{"id":2944,"date":"2018-12-09T21:44:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T02:44:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ratsassreview.net\/?page_id=2944"},"modified":"2026-02-04T17:13:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T22:13:19","slug":"winter-2018-issue","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ratsassreview.net\/?page_id=2944","title":{"rendered":"

Winter 2018 Issue<\/p><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n\"\"<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n <\/a>
\n(Cover Art Frog Concerto<\/i> by Mark Blickley)
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJeff Bagato<\/strong>
\n 
\nTRAILING THE BLUES
\n 
\n 
\nHe took a folded wad of bills
\ntwo inches thick from his pocket,
\nand peeled off fifty,
\nfifty, fifty dropped
\nfor a stack of pick-fours,
\nscratch-offs and megamillions,
\nhoping for an easy win;
\none day he\u2019d hit, then
\nthe blue uniform would be history,
\nand the sore legs
\ncould be put up
\non the coffee table
\n 
\nUsing a penny,
\nhe rubbed away silver
\npaint, flicking pinworm
\ncrumbs to the floor
\nwith the back of his hand;
\nthe numbers failed to match,
\ncouldn\u2019t add up this time,
\nbut he\u2019d taken enough
\nout of this paycheck,
\nand now he\u2019d have to wait
\nanother two weeks
\nto hit those numbers
\n 
\nThe thick black shoes
\nseemed heavy on the way
\nup those six stairs to the street;
\nthe flask of whiskey burned
\nin his jacket pocket;
\ncold air pushed against the door,
\nand he had to squint
\nin the winter sun;
\nFriday afternoon came on anyway,
\nand he still had to walk
\nback to the building,
\nclock in from lunch,
\nthen start shifting that junk
\nin the storage closet
\njust like the boss
\nhad said this morning
\n 
\n 
\nTHAT WAS MY FIRST WIFE
\n 
\nfive o\u2019clock she
\nwas drinking and by seven
\nher fists were up
\nin a Joe Louis, and I was taking
\nshots like I came home
\nfrom the war and lived
\nall those bullets and shells just
\nfor this, sometimes holding
\nher off with one hand
\n 
\nif I were to take a swing at you\u2014
\n 
\ncause I was in Golden Gloves,
\neliminated in the first
\nfight by a Filipino my size;
\nI couldn\u2019t meet
\nthat kind of need
\n 
\nWellesley girls supposed to be
\nso sweet and finished
\nout like ladies, and she
\nwas\u2014until five
\n 
\nand her arms went
\nup like this,
\nand I came home
\nfrom the army
\n 
\nthe army for this<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDevon Balwit<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nAN ABECEDARIAN FOR IAN BURUMA,
\nTHE FORMER EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
\n 
\nAcquittal isn\u2019t sufficient. The accusations linger.
\nBelieve me\u2014the New Testament rests but lightly on the Old,
\ncondemnation our original language. We do not want to forgive. Give us
\ndestruction and damnation, salted fields, the pillory.
\nEveryone has opinions banged together like shanty towns,
\nfished from the slough of the web.
\nGauging from The Times<\/i>,
\nhashtags incise like Kafka\u2019s penal machine;
\nIt\u2019s never<\/i> when one is rehabilitated,
\njoking, too, forbidden, replaced by grimness, a superior
\nknowing. Pleas for mercy or for Jubilee draw
\nlaughter. No one gets to be anything but perfect. Your
\nmeat, laid on the altar for atonement, goes unburned,
\nnor will anyone come to your aid. You will wander
\noutside the city gates like a leper.
\nPrepare for a life of ghosting, or at best, a
\nquiet like the deepest solitary cell. The
\nroll of the accused thickens,
\nshame swells like a locust-cloud.
\nThe age demands a purge,
\nugly, perhaps, but necessary.
\nVision narrows to the blade of a guillotine.
\nWe claim to stand on the right side of history,
\nX-ing out names in granite and toppling statues.
\nYou would do well to step in line.
\nZealots are famously intolerant.
\n 
\n 
\nGUILTY
\n 
\nI have lost all interest in having a self.
\nBeing a person has always meant getting blamed for it.
\nRachel Cusk<\/i>
\n 
\nI take up my rake and hack
\nat tangle. The weeds break
\nat the stalk, shielding
\ndeep roots. Dirt cakes
\nnailbeds, spackles callous,
\nwhich later raises dark shrieks
\nagainst student notebooks.
\nI am old to them and filthy.
\nEvery morning, I sniff
\nfor crotch, for gums\u2019 dank
\ncanker, performing with new
\nvigilance. Once, I guarded
\nmy body\u2019s perimeter
\nfrom violence. Now, I fight
\nerasure, planting myself
\nto catch the glare
\nof the klieg. I am guilty
\nof having gone to riot,
\na shapeless bush, a hectic
\nvine. Why struggle for clarity
\nwhen tomorrow threatens
\nmore of the same?<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJon Bennett<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nBUTCH
\n 
\nThe AIDS ward
\nat City Hospital
\nwas my dad\u2019s own
\n\u201cscared straight\u201d program
\n\u201cBut we ain\u2019t going
\nto tour the jail, Butch,\u201d he said,
\n\u201cI don\u2019t want you
\ngetting any ideas!\u201d
\nI was only 12
\nbut already
\nvery flamboyant
\nand later I managed
\nto find my way
\nto the jail
\nwithout him.
\n 
\n 
\nCOOL WHIP
\n 
\nShe had platinum blonde hair
\nand red lipstick
\nand was at my door
\n\u201cHold on!\u201d I said,
\nand waded through
\nthe 100s of empty
\nnitrous oxide cartridges,
\nabout the stupidest drug
\na person could get hooked on
\nbut at least I was off
\neverything else
\n\u201cYou\u2019re up,\u201d she said,
\na statement with
\nat least 2 meanings
\n\u201cWatch your step,\u201d I said,
\nand let the balloon
\nI was holding
\ninflate
\nAs I fumbled with her bra
\nand other fasteners
\nshe whispered,
\n\u201cI know you love me,\u201d
\nand coming from
\nthose red lips
\nI almost
\nbelieved her.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAce Boggess<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMAYBE FLOWERS
\n 
\nshould I bring flowers, a mixed bag of colors, dyed,
\nbaby fingers grasping, mouth, insatiable sexual parts?
