Issue #10

David B. Prather

Barometer

Water, this time,
right up to the front steps,
the stream knotting itself
into uncontrollable spasms.
This is the first time
it has ever come this far,

the water table arguing
its limits with pepper grass
and squaw weed, laughing
against the buckeye and the maple.
And it never seems to stop,
this rain coming down heavy

as sugar, melting
to brown, caramel twists
that disappear through the culvert
where one summer my sister found
the skull of a horse, the implosion
of those two, huge empty eye sockets

sifting runnels and trickles
of red clay mud. The salamander
that crawled the caverns
of bone where the brain had been.
The pebbles panned into a new medulla
like broken chips of thought.

We were afraid to cross under
that dark bridge, the bones,
the spider webs, the sickly weeds
that grappled through the stones
toward thin summer rods of light.
The first tunnel of our lives.

And then crossing
the neighbor’s ten acres of yard
to get to the green swill
of the swimming hole where we learned
to dive, learned to use our hands
to keep us from death,

placing them side by side
in one flat plank before our bodies.
Then the rumble of liquid in our ears
and the reaching, the turning
for the surface as though
we were being born again and again.

All around, the air is muggy
with cloud sweat. Unnamable finches
jump at the closed pods of dandelion
seedheads, and twitch the rain
off their mottled backs. This morning the sky
purples with electricity. Later,

we will hear the flash flood stories
of picture frames and mattresses,
everything covered in a silt so fine
that it gets into the skin of things.
A cloud so dark
We should have seen it coming.

David B. Prather received his MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including Colorado Review (ed. note – Volume 27, #3, ’00), Seneca Review (ed. note – Vol. 26, No. 2, ’96), Prairie Schooner (ed. note – Vol. 72, #1, Spring ’98), The American Journal of Poetry (ed. note – see also here and here), American Literary Review (ed. note – Fall ’97), Poet Lore (ed. note – Issue 92, #4, ’97), South Florida Poetry Journal, ucity review, Kestrel, Sheila-Na-Gig, and others. His work was also selected for one of Naomi Shihab Nye’s anthologies, “what have you lost?” Currently, David spends his time as an actor and a director at the Actors Guild of Parkersburg in Parkersburg, WV.

Arlene Antoinette

By Sunlight

Sunlight streams in through the window
as I yank the soiled wife-beater
over his arms and head.
I say nothing to the man
standing before me, my drunk lover,
who prefers a bottle of Jack Daniels
to my company.

I don a pair of plastic gloves,
gather pail, water, soap
and sponge. Silence and sunlight
are my companions as I kneel
in front of dried vomit, left
on the carpet last night. Again,
I’m on my knees while
he’s singing off-key in the shower.

I rise to grab a clean pair of
his boxers out of the laundry basket.
I return to the floor, attacking the puke
as if it were him, loosening the tiny
chunks of undigested food with each
determined swipe. Using his underwear
instead of a sponge does not diminish
my anger, it doesn’t eliminate the rancid
smell of cheap bar food and stale booze.

I close my eyes and continue the routine
I’ve come to know so well during
the past two years: scrub, rinse, squeeze,
scrub, rinse, squeeze. I don’t need to open
my eyes and I don’t, until I’m done cleaning
his filth, the gift left for me every
Friday night. His off-key serenade
still drifts from the bathroom, but it’s not
for me. Maybe it’s for the soapy water
that clings to his body, the way I used to when
we first met.

A Mask Like No Other

It’s impossible to write love poems
while wearing a CPAP mask,
as cool air forces its way
into any available crevice
blinding the eyes and filling
empty nostrils.
Burning passion becomes tepid
as “T” shaped plastic obscures
a lover’s face, and skin reddened
under a silicone disguise begs
for ointment instead of wet kisses.
For the finale, a six-foot hose, tired
of its inflexibility, play
melancholy music, an annoying
mix of squeaks and off-key whistles
with no intent to break hearts and wills
which is exactly what it ends up
doing anyway.


