Issue #48

William L. Ramsey

Don Quixote Sniffs a Flower

A yellow nuance
armored

in a perfume alloy
passes.

Roqueforts errant,
horse-drawn

donkeys pass,
a washbowl

suitable for
service as

the heralded
bronze helmet

of Mambrino.
So his senses rear

on a sagging
bush, a sapling

lance couched
central to their

honor’s perianth,
addled, aspur,

and charge
from the meadow’s

eastern edge
an undulating daisy.

William L. Ramsey’s first book of poetry, Dilemmas, is available from Clemson University Press. His poems have appeared over the last 30 years in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Northwest, The South Carolina Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Tar River Poetry (print, Fall 2019).

Ryan Mahr

AN ASPIRING SAINT INTERFACES WITH DEATH IN A DREAM

“You must get this all the time,” you say,
“but I’m not ready.” You’re in a large

colander, and your feet are turning to liquid.
Death is a way oversized female sparrow

whose head tips like coins in a jar, the same
bright noise. She sort of says, SO WHAT?

Your patellas hit the turquoise plastic. Begin
to dissolve. You hear your former feet

drizzling onto something like stone, below.
“I’ll try to get ready,” you say, unclasping

your hands to unclasp your crucifix. She
sort of says, DE GUSTIBUS NON EST, ETC.

and flutters up to cling to kitchenware’s lip.
IF IT’S ANY COMFORT, she intimates,

ME TOO–ONE DAY. You let the crucifix slip
through first your fingers, then the thigh-draining

holes. You know that’s not what she meant.

Ryan Mahr-Hale holds a B.A. in philosophy from the State University of New York at New Paltz. He has not yet managed to leverage this into a career. When he works, he works retail. He lives in Kingston, NY, with his wife.

Stephanie L. Harper

On Domestic Life & Other Stories of Carnage

The tabby cat, with stripes & spots like flames
the setting sun secretes, or fickle names
for seascapes’ glimmers reaching brightly then
dimming from craggy shoreline to horizon,
hunts roses drying in their top-shelf vase.
Once damask, now decaying, browned to mace,
stiff petals lure this feline connoisseur:
Her high-wire jaunts smash vases to procure
bouquets to swat & crunch—oh, drab bouquets
to terrorize & strew in brash arrays
(no inch of the garret’s spared from her bloodlust)
of battered stamens, impotent as dust,
& rose hips bitter as sparrows’ crops left
like little neckless heads, rebuffed, bereft.

Stephanie L. Harper is a recently transplanted Oregonian living in Indianapolis, IN. Harper is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and author of the chapbooks This Being Done and The Death’s-Head’s Testament. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Whale Road Review, Isacoustic*, Panoply, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, and elsewhere.

Magdeline Maher

Tuesday team happy afterhours

fuck a bell jar I’m slamming bronze gongs
clapping cymbals ululating in honor of
something ineffable I used to say that
when I leave I’ll leave in a quiet way but
this time I refuse to go silently in the night
I’m burning every bridge and when I get there
I’m doing toe touches and sun salutations
against the backdrop of the bass thumping
on Tuesday 11pm I never thought I’d last this long
and never really cared to and former me judges
current me for it but fuck that bitch she never
gave a shit about me anyhow she was my best
lover and my worst enemy but in candor we’ve
got a lot in common I’m still drowning in myopia
I’m blacking out against the yellow wallpaper
I’m pulling on hangnails and stripping
BHA-cleaned skin to the bone I’ve decided that
Arendt was wrong and that the human condition is a trope
so I’m reclaiming myself I’m decolonizing
I’m killing my Christian name and taking my own
I have a lot of them anyhow meanwhile I’m
tonguing the wine glass before I finish bubbly rosé
to keep my cupid’s bow pretty in pink and I’m ignoring texts
while responding to work messages on the Slack app and trying to
remember if Kafkaesque is part of the human condition or if I can
still be mad without losing my insolence but then I say fuck it
I’ll be mad anyway no one I know has had a thought in years
my lovers and the girls I meet on Bumble BFF play podcasts to sleep
I would too if I slept + wannabe trap sadgirls on Spotify are just my
white noise now and I’m terrified for the one neuron we’re all sharing
but tonight I don’t want to think about it the way I never want to think
about anything so instead I’ll be homesick for a sky that’s not
a lunar eclipse I’m howling at the moon asking her to take me
with her when she leaves for the morning but instead when
day breaks through the cracks of the filthy ozone I’m brushing my
gilded teeth I’m drinking a nitro cold brew I’m eating a full bar of
95% Lindt fuck a fair trade I’m switching from rap to pop I’m
doing a cat eye I’m making pivot tables with sql and I’m
resting my head on my desk then at the end of it all I’m
trying to remember what I do at this job again