\nshould I choose roses\u2014red the generic promise,
\nyellow the I-don\u2019t-know & white the I-don\u2019t-know-
\nwhat-I-don\u2019t-know? how about daisies, lilies, daffodils,
\ncarnations? I feel like giving. I feel like love\u2014
\nflushed, hopeful. there are days I want to see rain &
\ndays I wish the world would end in flames,
\nbut this day, what I can\u2019t shake is an urge
\nto address you with offerings: sweets, liquors, stems
\nbearing artful earthborn faces. should I? or will
\nlack of money overcome impulsive lack of sense?
\ninhale their scents\u2014I think them into being, &
\nyour subconscious sniffs from a distance
\nas if to answer yes, god yes, a welcome gift
\non an insignificant afternoon, which
\nseems like the best kind of afternoon there is.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJim Bourey<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSTILETTOS
\n 
\nFoundation garments strong enough
\nto hold up the Eiffel Tower.
\nA satiny black dress slithering
\naround her body and retro-deco-hose
\nwith seams that trace a path
\nto promising places.
\n 
\nAnd finest of all,
\nshiny black
\northopedic stilettos
\n(Stride-Rite\u2019s best)
\na comfortable
\n\u2013 though precarious \u2013
\nride for her senior citizen soul.
\n 
\nMy lady will be time traveling
\nand Molly\u2019s Tavern will swing tonight.
\n 
\n 
\nBREAKUP
\n 
\nScent of memory, that grass \u2013
\nnot the smoking kind nor newly cut \u2013
\nbut the wormy just rained fall
\non your thirteen-year-old face
\nafter being pushed from the seat
\nof your bike by Carol Carpenter when
\nyou asked her if those
\npointed breasts looked the same
\nwhen her bra came off kind of grass.
\n 
\nLove was shattered
\nand that sticks forever.
\nA scent worth the pain.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nNeva Bryan<\/strong>
\n 
\nGLOSSOLALIA
\n 
\nMy sleeping son speaks in tongues.
\n 
\nHis strange language mystifies me.
\nI tuck his blanket tight against nightmares
\nand unknown angels.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRachel Burns<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTSUNAMI
\n 
\nI count myself lucky to be alive
\nwhen the earthquake struck, I was out on a drive.
\nHalfway up a mountain
\ntearing along the desert terrain in a hire truck.
\nWandering around in a daze all day
\nphoned my boss
\nI survived but won’t stay.
\nHe says, Oh yes, you will my girl, what a scoop,
\nstory of a lifetime. I think we\u2019ve hit the big time.
\nThe camera man\u2019s already there,
\nget fucking filming, and I\u2019ll put you on air.<\/i>
\n 
\nThat\u2019s what I did, though I felt rough
\nsickened by the smell
\nof the rotten corpses and stuff.
\nWe followed the bereaved
\nas they grieved
\nwatched them search in vain
\nin downpours of rain.
\nThey searched the rubble
\nlooking troubled.
\nThen they would give up
\nsit down on the
\nconcrete remains
\nof their broken homes
\n 
\nWe kept on filming, it was surreal
\nthe boss became bored because it was all too real.
\nThe public grows tired of the body bags
\npictures of the residents reduced to rags.
\nWe need hard-hitting stuff.<\/i>
\nAs if the earthquake wasn\u2019t enough.
\nFind a white tourist from the British terrain.<\/i>
\nWe found a family,
\nwho lost their mother
\nthey were waiting in the car,
\nwhen the earthquake took her.
\nWe filmed as they wrapped
\nher western body in a plastic sheet.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJohn Byrne<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nI MARK THAT \u201cFALSE\u201d THOUGH PENNED BY MIGHTY WILL
\n(Sonnet 138)
\n 
\n\u201cAnd age in love loves not to have years told.\u201d
\nI mark that \u201cFalse\u201d though penned by mighty Will
\nfor there\u2019s been glory in our growing old
\nand happiness in years that don\u2019t stand still.
\n 
\nEntwining for a day may be delight;
\nentwining for three decades, vastly more
\nand so I\u2019m proud to ceaselessly recite:
\nour blissful times improve on those before.
\n 
\nYoung love\u2019s the cause of undeserv\u00e9d praise.
\nI find in it but one redeeming grace
\nthat novices can foresee future days
\nwhen joyous repetitions will take place.
\n 
\nSo Will I will assert you got it wrong
\naccumulation\u2019s where true bliss is born.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nNikki Byrnside<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nLAST GREAT LOVER
\n 
\nI have seen you before.
\nWe both busied our hands with another.
\nThough the thunderous pulse of
\npassion was missing, hidden,
\nI knew you could not resist
\nmy whisper,
\nthe warmth of my breath as
\nI peered down your shoulder.
\n 
\nI was eying you even then
\nwhen my obligation
\nfettered me to another.
\nNow I am focused on you,
\nas you lie here,
\nI anoint your toes with kisses.
\nForever starts with the feet.
\n 
\nWhen the heat
\nrises up your torso,
\nmy lullaby tap-tapping in your chest,
\nfingers find your calves.
\nFeel the stiffening in your thighs
\nweight on your shoulders,
\nhands round your neck.
\n 
\nI simultaneously fill and purge,
\nspilling intensity,
\nas you yield to emptiness,
\npeer into new dimensions.
\n 
\nLimits that you have given,
\nthe lines you have drawn,
\nI push you beyond the scream
\nyou say you can\u2019t transcend,
\nbut then you do, and you endure,
\nas new boundaries are crossed,
\nnew lines drawn.
\n 
\nYou swallow my darkness and hunger for more.
\nI am violent, forceful,
\nstrength that you need
\nbehind the terror\u2014
\nthe certainty
\nthat you are mine,
\nand this is our time.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nCR Callahan<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE LITTLE THINGS
\n 
\nI dreamed I was a syphilitic dwarf
\nwearing one of those medieval hooded robes
\nbelted with frayed rope.
