February 2010 Issue
Be sure to check out our contributors' bios.
"Today, Afternoon & After Class" (poetry) ....................................................................................... Ernest Williamson III
"Ongoing Moments" (poetry) ........................................................................................................... Howie Good
"girl in the city" (art) ......................................................................................................................... Nikki Yeager
"Repair Work" (poetry) .................................................................................................................... Howie Good
"Weighted Endlessly" (art) .............................................................................................................. Kate Daly
"Birmingham" (poetry) ..................................................................................................................... Stephanie Bryant Anderson
"Flowers for the Lady" (art) ............................................................................................................. Ernest Williamson III
"Circumference of Shame" (poetry) ................................................................................................ Ernest Williamson III
"A Little Rotten" (poetry) .................................................................................................................. Stephanie Bryant Anderson
"cambodia" (art) ................................................................................................................................ Nikki Yeager
"ABC Chewing Gum (HIV)" (poetry) ................................................................................................ Lakeisha "Kee" Hughes
"An Alchemist's Song" (poetry) ........................................................................................................ J. D. Marshall
"Neptune" (art) ................................................................................................................................. Jim Fuess
"Back End Web Programmer Familiar with Magento" (email) .......................................................... Asterios Kokkinos
"A Bon Chat, Bon Rat" (play) ............................................................................................................ Luke Krueger
"A Peak Into My Imagination" (art) .................................................................................................... Ernest Williamson III
"Dampened Morning Dreams" (poetry) ............................................................................................. Justin Wade Thompson
"Spirit" (art) ........................................................................................................................................ Jim Fuess
"Timeball" (screenplay) ...................................................................................................................... Asterios Kokkinos
"Bat" (art) ........................................................................................................................................... Jim Fuess
"Party Bags" (film) .............................................................................................................................. Howard Cohen
"you stole it" (art) ............................................................................................................................... Nikki Yeager
"Up" (poetry) ...................................................................................................................................... Davide Trame
"Two Aspirins And A Cat In The Morning" (poetry) ........................................................................... Janet Garber
"It Will Only Leave A Little Scar" (art) ................................................................................................ Kate Daly
"Under the Shadow of the Canadian Dream" (fiction) ....................................................................... Bryan Anthony
"KNOCK 'EM DEAD, KID" (film trailer) .............................................................................................. Chris Golon
"hollis street blues" (poetry) .............................................................................................................. John A. Grochalski
"Gail Dorfman" (poetry) ..................................................................................................................... Matthew Harris
Today, Afternoon & After Class
spilled along the chalk board
were your letters
hints of hemlock
stained the garrulous feud
frozen
in gray marble
beneath my feet
students were transfixed
like inward taste buds
accustomed to numbness
as whenever the teacher
uttered
words
salient expressions,
built with alacrity
smoothly
yet irregularly
along
faces
dead faces,
moved with faint pulses
for the sake of something
beyond
bland
something
captive
like Africa
today
afternoon
and after
class
ONGOING MOMENTS (after the writing of Geoff Dyer)
1
When we see birds
in the evening,
Camus said,
we always think of them
as heading home.
A white truck,
its lights blurring
through the rain,
is coming
the other way.
2
Can you photograph
an orange in black-
and-white?
The same person
appears in any number
of photographs,
even if it isn’t,
strictly speaking,
the same person.
3
Something was there
and no longer is.
The elevator door
will open again,
not on another floor,
but in another city.
REPAIR WORK
The moon enters in a dark overcoat.
What’s going on here? It’s possible to see
the suicide in people’s faces, the slope
of their shoulders, the way their clothing
is worn, their gait. There are days –
many, in fact – fingers drum impatiently
on the roof. I spoke to the police about it.
The stairs that lead up also lead down
to an iron bed, rumpled sheets, a photograph
of insomnia. Everyone is singing but me.
I’m hunched over, tightening a screw
with the edge of a dime. It does a bad job.
Birmingham
Circumference of Shame
sailing south along Cape Cod
in the hush marsh
bleeding indifference
as the tide comes in
your hands were sultry
black
kissed with
sand
Jamaica came into our love
that moment
though I was draped in a T-shirt
twice my size
surprise in my eyes
led to weeping of my secrets
but the bass was hot and salty
and the lemonade was so sweet
I questioned its necessity
its necessity to treat me
more kindly than the
woman serving it
and all of my imperfections
so haplessly
25 years ago
this
day
A Little Rotten
a little rotten,
a little scarred,
and definitely red.
She wants to study Russian
and brag of being a Mathematician,
but her liberty is to cry,
to fold into a poor man's hands.
She is a coward, a shivering thing
but her movement is involuntary
as if that poor man were crumpling her
from an image of origami
into an image of paper trash.
She holds tight to her tobacco.
Her hand stays dangled in the air
as if she were mid-sentence
or mid-thought,
but she has nothing to say.
She looks ugly
and brown
like a potato.
ABC Chewing Gum (HIV)
Like lips that lick cherry flavored drip drops of lollipops
Until they come to the spot
Where thinking stops
And bubble yum pops from fluid movements
Through the cavities of candied shells to form ABC’s
That Spell, H-I-V
Giving candy is easy
Keeping it wrapped up tightly is the difficulty
An Alchemist's Song
Of muck and gravel and ash
I will form this day,
From clod to clump and brick
Fingers taut and splay,
With fever and hammer and crash
I will beat it dumb,
From beast to cattle and cricket
'Till time succumb.
No malice nor greed nor hate
Would I ever need,
To bludgeon with lust and flame
A rebellious seed.
No fortune nor god nor fate
Need I first consult,
To butcher without tear or shame
A blighted colt.
To wash and balm and sing
To an infant bairn,
Whose cobalt and crystal eyes
From his mother born,
Is right to raise from Spring
A triumphant fist
That cradles bread and wine
So I may subsist.