Magdeline Maher is a writer from Georgia. She has published pieces about masculinity, technology, and ethics in various academic outlets. Her creative writing has appeared in various poetry journals. She is a 2020 Brain Mill Press National Poetry Month Shortlist poet. In her free time, Magdeline likes to read, hike, and seek the silver linings.

Charles Rafferty

In Praise of the Invisible

Every marble statue started out as seashells. I don’t care if you can’t see them. Likewise, this cherry pie began as bees forcing their faces in for the droplet
of nectar. You’d be surprised how little the world is willing to surrender. I just saw
a hummingbird singing for the first time and I’m 54. I still haven’t read Proust,
and it occurs to me that I’ve opened the glove compartments of only a dozen cars. Imagine the pistols and outdated maps, the bottles of something saved for later.
All the while, the mine fire of your kiss continues beneath this landscape of suburbs
and rolling hills.

Charles Rafferty has a new collection of prose poems forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2021 – A Cluster of Noisy Planets. His latest story collection is Somebody Who Knows Somebody (Gold Wake). His novel, Moscodelphia, is forthcoming from Woodhall Press.

Ashley Sapp

MY FIRST KISS

occurred in the branches of a tree,
my face upturned as though my mouth
would capture the sky on my lips – finding
a boy instead. As I stood on the cliffs
of Shortoff Mountain this weekend, I remembered
how that kiss felt like being on the edge:
wind pushing my back toward a fall. But I
remained steady, feet planted like the stubborn
cedar trees emerging from the fringe of rock, and
I spoke of memory, how it alters us as much as
the experience of things. My last kiss was at a campsite
by the fire, a spark by a spark. As my tongue felt
for grounding in his mouth, I recalled how we
met a hawk at the summit during our hike.
Watched his effortless flight caught in the wind
and thought about the difference between taking
versus giving. How the effort feels the same but
the outcome is never the stuff we hope for.
My next kiss will be with a man I’m devoted to,
and it’s like the hard climb you take to the top
of the mountain: your muscles work and ache,
your lungs breathless with exertion, but you still
manage a small gasp at the view, one breath, stolen
when there is no air. The difference between
learning and loving. How it tramples what is left.

Ashley Sapp (she/her) resides in Columbia, South Carolina, with her dog, Barkley. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of South Carolina in 2010, and her work has previously appeared in Indie Chick (print, 2014), Variant Lit, Emerge Literary Journal, Common Ground Review (print, 2019), and elsewhere. Ashley has written two poetry collections: Wild Becomes You and Silence Is A Ballad.

Kyla Houbolt

my dead papa appreciates your cigar

Sunday afternoons

smoke hung from the ceiling
of the family room like
not quite clouds

some humans have
an atavistic belief that smoke
repels the lowest ghosts

too rank even for their
twisted sensibilities but my
papa being an angel

hovers close by that beloved
stink now exhaling music he
devours his empty sandwich

no tumored throat to thwart
he savors drossless this
distilled elixir — or so

I imagine him.