\nIt was the onset
\nand I was panicked and ran to my hovel
\nto inspect my
\nself.
\nI was dirty and smelled of everything sour.
\nIn this room, my robe tucked under my chin
\ntrying to see the canker blossom
\npast my hooked nose and swollen belly
\nby a tallow candle placed low on a bench.
\nI remember fear and a sense of loss
\nfor in this dream I was in demand as a sexual novelty
\nand up until this point
\nthe dream had been wildly satisfying.
\nStrange Puritan punishment,
\nguilt that lingered long after waking
\nbeyond the steaming coffee in a well-lighted kitchen
\na faint new burning with the rising sun
\nI was afraid to see.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nWendy Taylor Carlisle<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nEARLY SEPTEMBER
\n 
\nBig summer bugs thud against
\nthe curtainless windows, suicides
\nfor last light after the day
\nhas poured out its bucket of shine.
\n  
\nFireflies lift toward the highest
\nstill-green leaves.
\n  
\nOh Lord of Come and Gone, let me be
\nstunned by these final days of summer
\nas the angle of sun changes obscurely
\nand a breeze blows in, gravid with fall.
\n 
\nLet me be capable of feeling
\nthe season\u2019s chill promise.
\nLet me be like the leaf,
\nmomentary in fire, content to be lost.
\n 
\n 
\nNEST
\n 
\nLet us gladly pile up leaves and fall in them.
\nLet us unpack sheepskin boots
\n 
\nweeks before we need them but
\nbe deep in chill before we understand
\n 
\nwhat\u2019s happened to summer.
\nLet the season be a subtle wound
\n 
\non our skin as it pales and we finish
\nthe last of the fresh basil and begin
\n 
\na marinara with this year\u2019s home-canned tomatoes.
\nOh let us be confused by losing an hour
\n 
\nand scratched by wool socks
\nand please let us be more concerned
\n 
\nwith a warm nest than with how helpless
\nwe will soon be against the cold.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRebecca Clifford<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nONE OF THOSE DAYS
\n 
\nOn going to the loo I notice that
\nmy socks don\u2019t match
\nmy skivvies are inside out
\nand backwards
\n 
\nI wonder what the ER nurses will say
\nwhen I finally have that accident
\nmy mother\u2019s been warning me about.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMichael Coolen<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nOH HOW HE LOVED LOVED LOVED YOU
\n 
\nhe did it because he loved loved loved you
\nsuffered for your sins more than anybody ever ever ever suffered
\nexcept for maybe perhaps perchance on the other hand
\na million women murdered by misogynist medieval monks
\npastoral prickers eradicating crimen exceptum<\/i> witches
\nsticking hot needles called pricks
\ninto the anuses and vaginas of shaved naked women
\nto determine where Satan had entered their bodies
\nleaving them beheaded on church floors
\ninfants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers
\ndid that guy on a stick suffer worse than having red hot
\ncharcoal shoved down a teenager\u2019s throat
\nhis Muslim body hung upside down in a tree
\ncock sliced off and shoved in his mouth
\nvultures feasting on his intestines as he died
\nworse than thousands of Bosnian women and children
\ngang-raped to death then hung on barn doors
\nnails through their hands and feet to honor
\nPraise Stick Guy! scribbled on the walls
\nmore than the Jewish father forced to dig a mass grave
\nfor his family\u2019s bodies rotting in the sun in a nearby field
\nhis ten-year old son bursting open from gasses
\ndropping the boy\u2019s putrid remains piece by piece into a grave
\naching for the moment his own body could join theirs
\n 
\nstick guy got taken down by family and friends
\nwho cleaned his body and oiled it and buried it
\nsoon legions of level-of-suffering-myth-doctors sprouted
\nspouting industrial strength whoop-di-do
\nhow suffering stick guy loved loved loved you
\n 
\ntoday you won\u2019t find shops with statues for sale of women
\nspread-eagled on the ground surrounded by a merry band of men
\nor other victims of his love love love
\nbut there are countless opportunities to acquire
\ncolorful crucifixes-rosaries-scapulars-dead-saint-relics
\nsold in sacred bookstores next to sacred cash registers
\ngraced by hand-painted multi-colored Talavera ceramic wall crosses
\nPraise Amazon!
\nfor a small fee you can have sacred par\u00b7a\u00b7pher\u00b7na\u00b7lia
\nblessed by a sacred pe\u00b7do\u00b7phile
\nall in the name of that dead\u00b7guy\u00b7on\u00b7a\u00b7stick
\nwho preached \u201clove\u00b7your\u00b7neighbor\u00b7as\u00b7yourself\u201d<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJoe Cottonwood<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nNAKED PLUMBING
\n 
\nKitchen remodel, budget is low
\nso I build simple and tight.
\nShe teaches nursery, talks slowly.
\nLoves kids. None of her own, not yet.
\nIn a crappy bathrobe, legs crossed, from a stool
\nshe watches me work, smokes filter tip Camels,
\nsays she can\u2019t quit. Admires my tools.
\nAsks if I\u2019ll try to fix the shower nozzle,
\nbright brass she gave hubby as a gift.
\nIt only dribbles.
\nI try leaning in, wet arms.
\nNot good enough<\/i>, she says, get inside,
\ntake a shower, I\u2019ll pay you.<\/i>
\nAnswers the phone, leaves me alone.
\n 
\nSomething\u2019s jammed.
\nI twist the dial, jerk it back and forth
\nthough careful, not too hard
\nbecause my hands, they can crush things.
\nThen I notice she\u2019s back,
\ndrops the robe and steps in.
\nLet me help,<\/i> she says.
\n 
\nAnd the nozzle, fixed.
\nWorks on Stream, Pulse, or Mist.
\nShe says Pulse is best.
\nNever calls me again but next Christmas,
\nshe sends a photo card. In the tidy kitchen,
\nthe new tiles, hubby and baby and her,
\nall smiles. Yeah, I wonder.
\n 
\n 
\nHALF A VENUS DE MILO
\n 
\nPriya so pretty
\nat first you don\u2019t notice
\nshe\u2019s missing an arm. One sleeve flat,
\nfolded into raincoat pocket.
