Editor note

Cover art: Treachery of Empire by @dominikus

Issue 27

If it weren’t for the poets and artists we would have no maps for our sacred selves. Every poet is a cartographer and translator of the psyche.

Reading a poem is like walking blindfolded within myself, feeling my way by touch — wall by wall — while I figure out the exact dimensions of my depth. Someday I will accept that I am an abyss.

We make do with what we have — our native tongues, our limited grasp of life. I grab for fistfuls of more and more consciousness and all I come away with are a few new wisps of meaning.

Poetry is a back door to our within. This issue is a composite of our human spirit — boundless and mystifying. I am grateful to all the contributors for sharing and showing themselves — a constellation of souls singing and gleaming.

Contributors: Lily Beaumont, Jennifer Frederick, CL Bledsoe, Ana Jovanovska, Douglas Cole, Adele Hally, Jack Kogut, Vincent Vecchio, Henry Motto, Jaye Nasir, Roy Christopher, Dominikus, Susan Bloch-Welliver, Lorrie Ness, Shana Ross, Luna Monet Sierra, Jason M. Thornberry, Taylor Richardson, Maureen Frank

Claudia Dawson, Founding Publisher & Editor
July 2022



Ask the Dust

the dust remembers the first shore and the first cry it made
out of the air and its far vision back over water and land ahead

the dust remembers when fire appeared like a miracle
full of so many ideas and passion verging on violence

the dust remembers storms that took it east west north and south
mixed it with dirt until it clapped its hands and said I’m hungry

the dust is not the remains on your window ledge
where the fly lies like a fallen pilot without a parachute

the dust is not what accumulates when you don’t clean
the dust has secrets

the dust has traveled on star waves to get here
attracted to other dust like dancers at a spring concert

the dust remembers rising with your eyes and looking out
feeling like you and you alone for a minute out of eternity

the dust remembers amazing vehicles and rooms full of music
and sunsets that make you weep to witness them

the dust remembers more and floats like a missionary downstream
towards the canal of your ear like a fog of memory out of focus

more so much more and if you’re curious and want to know
all you have to do is get down on the ground and ask

 

CONQUERORS

 

I am in a city riparian, eight-legged,
once launching and colonial,
brutal, even, rising out of a brutal history.

But all of history looks brutal, you say,
just look at these claws cutting the water
and those heads blackening on their pikes,

spirits whispering from their stone palaces
that clatter like castanets in the waves,
don't do it, don't do it, or take it all, take it all.

We climb out of the sunset.
We eat your temples one by one.
Our bones mingle with gold dust on a riverbed.

And we sleep a version of peace you can't reach
by philosophy no matter how high the empire
couch or the fire on the other side of the library.

 

Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry and the novel, The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. He is a regular contributor to Mythaxis, an online journal, where in addition to his fiction and essays, his interviews with notable writers, artists and musicians such as Daniel Wallace (Big Fish), Darcy Steinke (Suicide Blond, Flash Count Diary) and Tim Reynolds (T3 and The Dave Matthews Band) have been popular contributions. He also writes a regular monthly column called “Trading Fours” for Jerry Jazz Musician and has recently been named the editor for “American Poetry” in Read Carpet, an international, predominantly Spanish-language journal produced by Maria Del Castillo Sucerquia from Columbia. In addition to the American Fiction Award, he was awarded the Leslie Hunt Memorial prize in poetry, the Editors’ Choice Award for fiction by RiverSedge, and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart and Best of the Net. He lives and teaches in Seattle, Washington. His website is douglastcole.com. You can find him on Twitter @TheShadow_man.

This Road is a Loop

Last night, I found you in the old house. The hills
trembled and closed in around us. I had
imagined you lost and adrift forever,
a vaporous spiral wafting out of sight, but
you have dug your burrow here among the foxes and snakes.
Still so shadowy and stealthy, your instinct for vigilance
cannot keep you safe.

Two black cockatoos lead me to you, a betrayal you say.
Your skin smoke grey hunched; you wait impatiently for the world to end.
Unglued, your fingers flutter and drag through your hair.
Even in this sleep-world, I can’t mend the torn parts of you.
Crawling on the floor at your feet, I gather the broken pieces
as they crumble to dust in my glowing hands.