Arlene Antoinette writes poetry from a broken down folding table which motivates her to keep things brief and a bit off-centered. Additional poetry may be found online in such places as: Sick Lit Magazine, Boston Accent Lit, The Ginger Collect, The Feminine Collective, Foxglove Journal and GirlSense and NonSense.

Simon Perchik

untitled

Half iron, half oak, the bed
all night honed on what went wrong
–it’s an axe, striking upside down

though you sleep facing north
side by side an empty dress
shaped into bulls and chariots

with your mouth wide apart
louder and louder getting ready
for the slow descent –you sit

on the edge, trying to bleed
to open the sleeves
still reaching out in the dark.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review (ed. note – here, here, here, and here), Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Osiris Poems published by box of chalk, 2017. For more information, including free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website.

Michael T. Smith

Nursery Rhyme

When little boy blue jumped beyond the moon,
he crashed on sheepskin holding wolves within.
Goodbye naïve Bo Peep, abandoned soon,
In Blackness – roses ashen spread a kin.

Along with Jack, they vaulted monstrous walls,
but after distant tumbles, cracked a crown.
Picking up eggshells, candlestick free-falls
four-and- twenty spiders plummet down.

Oh Mary, Mary, does your garden grow?
Blinded rats scurry with clocks striking one
and crying mercy, broken fiddles throw
another screeching note. Is peace undone?

One final comment for/to geese painted blue:
observe the throng that vacates mother’s shoe.

When I See a Smirk

When I see a smirk flutter ‘cross your face
I try to follow it with mil’tant gaze.
Shall I see it upon your cheek in chase?
Or will it be a sly, imagined haze?

Perhaps your lips instead with gentle crease
Will tell me what you keep ‘neath lock n’ key
The fine lines of some kiss-in-waiting free
Those lines from out of which you try to cease.

Might your hand reveal with nervous jitter,
Palsy out a twitter, th’secret you keep
While butterflies bred of numbrous litter
Are caged behind your fat windows e’er deep.

So in a marathon of sight I sprint
In mirth, to find some shy and living hint.

Michael T. Smith is an Assistant Professor of the Polytechnic Institute at Purdue University, where he received his PhD in English. He teaches cross-disciplinary courses that blend humanities with other areas. He has published over 50 poems in over 20 different journals (mostly within the past year). He also has critical work recently published in Symbolism and Cinematic Codes Review. He loves to travel.

Laura Treacy Bentley

Let No One Sleep

While I dreamt alone in a double bed,
a nameless bear kept vigil
outside my sliding glass door.

At first light,
I discovered his tracks
sunk deep in wet sand.

Marveling at the giant paws,
I mixed plaster of paris
to cast his almost human prints.

After a time, he left his mark again—
five thigh-high gashes in a cedar rail,
his princely claim to my cabin.

I touched the splintered wood
and swabbed a coat of stain
into the jags.

When I left for the city
he tried to stop me,
hurling his black hulk

in front of my car.
And now just before dark,
he shakes a bear-proof container,

sniffs the garlicky remains
of bruschetta
and a broken wine bottle.

Thwarted,
he drops on all fours,
saunters down a gravel drive,

and pads up the ramp to my door,
still dreaming
his Tuscan dreams.

A motion detector averts his plan.
Breathless, I watch him bolt away
and surge down the hillside.

The bear prince
fades into a thicket,
humming Nessun Dorma,

imagining a banked fire,
baked manicotti,
and a shared glass of Chianti,

freshly poured.

LAURA TREACY BENTLEY is a poet, novelist, and point-and-shoot photographer. She is the author of a new chapbook/artbook, Looking for Ireland: An Irish Appalachian Pilgrimage (2017), a psychological thriller set in Ireland, The Silver Tattoo (2013), a short story prequel, Night Terrors (2015), and a poetry collection, Lake Effect (2006). Laura has been widely published in the United States and Ireland and received a Fellowship Award for Literature from the WV Commission on the Arts. She has been featured on A Prairie Home Companion, Poetry Daily (ed. note – Friday June 12, 2009), O Magazine, and read her poetry with Ray Bradbury in 2003.