\n 
\nPriya at a party
\nsays You want to ask
\nso let me just tell you.
\nIt\u2019s a birth defect. I\u2019m defective.<\/i>
\n 
\nOtherwise perfect, you say.
\nShe says How do you know?
\nHave you counted my kidneys?
\nMy ovaries? Toes?<\/i>
\n 
\nYou\u2019re sorry. You turn to go.
\nWait<\/i>, Priya says, I\u2019m missing nothing
\nexcept good manners<\/i>. Frowning,
\nshe studies you \u2014 forehead to feet.
\nNow your turn. What makes you incomplete?<\/i>
\n 
\nRomance, you might say
\nbut perhaps it is here.
\n 
\nShe sees in your eyes and warns
\nBoys, men desire me.
\nMale instinct to protect,
\nmale desire to fuck a one-armed woman.
\nSorry if that\u2019s crude.<\/i>
\n 
\nPriya so pretty
\nthough missing an arm.
\nHow can you tell her
\nyou wish her no harm?<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTerry Culleton<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSPRUCE
\n 
\n A sapling fenced about with chicken wire
\nstood in a field of milkweed everywhere,
\nand meadow grass and woodbine, gypsy briar,
\nwild bamboo. — Someone had taken care
\nto come from town to stake, as round a grave,
\na stinted fence shaped like a battered horn
\naround the trunk, so that the tree seemed brave
\nin its confinement, as a unicorn
\nheroically lamenting bygone magic
\nmight stand contained and drop a silver tear.
\nBut nothing in suburbia is tragic:
\nthe fence fenced out the famished nibbling deer
\nto give the young tree freedom to apprise
\nitself of wind and light and bottle flies.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBatuhan Dedde<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSONG OF THE BUTCHER\u2019S STEEL III
\n 
\nI\u2019m an extra in my own life
\nthanks, God.
\nI know enough negative words to build a bridge between death and life
\nenough love to be a plaything between death and life.
\nI know lots of stories
\nthat tell of men who return from death to life like they\u2019re coming home from work
\nwhile the sun goes from life to death like every night it\u2019s leaving home for work.
\nMy paragraphs in out-of-the-way corners
\ndraw the blade of melancholy across the butcher\u2019s steel again and again.
\nI\u2019m a Joseph cast out even from those wells
\nwhere silence is equivalent to blood.
\n 
\ntranslated by Donny Smith from Dayan\u0131lmaz Ac\u0131lar Orkestras\u0131<\/i> (\u0130stanbul: Alt\u0131k\u0131rkbe\u015f, 2015)<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSteve Denehan<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHAIR AND SMOKE
\n 
\nThe hair on my arms, newly white
\na sun-bleached preview of old age
\nI think of my father\u2019s arms
\nonce, carpenters\u2019 arms of bunched sinew
\nand dense muscle
\nnow, the arms of a boy
\nwhittled away by age
\nrendered hairless, side effects
\nfrom a dozen daily tablets
\n 
\nhe sucked half a century of smoke into himself
\nuntil his lungs revolted
\nmy childhood memories often cloaked in hazy shrouds
\nyet, I sit here by a pool, sky-watching, lilting toward a dream
\nwhen smoke, hidden in warm breezes, finds me
\n 
\nI breathe it in and tumble back through time
\nmy father, the butt of a pencil behind his ear
\nbrow pursed in concentration
\neyes unblinking, the obligatory cigarette
\nand that glorious haze
\na hammer in his right hand
\na ready chisel in his left
\nand his arms, half as old, twice as young
\nthe hair on them still black
\n 
\n 
\nNEVER TRUST THE WEATHERMAN
\n 
\nThe weatherman looked me right in the eye
\nand promised sunshine
\nyet here I sit, an inside child
\nlooking out through curtains of rain
\n 
\nit is grey outside, and inside and
\nthe wind sneers down the chimney
\nwhile the radio tells me
\nAretha Franklin died today
\nand then, it all makes sense
\n 
\n 
\nJUST YESTERDAY
\n 
\nShe lay smiling on the operating table
\nthis, an adventure, like all our others
\nI held her hand as her smile, suddenly
\nhidden under the anaesthetic face mask
\nwas found in her eyes
\n 
\nwith each breath she stepped
\nfurther from me
\nI felt her try to lift her eyelids
\neach one weighed down by sleepy anvils
\nI felt her hand empty of her
\nand let me go
\n 
\nwaiting in her room I follow cracks in the wall
\nbefore I hear the squeaky wheel of her bed and
\ncraning her woozy head backward
\n\u201cdid you hold my hand Dad?\u201d
\n\u201cyes\u201d
\n\u201cI knew you would\u201d<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAlyra Far<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCOFFEE OUR SAVIOR
\n 
\nDisturbing climate news\u2026
\nCoffee plants don\u2019t flower
\nwhen temperatures soar.
\n 
\nIn a warming world
\nno flowers means
\nno coffee beans
\nto brew steaming cups
\nof morning joe.
\n 
\nCan caffeine lovers
\nturn the tide
\nsave our globe?
\n 
\nWill climate change
\ndeniers join
\nthe cause
\ndrop blind belief
\ntake a jolting
\nleap of faith at
\nthe Altar of Reason?
\n 
\nOh coffee, coffee, coffee
\nin the name of
\nour daily java buzz
\npray to God
\nJesus will find<\/i>
\nScience.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJ. Fisher<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHOAX
\n 
\n\u201cshow me your soul\u201d
\nsame dereliction, every
\nlast one. I was
\nalready too in love
\nwith the idiots’ dream
\nto afford that
\nold war. I believed
\npoverty was the thru
\nto greatness. All I got
\nwas thin, hungry
\nand a new hole
\nin my old ass.
\nI left her, curbed
\nand hustled up
\na six and some smoke
\nto brace me
\nup against the lie.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJean-Luc Fontaine<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMY FIRST KISS AND GEORGE CLOONEY\u2019S
\nBANK HEIST MASTERPIECE: OCEAN\u2019S ELEVEN
\n 
\nIt\u2019s right when George Clooney and his crew
\nbarrel straight into the machine-gun spray,
\nthat first Sami leans in for the kiss. Bullets sparkle
\non the screen, and my tongue darts around
\nin her mouth like a hare frightened from his swale.