 

Adele Hally is an Australian writer. She is currently studying Creative Writing through Curtin University and lives on an island with her quiet partner and her loud dog.

Remember the Lightning and Her Sister Darla

Back then, the world existed in 4 minute slices,
radio friendly, and capable of being shined
with the right spit. We never listened to
the words because we trusted the censors, not
realizing they were dying like the rest of us.
Pastries tasted like sugar, and funny colors
didn’t matter in a beverage. This morning,
I dumped out my leftover intentions in
the parking lot so I could recycle the cup. Maybe
a flower was trying to grow from that concrete.
I followed a man to the stairs—give me
the confidence of an old man in shorts
and sandals, black socks worn without irony,
and an overwhelming need to chat with strangers.
I was never that unable to question others’ desire
for my company, and I have mania. Inside,
everything is animal, including my shirt. Every
day, I forget the color of the sky until I sneak
out and ask someone. Most times, they look
from one to the other and shrug. I finally
petitioned to get a screen put up. It flashes “blue
and sometimes gray” from dawn until dusk.
I still ask because I don’t like to believe. Back
then, the sky was always forgetting me. Lightning
asked my name at parties, so it knew who to avoid.
Now, I see it on my morning commute. Ugly
tie and khakis. Sleeveless blouse the wrong
color for its skin. Its sister Darla got married
and divorced a long time ago. She’s back
from the coast, but no one seems to know
which one. Kids and debt. When I catch the last
elevator with the lightning, it’s shaking its head,
shocked at the state of things, like us all.

 

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of thirty books, including his newest poetry collection, The Bottle Episode, and his latest novel The Saviors. Bledsoe co-writes the humor blog How to Even, with Michael Gushue. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Interstellar Catalog

On this world they worship a child god – god of insects, god of complicated relationships. Their god is bound to termites and gnat swarms, infinite in his attention to detail and cascading consequence, and bored, so goddamn bored with the pedestrian plots of talking bipeds. The exaltation of larks is ok, the wheeling flash of the school of herring, but their god has spent time sanctifying every soul in a hive, the collective and the infinite individuals, held fully and simultaneously in the divine heart without diminishing any part of the waggling crowd. We try to explain the attraction of omnipotence as we talk to their temple tenders, over tea steeped from local leaves. Priests, of a sort, they laugh and laugh at our ideas and say yes, we also. We worship the details. And then, they say, we have sense enough to let go. God loves the details, a word that also means dust mites. They are at peace with simplicity, the dullness of their loves and overstuffed lives and overreaching ambitions that crumble away to nothing given enough time. Their god tolerates them with wellsprings of patience to stir the world, to live meaty lives, to feed the maggots in time. On this world there’s no way to fail your pious destiny. The pressure is off. Their god has pudgy, sticky fingers and a charismatic laugh. We can’t, says the priest who rakes the leaves of the temple yard, after the overwintering and before the new grass, wait to see him grown.

 

Shana Ross is a poet newly arrived in Edmonton, Alberta after 25 years in New England. Qui transtulit sustinet. Her work has appeared in Chautauqua Journal, Ruminate, Gone Lawn, Kissing Dynamite, SWWIM and more. She was awarded first place in the 2021 Bacopa Literary Review Poetry competition, received a 2019 Parent-Writer Fellowship to Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and serves as an editor for Luna Station Quarterly. Her first chapbook, Heavy Little Things (Finishing Line Press) is now available. She holds both a BA and MBA from Yale and rarely tweets @shanakatzross.

Nightjar

Grandma,
the moon is now
and your pillow is lined
with spider silk and the tiny twigs
we brewed in dew.

In the curio,
you’ve hidden your clutch
of eggs between teacups and the porcelain
doll’s cheek that rocks
like a round-bottomed bowl.

Come and peck
at apple rings hanging from the beam.
Forage higher still, under the eastern gable,
where I’ve thatched a nest
for you to roost.

I’ll watch from the rafters —
watch you preen
the nightjar feathers
I’ve twined
into your hair.

 

Lorrie Ness is a poet writing in a rural corner of Virginia. When she’s not writing, she can be found stomping through the woods, watching birds and playing in the dirt. Her work can be found in numerous journals, including THRUSH, Palette Poetry and Sky Island Journal. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021 and her chapbook, “Anatomy of a Wound” was published by Flowstone Press in July of 2021.

