Issue #24
Stephen Hagerman
The Torch
“We throw the torch” wrote John McCrae
one hundred years ago today.
From failing hands in Flanders Fields
where row on row the poppies wield
and what we owe I could not weigh.
Now deep in clay our duties lay.
No longer must our bodies flay,
for as we drop our fire and shield
we throw the torch.
Be brave young lads and don’t allay
this duty that men can’t repay.
Remember where the cannons pealed?
For those of us who had to yield
the honor’s past. To you who stay
we throw the torch.
Mr. Hagerman has a college education, but not in literature. He also has a self-confidence, and clarity of mind that can be unnerving. Stephen has been called arrogant, conceited, and not humble, and that’s just in the past week.
Tim Meyer
Heavy Cream
The road dives into water
as the car grows fins. It’s a wonderful world.
Our fellow has drowned in a bathtub full of wine.
We will bait up so to catch him
as he comes out from under the shore.
The trees are mossy, the water weedy;
small islands are covered in black lichen.
We notice two silver handles above the clouds,
the only shiny things.
Now it is time to pour from the thermos
a heavy cream to coat our insides
so that we can do and eat this deed
without faltering. Christmas sprays
are cut from these bogs for their contrast
to the lights. Stories should have dichotomy.
I plug in the battery to light the glass shell on the prow
and we both bury our two-aught hooks
into wads of siren hair soaked in black port.
Meyer is still clinging to the barnacled thighs of life but important pieces are washing away. He is a laborer who has been published since 1968; lately in Blue Collar Review, Outsider Poetry, Zombie Logic Review and this fine electrotome. He has read poetry on the radio and said it was like hitting the ocean in the ass with a fist full of salt.
Jordan Potter
Your Video Will Play After This Ad
We are at the symphony. Need I say more?
So, my best slacks and starched white collar,
Her arms folded in azure taffeta,
The clean archways, the ten dollar
Parking, the noise we make only when
We’re fancy, heels and wing tips
Snipping at the pockmarked concrete,
Bourgeois choruses chewing the air.
Smile, remember? It’s supposedly
Your favorite thing. Your father bought
The tickets and God knows what he paid,
Hearing you once praise Elgar’s Enigmas.
Other stilettos chatter with Oxfords.
Their owners laugh softly to one another:
They don’t intend to look ungrateful, but
Similar doubts plunder their sagging faces,
Blanched operatic by a flashing marquee
Cheaply pixelated despite
The Conductor’s Circle donations—
Five million a pop—and the renewed
Grant from the Segerstrom’s, who, with the Irvine’s,
Owned all our seats.
I have the tickets. They pass
The first round of inspections
And we stroll up the red felt stairs
Past the ushers on each mezzanine,
Their faces tiered with polite expression.
Tickets?—this plump woman points to door
Sixteen, nosebleeds with suspect acoustics, and
We compress our bodies, squeezing
Towards the vacancy in the middle
Of our aisle, the summed age of which
Likely dates to Babylon. We take our seats.
The orchestra searches for its tune,
Crooning previews. The rest you know:
Playbills and biographies, movements
You could’ve sworn were shorter on the radio.
When they do get to Nimrod, I tally
It from the scorecard and wait for the end.
By the fourteenth enigma, we’re stumped,
Disinterested. I know it’s sad,
What we come home to: the lives we wait to live,
The ones we enjoy so much we don’t need
To wear it on our faces, here for
Everyone else to see we are here,
Thinking of the people we really are,
Chewing away in front of some nonsense,
Utterly satisfied. But we’re an audience
Of frauds, after all. Counting down the notes.
And when the finale comes and goes
Like a lifetime, finally, the conductor
Of course requires five exits
And reentrances, the most insecure
Among us, absurd and gratuitous.
The lights go up like second-hand prayers and
We leave, instantly forgetting the a-minors,
Breathing in the night, ready to resume
What we’ve been waiting for the whole time.
Jordan Potter is a writer and actor from Huntington Beach, CA. His poetry has appeared in various magazines and his screenplays have been officially selected by film festivals around the world. Blank Verse Films, a studio he operates with Mike Gioia, produces recitations and dramatic reenactments of poems.
Laura Stringfellow
Sanctum
He left to fend for himself
in the mountains. He fed on rabbit
and the sweetness of deer.
The slightest noise made him fearful,
and he became quick in his step.
Everyday at noon he went
to the top of the same grassy hill
and said, look, this is mine.
I am king of the mountain,
but where are my people?
He spoke to the wind,
and it answered him
with a deep, hollowed version
of his question.
There, he thought, my people
are over the next hill.
At night, he lost himself. The voices
deadened under the unmoving.
He whispered to the trees that had spoken
earlier but received no answer.
He looked for his feet
and saw nothing but the black
hue of obsidian.
He feared he would dissolve
into the curved pupil of what
he had once called night. He faded
during the dark
part of day and forgot
about his existence.
He had not yet heard of fire
and he became
everything that was not
seen. He was
afraid because he did not
fear the moon or himself. He spoke,
and someone he could not see answered.
Laura Stringfellow writes both verse and prose poetry, holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetry, and hails from the very humid Southern US. Recent work has appeared in various journals including Right Hand Pointing, Déraciné, Eunoia Review, Clementine Unbound (forthcoming), and Nine Muses Poetry .
Amy Plank
SING ME AN OLD SONG
Without drums, or guitar, or keyboard,
or ooh and ah’s.
But
With words, written by people long since gone
Found in the blue hymn book with pencil marks
From boys, now men, once bored by long sermons.
Sing me an old song,
The one that leaves a tremor in our elder’s voice
The one the pianist plays without music.
The one I’ve sung since scratchy tights and velcro sandals.
The one that lifts my heart more than my hands.
Amy Plank was born and lives in Wichita Kansas. She finished her Freshman year at Cedarville University in Ohio where she majors in English and runs Cross country and Track. After graduating, she hopes to pursue a career as an author or editor.
Karen Shepard
Insomnia…
…is a faithful lover, slipping in beside me,
blowing salty, humid air onto my neck.
He holds a well-worn book in his hands,
reads to me of Penelope and Odysseus. He whispers
of tucked away places, of burning sunsets,
of heat that breaks when the monsoon finally lands.
Early spring wind now tosses rain against the window
and he runs his finger down my spine, reminds me
of a friend I should have searched for,
of creeks that flowed into the Indian Ocean,
of how easy it is to force a last breath
and then hold the weight of death in sunburnt arms.
He brushes wild flowers against my cheek
licks sand from my forehead.
Night has swallowed the day’s colors
so he finds a brush and paints them again
on my thighs, my breasts, the curve of my hip.
Tangled together until light nudges beneath the curtain,
we taste the iron rich soil of ghosts, smell maize grilled
on charcoal jikos, hear the morning call to prayer
braided with the rooster’s heckle. He dims
with the sunrise, leaving his stringed bow on my pillow.
Karen Shepherd lives in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys walking in forests and listening to the rain. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in various online and print journals including most recently Ecletica Magazine, Cirque Journal, Anti-Heroin Chic, Songs of Eretz, and Plainsong (print only). Follow her on twitter.