\n 
\nOur faces warm with the unshaven glow
\nof projector, the gentle undoing of lips, and I blurt,
\nI\u2019m sorry for being such a sloppy kisser<\/i>,
\nknowing that this it: she\u2019ll dump me, then tell
\nall her friends that I make-out like a dog
\n 
\non dental-anesthetic. On Monday, my classmates
\nwill call me, faucet-boy, drool-fool, mop-
\nbreath,<\/i> as I slip through the halls,
\nand any second now, Sami will jump from her seat
\nand dive for the exit like Julia Roberts
\n 
\nafter she triggered the bank\u2019s alarm. But Sami whispers,
\nI adore you<\/i>, then wipes the slobber jeweled
\nupon my upper lip\u2014the orchestra music thrumming
\nthe small bones in my face. Brad Pitt
\nrains down knuckles on the steering wheel
\n 
\nof the getaway car, and I turn to face the audience\u2014
\nrow after row of white planets shiny
\nin the night sky. I grip Sami\u2019s hand, then rest
\nmy head against her chest, the same way Clooney
\nplants his ear on a steel safe, then rubs his hands
\nacross the outside as he tries to divine the code.
\n 
\n 
\nPIMPLE
\n 
\nFresh out the shower, and my wife swoops in,
\nasks if she can squeeze the pimples on my back.
\nI\u2019d rather stick my face in mulch
\nthan have you pinch at my skin<\/i>. My wife grumbles
\nlike a printer with a paper jam, then bribes me
\n 
\nwith all my favorite things: foam-heavy coffees,
\ntacos drenched in iguana-green guacamole,
\nthat leopard-print lingerie dangling behind the door.
\nErica, I just want to relax<\/i>, I say as I retreat
\ninto our bedroom like a hermit crab backing
\n 
\ninto his shell. But as I sit on the stool by the side
\nof our bed, she creeps behind, strikes
\nlike a kingfisher. Every time you pop my pimples
\nyou make me feel like a chimp in a zoo! <\/i>,
\nI shout as I swing around, but I stop when I see
\n 
\nmy wife wince\u2014readying herself for the geyser
\nof frustration frothing inside me. I try to cling
\nto my anger like a koala to his eucalyptus tree,
\nbut when my wife wraps her vines around me, whispers,
\nI\u2019m sorry, I just like grooming you<\/i>, I realize I\u2019m beat.
\n 
\nI\u2019m caught in the maw of love, and there\u2019s no place
\nI rather be. I lower my towel to the ground,
\nand my wife smiles a big toothy grin, then settles
\nher hands on my back like a lioness
\nsinking her claws into a scrumptious hunk of meat.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKarin L. Frank<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nEATING JIM CROW
\n 
\nIn the local Price Chopper
\nseeking Thanksgiving fixings,
\nI\u2019ve ordered a turkey, bought
\nnecks for my Labrador.
\n 
\nSide by side, I stand
\nwith an elderly gentleman.
\nHis mixed-mocha hands
\nwork next to my week-old-cream
\npicking through the same yams,
\ntasting ripeness and decay
\nthrough our fingertips.
\n 
\n\u201cAin\u2019t we become just the shrewdest,\u201d
\nhe chats, \u201csuckin\u2019 that last shred
\nof good from the turkey.\u201d
\nHe nods toward our respective packages
\nof necks. \u201cHow you fix \u2018em?
\nWith them yams? Some greens?\u201d
\n 
\nTurkey necks got my tongue
\nand I can only nod.
\n 
\n 
\nHIBAKUSHI: SURVIVORS OF HIROSHIMA
\n 
\nFear rides the storm clouds.
\nThey burn and smother.
\nVapors sour in the atmosphere;
\nthe dirty abrasive wind rises \u2013
\nour dignity which once clothed us,
\nrots now on our faces.
\nChildren frown at the sky;
\nadults avoid mirrors while
\na mere few scour honor
\nfrom the few potatoes
\nleft to eat.
\nFire breathed and purified
\nthe ones who died.
\nWe, the scorched, drag on
\nbut the lumps of ashes left
\nbeside our blown out buildings
\npersist and erode.
\nRain chooses now among the dogs.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMeg Freer<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nA WHEELCHAIR NAMED PRUDENCE
\n 
\nIn the nursing home, a wheelchair
\nnamed Prudence confuses me,
\nuntil I realize the label is French:
\nprudence<\/i>, \u201ccaution\u201d, \u201ctake care\u201d,
\nand I recall my friend named Prudence,
\nwho threw caution to the wind
\nand flushed her mother\u2019s cigarettes,
\ntook care of hurt plants and creatures,
\n 
\nlived with her mother in her old age,
\ncared for her until it became too much
\nand Prudence moved her to a nursing home
\nwhere she had to learn how to live
\nwith others, like Robert Fulghum\u2019s crayons,
\nand the woman with her wheelchair
\nnamed Prudence must learn to live
\nin her crayon box of a home on the street
\n 
\nwhere a red metal roof arcs over orange lilies
\nto yellow pumpkin doorstop, maples dress
\nin green under the protective blue of sky
\nto shade lavender where butterflies
\nsee two extra colors we can\u2019t even name,
\nwhere a decrepit brown Volvo sits
\nwith empty eye sockets, little bulbs gone
\nlike the empty eyes of those who don\u2019t care.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMac Gay<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHUNGER IS A HUGE PROBLEM
\n 
\nin this world, but at our house
\nwe know nothing of it,
\nand that brings what? Guilt,
\nhumility, gratitude, good ole
\nmiddle class complacency?
\nAt our house, even the dogs
\neat well, especially log-shaped
\nAbigail, her wide shadow
\nfollowing me or my wife
\naround the kitchen, cleaning
\nbowls, or bird-dogging crumbs
\nthat have somehow precipitated
\nto linoleum. The sore thumb
\nof first-world greed is a fat dog.
\nI love Abby. Would include her
\nin my prayers, if I said prayers.
