ISSUE 4 // POETRY
"Fire Flowers" by Candice James
KATIE ANHALT // ROMANTIK
// THE NEAREST PARADISE
"I find a casket / Polished ebony / In a white dust labyrinth / Under lily moon. / But it will not open / for my comprehension." - The Nearest Paradise
JASMINE BAILEY // SIDDHARTHA
// DISAPPEARED
"I could come back / an egret lancing the marsh; / perhaps the osprey / once disappointed a good man. / And if human— / longer-legged, sun-colored?" - Siddhartha
"Lioness" by Jennifer Lothrigel
AMEE BROUMAND // HIDDEN
"in the mind’s core, a waterfall—(a strange thing, / a thing ill-designed to assuage fear—"
HARMONY BUTTON // THE WOUND
// BICEPS
"I still appreciate your genetic sturdiness, your / non-wimpy here's
one-for-the attitude, your / sweater stretching broadness and your /
offering to fight off all the scary things" - Biceps
"Punctured Mindscape Folds" by Richard Vyse
HA KIET CHAU // HALFWAY HOME
// NOVEMBER 30, 1998
// A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
"the river is dead in december. / canaries and frogs drift facedown in the water. / i am swimming and drinking the river, / gulp after gulp until i’m so heavy, i sink." - November 30, 1998
CACONRAD // PLUTO.1 // PLUTO.2
// PLUTO.3 // PLUTO.4
"we win from time to time / abandoned above adaptable positions of
the losing / we risk everything in thinking we can navigate maverick
of the green" - Pluto.4
CAITLIN CUNDIFF // A PRIVATE VIEWING
// PUNNETT SQUARES
"When Father cleanses her hands / and pastes them together, / I
hope he glues them in prayer." - A Private Viewing
"Gunslinger Dreaming of Her" by Ege Al'Bege
THOMAS DOOLEY // BALLAD OF LIEUTENANT TOM DOOLEY, 1955
// BALLAD, 1960
"He can polish / down Tom’s jags He can conceal / a pimple They
know at the flower shop / skip the lilies the mister sneezes" - Ballad,
1960
MAGGIE GRABER // ROLLER DERBY NIGHT IN SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
"and I wish, on the way home, you could have seen / the Big Dipper above Crab Orchard Lake, nailed / to the black wall of space, and the moon spinning slow"
JENNIFER JACKSON BERRY // COTTON BIRTHDAY
// [M]OTHER'S COMMUTE
// [M]OTHER'S DREAM
"Our baby tops a pill bottle, / each white disk / the wrong kind of confetti / kept fresh under her billow." - Cotton Birthday
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE translated by JENNA LE // JUNE SUN, THOU ART A GAYAGEUM
"Sundays here drag on and on / and organ-grinders from Morocco /
flood the gray courtyards with their moans."
"It Is Nice To Be Me" by Nigel Ford
ESTHER LIN // RUNAWAY
// IT'S POSSIBLE THE DAYS MARCH FORWARD
"This afternoon Emma Bovary tipped forward / and black mud ran from her mouth. Someone, / in preserving her hair, dark as that mud, / sliced her temple twice instead." - It's Possible the Days March Forward
HOLLY MITCHELL // EMILY IN SAN FRANSISCO
"With blushing orange, / I give myself a saccharine cross. / I lick the sacred from my pointer and sigh. / My time is at last synched"
"Man Profiled X" by Richard Vyse
HASANTHIKA SIRISENA // CADRE
// AFTER A PIPE BOMB EXPLOSION, THE MOST SERIOUS INJURIES MAY NOT BE VISIBLE
// MY SISTER FORWARDS A LINK
"Truly, truly, thangachi, do not / worry. A bottle is much harder / to hit than a man." - Cadre
SHARON SUZUKI-MARTINEZ // THE DEAD WHALE TRAVELING CIRCUS
"A whale fetus / like disintegrating sandwich meat is sad entertainment. / But for them, the whale is a constellation / drifting across the womb-cosmos of memory."
DEBORAH BENACOT translated by MARGARET YOUNG // UNTITLED
"your absence is this dirty rag / I use to rub my memories / one by
one / until they gleam"
"Make Up Your Mind" by David Klugman