Issue #63

Matt Dube

Table Read

If by truce we’re made
whole if by truce we’re
made to see the cracks
where the light if
by truce we’re made
trite if by truce
our struggles made
small, our nights
under rocket skies
and thunder under the
floor if by truce the
triton the two tone flag
flags if by truce we’re seen
in history as history
even heroes until if
by truce we see us surrender
if by truce we are made
less diminished partitioned
informal checkpoints formalized
and internally displaced
people if by truce expect
more of the same or worse
We reject your terms

Matt Dube’s poems have appeared in Interstice (2019), Rattle, Westchester Review, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and American lit at a small mid-Missouri university, and he reads submissions for the online lit mag, Craft.

Kevin Hüttenmüller

& cry out names of the ones they swallowed

great big dark over soil / slick handsome babe gliding
in and out / of terrain / seasick mother / algae-tongue
pitchfork-tongued / soon they breathtake / like rustling
the cold lantern light / the boy no bigger / than a bumble-
bee / at the center of buzzing / lightshine ripe with
soft fruits and riverbeds / dined with sweets / cupcake
mountain / lollipop tree hanging over / rawboned
lake / breadcrumbs in the sheets / skeleton in the
streets / four-chambered mouth / foul and restless over
the window ledge / ribs popped open / naked like
marrow the boy / becomes a silhouette of his first body

Kevin Hüttenmüller (he/him) is a writer and student currently studying special education in Germany. Their work is published in Free Verse Revolution, Miniskirt Magazine and Sledgehammer Lit. You can find them on instagram @the.cellphone.novelist

Marina Vladova

Marcescence

But having shed his human form he became everything else.
At my conjuring he didn’t mind slouching for miles in the passenger seat.
And in a soft shearling as if a coat was dialect,
He offered heartfelt footnotes and affirmations.
He appeared in harmony with the late afternoon light—
Linen pants, dress shoes, a hand full of fallen branches, that smile.
And then years later with the right optical bend, he became
The coat and the branches and eventually the light.

Born in Odesa, Ukraine, Marina finds herself thinking & writing about gooseberries, resettlement, and migratory loss. She has over 25 years of writing, teaching, and publishing experience with poems forthcoming in Sage Cigarettes Magazine. Her work integrates poetry & storytelling into clinical settings. She’s also an adjunct instructor in the Northeast Ohio MFA consortium.

Erin Olson

The Constellation of Sciatica

Round about my left hip and femur lies the constellation of Sciatica,
a downward spiral of burning stars, embedded beneath muscle,
in the deep memory and storm of nerve bundles.

My hand travels across the smooth, taut moon, tracing
the tender, burning suns that wind down around my leg, shooting
through the thick, dark space that is the cosmos of my musculature.

The constellation speaks to me in pain and jagged light – no comfort in the rough galaxy.
Sciatica a sign that coils like barbed wire, each star a dagger in the tender flesh
that keeps me conscious in the hushed hours of night.

My fingers are the compass that plots each point, activates the dark mythology of the
constellation. Pressure points release the epic drama
in punctuated pauses of relief.

From somewhere in my cortex a clipper charts its course and sails into
an electrical storm of synapses and memories,
imagining a wave of light, pulling through ionic air, cheeks puffed out and billowing,
spreading warmth like honey, like an ancient song,
to soothe the hungry, raging stars.

Mind expands space, pushes out the daggers, those burning suns,
and my hip expands, bones melt, muscles sing.
The mythology of my ego is disproved, forgotten.
In the absence of pain I am everywhere.

The Death of a Zeppelin

Egos, like zeppelins, hover and glide
through these dusty, grand halls,
bumping by one another
as they move up and down
the sweeping staircase, or squeeze
to fit into the ancient elevator.
Academic giants,
fragile tissue craniums constrained
by a language that creates its
own atmosphere.

And I am bitter, like marigolds,
exhausted by my mediocrity,
my otherness.
Bits of my professional body
strewn on the staircase, lying limp in the dusty
hallways, bursting into flames
outside the library mall.

I tried to construct the framework —
filaments of language, theories, methodologies
— I grabbed a strand,
began weaving my gargantuan balloon head
from library shelves and lecture halls.
Words and words — miles of words.
Someone else’s architecture.

And then it all began to fall apart —
in the emergency room at 3am,
my son slow-breathing on a nebulizer.
The language came undone, snapping
and bursting around me in a rush of fire
and salt water, and
my zeppelin imploded.

Now, the dirigibles are bobbing
and nodding in their chambers,
well-protected,
as I go careening, scorched and submerged,
but tasting the sweet, sharp
truth of oxygen.

Erin Olson is a licensed professional counselor, poet, and gardener. She lives in southeastern Wisconsin with her husband, son, cat, and a growing variety of plant species.

John Muro

Ash Wednesday

I meant to give you the gift
of tall Gothic windows struck
blind by sun, well-worn banisters
of polished mahogany adorning
stairwells of glazed stone, cobbled
courtyards and walls of brick dust,
hoping fate would be kind, only
to recoil and swallow hard seeing
that time had long ago turned
and left, and that all of this had
drifted up and away from its
urban lattice into a brass-white
sky, leaving a hole to be filled,
floating between blown out buildings —
the stale air littered with ash —
while a stream, dark as Lethe,
quietly flowed past, wind-wrinkled
water separating the worlds of
forgotten origins and ill-timed endings.

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2021, John’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous literary journals, including Acumen, Barnstorm, Grey Sparrow (#39), Neologism, River Heron and Sky Island. His first two books of poems, In the Lilac Hour and Pastoral Suite, were released by Antrim House in 2020 and 2022, respectively.

David Chorlton

The Four o’clock Owl

It’s four in the morning; sleep floats
through the house while
outside the stars part
to let the owl’s soft call pass through.
Darkness has a gentle touch,

it whispers what daylight feels compelled
to shout. The owl moves
with mystery beneath its wings
the way dreams hover
in a mind with its lights switched off.
From the debris scattered by memories

the owl picks up the details of an accident
and beds them down
among the bones of mice. It takes a page
from a private phone book

and calls every number.
It guides the souls
of departed pets
back to their feeding dishes.
The pieces don’t fit. They are real but don’t
recognize each other. An unpaid bill

rests beside a postcard
from many years ago. Lost keys
have gone searching for a door to open.
Only the calls continue, following

the path through a novel
begun at bedtime, but too long to read
to the end, the path that climbs moonlight

without fear of the dark.

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems often reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His newest collection of poems is Unmapped Worlds from FutureCycle.