\nWould ask forgiveness for the fat
\naround her belly, and mine,
\nwould feel compassion and sadness
\nfor the impoverished of the world
\nhad that rerun of Jerry Seinfeld not
\nbeen on, during which I fell asleep.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAlison Gerhard<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nDUST TO DUSTING
\n 
\nYou cannot outrun death by dusting
\n(well-kept steel still takes to rusting),
\nbut I shall pass through lands unseen
\nwith shelves, if not my conscious clean.
\nAnd should Peter all my sins announce
\nat least he’ll say,
\n“She kept her house.”
\n 
\n 
\nSHOPPING MALL ELEGIES
\n 
\nYou can hear the asphalt dying if you listen closely enough.
\nAt 9pm the car engines are death rattles.
\nThe parking lot heaves,
\nits skin still hot to the touch.
\n 
\nThey asked us more politely than expected to leave,
\nto end our reign over the food courts-
\nour shoes now too big to fit on the quarter-operated carousel,
\nour soles in stained stilettos still learning to walk.
\n 
\nWe sprawl instead on truck-bed thrones
\nto rule a white-striped graveyard,
\nall arms and legs and bones
\nwith nowhere to go.
\n 
\nHe sits atop the cab and lifts a cigarette, an incense offering.
\nBehind him the spark finds its echo in the cop cars,
\nshining red and blue relief through mohawk spikes-
\na crown for the nightfall kingdoms that will never remember their sovereigns
\n 
\nonce we are gone.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE LITTLE MERMAID USED TO DANCE\u2026
\n 
\nI understand better the way of the waves
\nTo trade movement for pain like there’s nothing to say
\n 
\nI traded my legs for a cane made of scales
\nI still hear the music
\nI won’t speak of tails
\n 
\n 
\nTIDAL
\n 
\nYou don’t feel like sin
\nmoving within me,
\n 
\nand I’ve seen sin.
\nI’ve felt oil-slick touches and bad decisions,
\nknown gentleness like soft waves breaking on beaches
\nthe sand worn down and tired nonetheless.
\n 
\nI’ve said blessings with your name on my lips
\nlike quiet prayers moving within me,
\nlike nights without ceasing
\npushing and pulling in moon-struck tides
\nand you don’t feel like sin.
\n 
\nWe’ve been saved by the waters long enough.
\nEnough time to fall under,
\nto move within,
\nto sink in sin,
\nwith nights enough to dream
\nthat we’re in too deep-
\n 
\nTo dream we never crest
\nand never break.
\n 
\n 
\nHOTELS AND THE HIGHLINE
\n 
\nYou kiss the backs of my knees with a tenderness
\nthat joints do not deserve.
\nYou bend with me and I might break
\nbut we’ll arc back together.
\nA little crooked never hurt anyone
\nanyways.
\n 
\nYou press ticks to the kisses in the hitches in my breath
\ntwo spastics sleeping through twitches.
\n 
\nWe walk in white-walled gardens now holding three hands
\nYou me my cane you me my pain
\nYou me and gardens with glass elevators.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nWilliam Gillespie<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE NAME OF THIS POEM IS DEAR FRANK DON\u2019T JUMP COME DOWN OFF THE LEDGE.<\/i> IT IS A POEM ABOUT FRANK.
\n 
\nFrank, it\u2019s not your fault, you can\u2019t help it
\nFrank, you didn\u2019t know he was married
\nThe tequila didn\u2019t seem like it would be that strong
\nSomebody else would have sold those nuclear weapons schematics to the Taliban
\nAnd that enriched uranium: who knew?
\nFrank, a lot of men have that same problem
\nAnd sure size matters but so does other stuff
\nFrank, you had no way of knowing that guy was the real Devil
\nAnd who, Frank, truly knows the value of men\u2019s souls?
\nYou didn\u2019t know kidnapping was illegal and you
\nNever believed in condescending to children or making exceptions for them
\nPlus it wasn\u2019t the worst poem ever written
\nFrank, the newspapers always exaggerate, and heinous, bloodless monster\u2014<\/i>
\nThat\u2019s just how they move units. Same deal with twisted, pervy, insidious
\nInhuman<\/i>. What does that even mean<\/i>?
\nCome on Frank. Get down.
\nYou\u2019re being a total asshole, you know?
\n 
\nThis is just like you.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJohn Grey<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nA MARRIED MAN LAMENTS
\n 
\nDoes leading an ordinary life
\ndisqualify me from romance?
\nCan Don Juan co-exist with a vacuum cleaner
\nscuffing up the dirt beneath my feet
\nor the barrels of trash I roll out to the sidewalk?
\n 
\nMy wife is in the kitchen, baking.
\nHer hair’s tied back to keep the strands
\nfrom falling in her face.
\nBut isn’t that where those strands belong?
\nI can’t comment for the moment.
\nA tap is dripping.
\n 
\nI sometimes go in fruitless search
\nof the young man
\nwho drew hearts in dust
\non car windows,
\npoked love notes under doors,
\nstrummed his guitar and serenaded.
\nDoes anybody serenade anymore?
\nDoes ProTools even have that as an option?
\n 
\nBack then, it was all about the getting.
\nAnd having got, what’s Romeo to do?
\nCandle-lit dinners celebrate anniversaries,
\nthey don’t mask them.
\nAs the last drop of champagne is drained,
\nthe bill arrives and out comes the credit card.
\nPaper and plastic are the real tryst here.
\n 
\nI have to tell myself that we have something deeper
\nthan breathless kisses and passionate hugs.
\nLet me add that to today’s chores.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Helweg-Larsen<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nATAVISTIC
\n 
\nJust past the new development\u2019s array,
\nbeyond the parking lot, the flowers, the fence,
\nthe land becomes uneven, falls away
\ninto an area of no pretense,
\na bulldozed pile of rocks, some weeds, a bog.
\nHere are drawn children and eccentrics both,
\nbeyond the ordered asphalt, lineal law,
\nto nature lurking in the undergrowth,
\ntiny wild flowers, perhaps a snake, a frog,
\ndrawn by our lower brain of hunter, ape,
\nwhere food is found or killed and eaten raw,
\nlife is survival, and sex may mean rape.
