open to receive,
having prowess—the charge latent in my muscles,
preconscious of need—to pierce the opposition.

Now I will meet what is going to happen. I am
not ready, except that I know
how to give permission:
a sachet of virtues,
a pliancy of the meek,
an action when the hour strikes.
Maybe they are the same: the permission and the readiness.

What you were is what you will become.
The flowers were magenta, violet, parchment.
The seeds mixed in my pocket. I do not
remember what you are. They sprout
tendrils that slowly unfold tinctured secrets.
You are becoming what you always were.
I water you. I do not remember what you are,
but do not let me stop you.

Tucker Lieberman’s poems have appeared in Snakeskin, Defenestration, and his collections Wild Mushrooms and Brújulabeja. His forthcoming book, Painting Dragons, examines castrated villains in fiction. He is married to the science fiction writer Arturo Serrano. They live in Bogotá, Colombia.

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