Sometimes A Crow

Sometimes a crow whispers,
tempts me beyond possibility,
blackens my body, extends her wings.
We take flight.

Not in a fairy tale or a dream,
on an air current.

Our inky blue bodies circle the moon’s ring,
rest in tree tops.
Our beaks split bark.
We wonder about humanity.

Sometimes a leopard tears through tomorrows,
wakes me from lethargy,
channels my consciousness,
pounces on her quarry.
Blood dribbles down my chin
I renounce desecration.

Sometimes morning welcomes me,
spreads her offerings.
I feast on her banquet,
smile through the window,
hand on glass,
marvel at translucency,
sheltered from cold.

Sometimes I am lost,
no one guides me,
I step into other realities,
find I belong.

 

Susan Bloch-Welliver lives in the Pacific Northwest. She is a poet and glass artist. Her poetry is published in anthologies and journals. She received a Victor Jacoby grant/award to develop poetic sculpture from the Humboldt Area Foundation in 2019. In 2021 she received a grant to create and exhibit poetic sculpture at the Morris Graves Museum. She is the daughter of a poet and nurse, sister of a bookseller and wife to a kind-hearted builder.

The Indexical Trace

Nostalgia is poison, but
It doesn't mean what it did
Maybe that's why they say
You can never go back

A right turn on red
A message left unread
The grey interstices between
Sign, signifier, and signified

The indexical trace
Of the presence of another
Footsteps overhead on a creaky floor
The light on under the door

An errant thread
From a piece of clothing
On a towel of another color
The most comforting sign of home

 

Roy Christopher is an aging BMX and skateboarding zine kid. That’s where he learned to turn events and interviews into pages with staples. He has since written about music, media, and culture for everything from books and blogs to national magazines and academic journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and currently lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Black Earth

If we slept with our heads
touching, we’d dream of

your body, frozen
in a murky green river,

your eyelids thin, almost
glowing. I know how to follow

your footsteps: mushrooms
spring up in your wake.

Faceless, silent life.
See, love is only enthralling

when it’s buried, but
I’m tired of the shovel

and the sleeplessness.
You keep handing me forever

and I keep handing it back,
saying, Hold on a minute.

You are giving me violets
and I am giving you black earth.

It’s a ritual now. Put your
two hands together and pray.

 

Jaye Nasir lives in Portland, OR where she spends her time writing fiction, nonfiction and poetry that blurs, or outright ignores, the line between the real and the unreal. Her work has appeared in Kitchen Table Quarterly, Echoverse Anthology, and Lammergeier Magazine, and is forthcoming in Santa Clara Review, Buckmxn Journal and elsewhere.

Shaman

Before me the fire’s lit, and so I sit lotus style. My thoughts’re sterile. My soul’s crocodilian languid in the swamp. Smoke from cackling branches & all that wispy razzmatazz before me sway smooth as jazz towards the cosmos like cottonmouths. The chiminea roars to life, teasing my attention — I gaze w/ eyes glazed into its flame, a rare glimpse into the infernal catacombs, enslaving the wicked ilk of days yore w/ their gasping hearts now hung from fishhooks in their eternal tomb,: beating so weakly but never quite ceasing, and their discarded meat-bags groaning in igneous agony w/ arms outstretched for some trickle of Salvation’s saliva… Though, am I any less damned than those below as I unzip this burdensome spaceship of flesh bestowed — my rapscallion stomach sicker & sicker, imbibing in the ancient ichor? Eh. Such retrospect would have to wait… The trance’s near… No more fear… I discard the Mask & awaken within through feelings of a waterfall freefall… My mind’s simmering like gumbo mumbling shaman mumbo jumbo. The possession’s intense.  The convulsion’s vile. Pituitary senses. Reptilian smiles. Visions of Elysian delirium flood my dreams rich as the Nile & a purple aphrodisiac aura oozes through the space-time cerebrum — amethyst matrimony; exchanging vows and a kiss; gazing vast into the flames. Blessed be this bliss. Another pupil Hell claims.