\n 
\n 
\nLOVE POETRY
\n 
\n 
\nAll the love expressed in poems overtly
\nseems so pure they can be taught in schools,
\nyet reading lives of all these divine fools
\nyou realise that the impulses
\nthat drove them to express themselves in verse
\ninclude love that repulses
\n(differing by era), and was forbidden:
\nincest, same sex, underage, interracial,
\ninterfaith, cross-generational,
\nBDSM – even a pet, a dog.
\nScandalous, and kept hidden,
\nat worst horrific and at best uncouth –
\nyet all identity is just a fog
\nof \u201cYou, my love\u201d, expressed covertly.
\nAnd kids in school are never taught the truth.
\n 
\n 
\nROSE
\n 
\nThen Rose arose:
\nher rosebud mouth – her eyes like roses –
\nbreasts: budding roses –
\nbelow, an opening rose she won\u2019t disclose –
\nblushing rose to her toes.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n Hartley Hutchinson<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nKAR\u00c1NSEBES
\n 
\nI catch myself chewing
\non the inside of my cheek
\nagain. It\u2019s a bad habit. I think
\nabout oral cancer because
\nthe dentist told me I should. Now
\nI think about it all the time. It keeps me
\nup at night: canker sore-like
\nwounds, oyster-grey in the centre and
\nraw meat-red around the edges.
\nI still can\u2019t stop myself from
\nchewing. It\u2019s always harmless
\nat first: an introspective nibble.
\nBy the end of the day,
\nmy cheeks have been through
\na rusted cheese grater and
\nmy sore jaw clicks. Sometimes
\nI chew the taste buds off
\nmy tongue as well, or
\nchew the dead skin off
\nmy flaking lips. My mouth fights
\nitself. Continuous trauma to
\nmouth tissues can lead to
\nmutant cell growth. Speckled patches,
\nsore throat, throbbing ears, unexplained
\nbleeding.
\nI can taste blood and
\nit\u2019s like licking body-hot
\nsheet iron. I take a shot of vodka,
\ninternalize the sting.
\nCancer. Chew on that.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDerek Kannemeyer<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWILD GARLIC
\n 
\nWhat I remember most
\nabout Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who died last year,
\nApril 1, 2017, is a road trip to Charlottesville to hear him read\u2014
\nwith our chatter in Cap’s car about styles of literature\u2014
\nand the hall so full, and how he played to it\u2014
\nall flood-roll of Russian phonemes, and ocean growl of a voice.
\nOne might have drowned in it. One was tempted to.
\nThere was a Selected Poems<\/i> I read through afterward, to rehear its furor,
\nbut instead, deliberately, it was the quieter, earlier work
\nhe had turned back to, of Siberia, and the fine, wise slowness
\nof Russian nature: “my hurry has become pitiable in the face of you.”
\nHe grieved for Blok, the poet, dead a decade before his birth,
\nbut “what I remember are not the verses of his poetry,
\nbut a carriage, and a bridge, and the Neva\u2026and something terrible
\nabout the twist of his long-fingered, wax-pale hands.”
\nAnd he spoke of loneliness\u2014the loneliness of lost love, he said,
\nbut we felt the tincture of all loss in it\u2014as when he wrote of his dog,
\n“my splendid dog\u2026what a pity it is that you don’t drink.”
\nBecause in the end, how intimate a haunt the heart is!
\nThough our world may seem to widen till it leaves us grasping.
\nThough we may go scrabbling after it into a stridency, into a falseness.
\nSo that, stridently, a Brodsky will resign from his American Academy
\nonce it admits us, decrying our dissidence as tame\u2014
\nmere government-stamped sonorities\u2014our rabble roar as posturing\u2026
\nBut the hymn of us, once, was as simple and as slow as honey.
\nOur home town’s name meant “Winter.” As boys,
\nwe learned to drag the boat, like men, and use our axe.
\nAnd we smeared our bread with wild garlic.
\n 
\n 
\nMY FATHER TURNS 84
\n 
\n\u201cI’m not going to make old bones.\u201d
\nMy father, once or twice a year since his mid-fifties
\n 
\nHe’s very drunk, slumped on his back
\nacross from me as if fallen on this armchair
\nlike a floor. It’s his birthday, and the whole
\ntribe’s here, why not be? He’s too blithely
\ntrashed to know he just messed like a baby
\nover himself and the guest bathroom. \u201cI may
\n 
\nnot be around,\u201d he’s proclaiming, as he has for years,
\noff and on, on other birthdays he’s been drunk,
\n\u201cthis time next year. So I wanted to tell you that I
\nlove you, Derek. And how proud I am we took the risk
\nwe did\u2014because it was terrifying, you know, to flee
\nSouth Africa, and start over here, with nothing.\u201d
\n 
\n\u201cMmmh,\u201d I say. Which is to say We’re grateful,<\/i>
\nand I’m embarrassed.<\/i> Which is to say, in as
\nwarm and non-committal a one word as possible,
\nGo on! Please stop! I’ve missed you!<\/i>
\n\u201cYou see,\u201d he says (his gaze, though, so lolled
\nand hooded with the weight of an impending sleep
\n 
\nthere can’t be much but it he sees), \u201cI’m proud of our
\nthree children, and what you’ve made of yourselves\u2026
\nYou see,\u201d he says, \u201cit was about labels\u2026
\nI want you to write me something about labels, Derek\u2014
\nthe constraints of labels\u2026 Because I want you never
\nto let any of them,” he manages, “tell you who you are,\u201d
\n 
\nhe says, escaping from me then, sending back out of
\nthe dark, in his rich, clear Coloured schoolmaster voice,
\nhis preacher’s kid voice, this homily. This proud,
\nwrecked, sweet, drunk other of a man, my father.
