Issue #50

Laura King

Self-portrait fifty-five

1.
She drinks

a thousand flowers
in a day

hovers high
dips   sips

moves
or dies

2.
The hardest part was the breath.
No, the sitting.

Now she looks forward to Savasana:
She practices death.

3.
The tulip tree stretches

salutation to the sun

grips the earth
drinks deep

Laura King holds a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City and is currently studying in the MFA program for Creative Writing at Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. She has studied with Eduardo Corral and David Biespiel.

Jeffrey Thompson

-ology

The first bone was a surprise,
white chip set among gray
pebbles and sun-bright flecks
of mica—an egg-shaped shard,
holes for eyes, holes for fangs.
So I pried it loose myself
and dug for the rest, carefully:

One dust-thin layer per year
a little pile of dirt had coiled
round a tunnel of rattlesnake,
muzzled its quick ends, gripped
its slow middle, crushed it
down to an x-ray. Eventually.
I scraped each piece clean,
soaked them in soapy water,
stored them in a plastic bag—.
There was a snake for years
in our glove compartment.

Jeffrey Thompson was raised in Fargo, ND, and educated at the University of Iowa, where he received a BA in English and Philosophy, and Cornell Law School. He lives in Phoenix, AZ, where he practices public interest law. His hobbies include reading, hiking, and photography.

Anonymous

Without bees

Without bees we would not be here.
Everything starts small. A ball made

from pollen, saliva & honey. A lump
in the chest. The spread of stamen

dander. Food crops grow like the number
of visits to the hospital. So many tests

you feel you’re back to school. The results
handed over as if they were a watercolour

portrait, still wet. It can be reworked, they
say. Then they cut you open, try to soak back

the paint overflown into the adjoining sections.
Later they call you weekly. They name it

therapy but it reminds you of a certain guru
worshipped by two conflicting communities who,

when he died and flowers appeared in place
of his dead body, split the bloom into halves:

torched one, buried the other in the ground.
At the time the relation between bees and

pollination was not yet found. So the hives
remained. None was incinerated, none inhumed.

The guru’s microscopic remains stuck in
the black & the yellow hairs.

Shelley Jones

Definitions

She says there have been others
and I believe her, though I see
no evidence of their being here:
no shoes tucked under the bed,
no loose threads in my skirt, the hem
taken up or down for someone else.

She says she is not my mother
and I believe her, though this word
means nothing to me.

Is a mother like the moth, fluttering
in the dark, her wings protecting
the light until she suffocates it,
furry body singed in the flames?

Or is it something like a mop, a wet, tangled
mess that weeps while it works and requires
much wringing and sore muscles?

Or is it like the moss, sprouting up in shadows,
drowning along stones in the creek,
so soft a mat I lay my head in its lap
when the day is too harsh, too bright
for my weak eyes and I fall asleep, my hair
plaited into the green and growing spores?

Whatever a mother is, she is not mine, and
we both seem relieved. She says the word
with squinched lips as though she has filched
an unripened raspberry from the vine
that grows wild along the gate to the pasture.

There is sourness in her voice
when she says the word, like spoilt milk.
I am grateful she is not my mother,
though this word still rolls around in my mouth like
stones, inedible, my hunger unsated.

Shelly Jones, PhD (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Delhi, where she teaches classes in mythology, folklore, and writing. Her speculative work has previously appeared in Podcastle, New Myths, The Future Fire, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @shellyjansen.

Melody Wang

My mother teaches herself to swim

one summer. She shocks everyone,
              including herself, with her grim
                            resolve to swim — first aided

by flimsy foam noodle, chloride-
              coated sweat cascading over
                            the grooves of her face, grit

oozing out of every pore. No prior pursuits,
              paralyzed by the fear of drowning
                            her entire life up to that point

but something must have snapped
              inside her after my father’s death —
                            maybe she suddenly yearned for her body

to feel weightless and so heavy and wooden at once
              to struggle against the watery purgatory
                            to ache: to feel something again

it takes half a century for her to learn
              to embrace the silken solace of water:
                            the way it changes her voice

into something ethereal, as waves churn
              around us. Her aging dog side-eyes us
              and circles the perimeter, tense. We both

strain to hear my mother’s wavering voice
              as she speaks of the drowned and damned
                            decade that forced us to swallow

my father’s absence — how it snuck
              into too-sunny days and my brother’s
                            waning smile, entirely too evident

in each school year’s plastic
              photo surrounded by
                            the pristine grins

of his peers who have
              yet to know loss or the longing
                            that clung to us like a shroud

Melody Wang currently resides in sunny Southern California with her dear husband. In her free time, she dabbles in piano composition and also enjoys hiking, baking, and playing with her dogs. She tweets @MelodyOfMusings.