 

Vincent Vecchio is an on-and-off again writer from Vancleave, Mississippi. He’s had poetry published in The Write Launch, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Humans of the World and The Evening Street Review.

MY BODY THE ANOMALY

My body is a functioning gravitational anomaly—
I know more about the workings of a swamp 
than my own esophagus.

I am ninety birds of all shapes and colors
tied together at the feet.

Every action I make creates another me 
with a new history 
like some kind of time siphonophore.

When I bleed,
I swear I see black under red. 
A sort of oil. My father’s I believe.

He is my greatest mystery. He is perfection 
but he never put perfection onto me.

I’ve asked him a million times
if he is human and he responds 
with a fear of humans.

My mother placed a trickle of spirit in me 
that engulfs my mind with water. 

She is the reason why 
I require simulated waves to sleep.

I move through the clouds 
they leave behind, like moonlight.
I drift on each heirloom ripple in the sky.

I land on each blacktop before the end of each dribble.
My body is an icicle 
in the process of splitting a frog in half. 

I spill out like heat on the highway. 
I make this world a vessel,
I drink and I am drunk. 

I feel most at home floating 
in a diamond mine deep below the earth,
the closest I will ever get to distant space.

 

Henry William Motto is a poet out of Seattle, Washington who just completed his MFA program at Arcadia University. He has been published in Z Publishing's Best Emerging Vermont Poets and he is looking to have his first manuscript published. He has been leading a nomadic life style for the past two years with his girlfriend Shannon, dog Ozwald and snake Cleopatra.

I keep watching movies about men and the ocean

like I
was never
hammered into
a ship, cast adrift
on my unending
body, my hunger cut
loose as a star’s–
witness to a cinema of fossils
playing in the next galaxy
over. Here, see
your custom carrion:
the bloody spine
of me extended past
the sheets
of waves and past
my voiceless
wishes. Back on firmer ground,
I draped myself before
so many wrecks
for you, trying
to catch mutilation
on my tongue
so I could kiss it into you
first. Now
look at me, salt spiked
into my skin,
my north
obliterated.

 

Lily Beaumont’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Prolit, Star 82 Review, and Crow & Cross Keys. She has an MA in English from Brandeis University and currently lives in Central Texas, where she works as a curriculum/study guide developer and editor.

Around the Garden Stone

He read from a collection of James Wright. She liked to listen. She explored the scenes he described, constructing new scenes for herself, falling backward and downward into them as wakefulness dissolved and sleep encompassed her. They awoke something hidden deep inside of her; in a place she never knew existed. And from the first time that she lowered her hands and allowed herself to drift into the scenes he described, she recognized a part of herself changing, gradually, earnestly, urgently. Until he read those words she wondered if they had ever existed— or had they waited for him to utter them, breathing life into their shapes: letters and then words and then images and ideas, poking from the soil, budding, unfolding, coming into flower. “Saint Judas” was her favorite poem. By day she thought about the image in the poem of a man at the mercy of hoodlums, the soldiers that milled around the garden stone and sang amusing songs as their victim bled. The person who came to rescue the man was and wasn’t the one reading the poem, was and was not the one who lay now beside her. She asked him to read it again—later that night—and the language took shape in her mind. Images fashioned by sound delivered to the chambers of her sleeping self. And when she opened her eyes and looked over and saw the sunlight on his arm and his chest rising slowly, she knew she loved him. It was several months before the boy realized his copy of Saint Judas was no longer on the shelf.

 

Jason M. Thornberry’s work appears in The Los Angeles Review of Books, JMWW, North Dakota Quarterly, and elsewhere. Jason overcame a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic epilepsy. Relearning to walk and speak, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University. He lives in Seattle with his wife.

With Apologies to Joyce Kilmer - A Clone Poem

One day they say we all shall own

Our perfect image in a clone.

When poets breed by means like these

Then God can concentrate on trees.

 

Jack Kogut is a mostly professional technical analyst and a mostly amateur writer of mostly fiction with training and experience in the physical sciences. . He has had stories recently published in “Planisphere Q-Fire and Ice” and the “Ugly Babies 3/Ghosts Redemption” horror anthology. His is non-fiction work has appeared in “The Washington Post”, and a number of general and trade publications. He lives with his family in the suburbs.