Issue #21
Olivia Stowell
Lamppost Prayer
on sunday morning, lost shoes
sleep in gutters, missing the alarm
for the early mass, but
bless me, father, for I have sinned.
etched out crossword puzzle sidewalk squares
sounds unspoken easing into air
there’s got to be some set
of words to make things right
to put it all together and
all our broken dishes will fly back
into our hands and this time
we will know not to let go.
on the corner before me there is a man
sleeping, bedmates with those shoes,
and if i could hear it, i could speak
the language of his dream
of entering
heaven.
there’s a big long table,
he might say,
and the seat next to god is empty
because all the people,
everybody gets a chance to sit next to god
for a while. so i sit down
god asks me what i want,
i want to be blessed.
god asks me to hold out my glass
starts pouring wine into it
soon there’s too much, the wine is just
pouring out and over and i try to say,
“god, do you see what you’re doing?
god, it’s too full, they’re all gonna think you’re drunk!”
but god laughs at me,
and says blessings are too big to fit in wineglasses.
the man on the concrete looks at me
but i keep moving.
his dream lives in the spaces in his gums
where his teeth have jumped ship
like stories.
Olivia Stowell is an undergraduate student at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA pursuing a dual degree in English Literature and Theatre Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Glass Mountain, and Westmont College’s literary magazine The Phoenix.
John Leonard
Black
Our utopia is a blotter
soaked with ancient oil,
a shrine of plastic liabilities.
Standing on my shoulders,
you could soak your head in
the psychosphere as it slowly
collapses the earth.
You could taste the clouds
as they fall further away
from the heavens.
We worship a dying sky.
The stars we see are the bones
of caged animals.
It was difficult to breathe
through the tiny holes that God
punched through His darkness.
Their bones sit behind obsidian
walls, collecting the dust
of creation. We speak to them,
knowing sound does not travel
in a vacuum.
It’s only a matter of time before nothing.
John Leonard is a professor of composition and assistant editor of Twyckenham Notes, a poetry journal based out of South Bend, Indiana. He holds an M.A. in English from Indiana University. His previous works have appeared in Poetry Quarterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, Fearsome Critters: A Millennial Arts Journal, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Burningword Literary Journal.
Richard Dinges
Sated
Order returns
in fascinated form.
Hens strut to steal
food left for a cat
too old to hunt mice,
that sprawls sated,
purrs and ignores
thieves, too slow
to fend, too full
to care, old enough
to know food bowls
are refilled for
another meal
in her world, now
not worth a fight.
Richard Dinges has an MA in literary studies from University of Iowa, and manages information systems risk at an insurance company. North Dakota Quarterly, Ship of Fools, Westview, Briar Cliff Review, and Adelaide most recently accepted his poems for their publications.
James Croal Jackson
Father Monster
to keep her away from him
this elephantine responsibility
before you is quartz dressed
in granite stripped from volcano
& I am scared you will try
to kill yourself again if you
don’t stay stone / o lovely voyager
inside this thick sentence / time
spent without your child this seed
in a core / gnawed on like
pitted olives & broken
teeth being the easiest
part of the process
how your judge won’t
listen / how your judge takes
his gavel / slams against
a desk of air & its reaction
is a howling / sound
everyone else can hear
James Croal Jackson (he/him) has poems in or forthcoming in indefinite space, Rattle, and Reservoir. He edits The Mantle. Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh, PA. (website)