Kyla Houbolt (she, her) occupies Catawba territory in Gastonia, NC. Her first two chapbooks, Dawn’s Fool and Tuned were published in 2020. More about them on her website, https://www.kylahoubolt.com/ Her individually published pieces online can be found on her Linktree. She is on Twitter @luaz_poet.

Shon Mapp

Fructophobia

he told me not to swallow the pear seeds.
the slick shiny slivers would slide down
begin their sinister stirrings in my belly.
burrow, sow, sprout a tree. root right
through toes. rise branches rise.
pierce pupils. destroy eyes.
surly stalks would block ears and air.
he and my mum’s souls would take shade
under my canopy. their bereaved bodies
would waste away hugging my hollow trunk.
“spit the seeds into my hand,” he said
each time the firm flesh released
its sweet energy, tethered my chin
to his palm in a watery covenant.
they taught fear, the best and most often.
when compliance wasn’t yet a word,
filial duty was revered, it equaled
a paralleled love. with its acute angles
and lethal lines.
fear of lashes—of strangers—of aunties
& uncles of no relation—of things that bite
& sting—of falling, flailing, or failing—
& of slick shiny slivers that slide
we sorted the saved seeds on a dinner plate.
placed them between two damp towels.
laid it under the sun’s supervision.
I sprinkled water on the dry bits, when
the edges curled and browned.
I ensured their survival.

Shon Mapp writes about queer intimacy, multiculturalism, and kinship.

Mark Henderson

Ugly Laugh

It’s what you want;
as with orgasms, the prettier they sound
the more likely they’re fake.

A snort, a wheeze,
an animal sound—primal,
before the invention of shame;
it’s no good unless
you’re embarrassed about it later.

Submission is compliment;
somebody broke through and pulled you out.
Now stand there, naked,

and think—strike that: feel, be—
before the crust reforms.

Mark Henderson is an associate professor at Tuskegee University. He earned his Ph. D. at Auburn University in American literature and psychoanalytic theory. He has poems published or forthcoming in Cozy Cat Press, From Whispers to Roars, Defenestrationism.net, Bombfire, and Former People.

David Donna

Protein-Rich

Breakfast time slithers and drags
along its bulk—
another egg into the bowl,
soft pool of gold held
in a slippery, translucent field.

Silt with spices, splash of milk,
pull out the whisk, whisk well, worry
at them in the pan with hot olive oil,
a little while until the work
solidifies into a meal.

Feet up on the other side
of the loveseat, watch a sunbeam
mark the edges of its shrine, gilding
stray fibers with foreign
electrum, dyeing the walls, the ceiling.
Out of sight, a cloud shifts and blanks

the floor—slight
chill of a broken spell.
Hesitate, maybe, then turn
the tongue (old winding key)
and swallow a last forkful. Somewhere
in the abdomen, machines will flex
and spool the hours in carbon chains
for later. Later still. Sit back
in the quiet remainder—
trapped time passing
from shell to shell

David Donna’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Radar Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, Constellations, and elsewhere. They live in eastern Massachusetts, and write mostly code.

Christine Webster-Hansen

Epiphany in the Garden

The roots rip as yellow-green seeps from leaves,
stubborn clumps of broadleaf plantain.
Yanking crab grass and clover weed,
I unhook clasps still clinging to extracted terrain.
Squatting, I observe the greens piled to one side
synchronously spaced tulips,
allotted portions, mulched wood stained
with brown, sodden yard beyond.

I note a lifeless strand, liquid rising
from its stem, coating my skin
as I unsuccessfully rub the yellow-green.
Water wets my hand but green remains,
stems still breathing my exhalation.
Guilty now, I rise, the Lady MacBeth for weeds,
or perhaps a silly suburban queen, wondering:
What gives me the right?

Christine Webster-Hansen earned a Ph.D. in English and became a tenured professor before transitioning to the role of Assistant Dean of e-Learning. Her creative work is forthcoming in Maudlin House and Canary, and she has published poetry in Ariel Chart. Christine lives in NJ with her husband and two cats.