\n 
\n 
\nNIGGER
\n 
\n31% Northwestern Europe, 13% South China Sea, 12% Southern India, 9% Northern India, 7% Western Africa, 6% Eastern Europe, 6% West Mediterranean, 3% Southern Africa, 3% Northern Africa, 3% Eastern Africa, 2% Southwest Asia\/Persian Gulf, 2% Central Africa, 2% Melanesia\/Australia
\n 
\nMy regional ancestry, according to Geno 2.0 Next Generation<\/i>
\n 
\nBecause I\u2019m of the Rorschach race, and mostly those who need to place me
\ncan\u2019t, or might place me almost anywhere, and because for too long I could
\nbarely place myself, I realize, now, that sometimes I found comfort
\nin the jeer of nigger<\/i>\u2014a part of me liked being called it.
\n 
\nIn London, in the decades when London was awkwardly changing its color,
\nwe wogs all looked alike, and any of us might hear it, spat out the way
\ndogs bark, as if astonished by the rudeness of you\u2014look!\u2014
\na stranger!\u2014walking right among them!
\n 
\nHere, in the Melting Pot, I\u2019ve lost the right to it; sure, I\u2019ve a claim
\non all of its shades of meaning, but it isn’t a word for slightness,
\nand fetching my dusty title from the attic gets me looked at.
\n 
\nI put it aside, then; almost with regret.
\n 
\nRegret not for (of course) the loathing or contempt with which I had it
\nsaid to me, but for something diminished in the loveliness of dusk;
\nwith its perfumes of two Old Countries darkly dear to me;
\nand for the small, lost, tribal pleasure of a name.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMickey Kulp<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCOINCIDENCE
\n 
\nThere are entirely too many coincidences for my liking.
\nI get a supernatural shiver when I perceive the lifted
\nedge of a totally connected universe.
\n 
\nToday I’m driving down a major highway and I see
\na pillow on the side of the road. Was someone moving out?
\n(home to dorm, apartment to house, married to single)
\nNo big deal.  But why did it grab my attention?  What was so
\nspecial about some random debris on the shoulder?
\n 
\nLater, I’m stopped by the school bus.  Today is the first day of
\nschool, and young parents are taking pictures and waving as
\ntheir priceless beloved boards for the first time.
\n 
\nIt is taking forever, so I have plenty of time to observe all that
\nis going on and remember my time in their shoes.
\n 
\nI notice a father who seems too young to have a school kid
\n(Did I just say that?  God, I sound old.)
\nback away from the knot of smiling mothers.  He steps toward
\nthe bushes and wipes his eyes.
\n 
\nHe has been weeping.  Is it for the anxiety of letting his baby go
\ninto the cruel world, or is it the first keen awareness of the grains
\nleft in his hourglass?
\n 
\nToday is the beginning:
\nthe first beginning for some,
\nthe same old beginning for others.
\n 
\nI get to my office and check my email.
\nSomeone has died.
\nShe was a teacher, a mother.
\nShit.
\nI stare for a minute at nothing.
\n 
\nThe edge of the universe seems to drift up like the onionskin page
\nof an old bible, and I see today with new eyes.
\n 
\nThe discarded pillow.  Leaving. Moving out.
\nThe weeping parent.  The child leaving on the first day of school.
\nThe teacher leaving on the first day of school.
\n 
\nThere is no such thing as coincidence in this world or the next.
\nIf you feel a shiver, know that it was intentional.
\n 
\n 
\nTAKEOFF
\n 
\nI began to understand
\nwhen I joined a few others
\none night to feed the homeless
\ndown near the city prison.
\n 
\nWe parked in a weedy lot
\nwith old busted black asphalt
\nand train tracks along the back.
\n 
\nSometimes the taller weeds would
\nmove as the rats slinked through to
\nbegin the furtive nightly
\ntransactions among their kind.
\n 
\nI brought paperbacks in a
\nbox to give away, spreading
\nthem on an ancient Army
\nblanket under the blueish
\nlight of a buzzing street lamp.
\n 
\nI was gratified to see
\nthe ragged guys and ladies –
\nsome of whom were, technically,
\nalso guys – take an interest.
\n 
\n“Is this one here any good?”
\n“I like nonfiction the best.”
\n“They made a movie from this.”
\n 
\nWhen I had begun packing
\nthe books at home, I doubted
\nanyone would waste precious
\nspace in their backpack or cart.
\n 
\nWere books a frivolous waste
\nof space, a luxury in
\nwhich fine suburban people
\ncould indulge without weighing
\nit against the cost of food?
\n 
\nBut, happily, I was wrong.
\n 
\n“Do you have any school books?
\nI need to learn some more things.
\nI just got out yesterday.”
\nHe hitched a thumb toward the jail.
\n 
\nI gave him a thesaurus.
\n“This will tell you many ways
\nto say or write what you want.”
\n 
\nHe flipped the pages, staring
\nintently under the cone
\nof humming mercury light.
\nThen he squinted – I bet he
\nneeded glasses – and he smiled.
\nHe was missing a front tooth.
\n 
\n“Beginning… birth, creation.”
\nHe nodded, scowling, stumbling
\nalong “inauguration.”
\n 
\nThis might have embarrassed him
\nso he read on silently,
\nhis mouth moving a little,
\nhis face scowling, then resting,
\nthen smiling as he consumed
\neach almost-forgotten word.
\n 
\nHe looked at me and tapped the
\ncover.  “Takeoff.”  He nodded,
\npatting his chest with the book.
\n“Take…off.  That\u2019s it! Yep, that\u2019s it!”
\n 
\nHe winked and smiled with all his
\nface; a different kind of smile.
\nI could imagine him now
\nas a boy.  I began to
\nsee him maybe as his mom
\nused to see him.  Before all
\nof his troubles got started.
\n 
\n“I’m gonna take…off,” he said
\ndramatically, waving the
\npaperback like a preacher
\nwho just laid down the Word of
\nbright mercy on his lost flock.
\n 
\nHe launched into the darkness,
\nhis finger marking the page.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKamryn Kurtzner<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nATTEMPT AT AMERICAN
\n 
\nI\u2019m making
\nthe tuna casserole tonight
\nwith the white sauce
\n that you need to watch
\nbecause if it\u2019s not a pure white
\nit\u2019s not right
\n 
\nand you\u2019ll have to settle
\n    Nonna never did
\nin life
\nin love
\nespecially her kitchen
\n 
\nCarmella
\nshe stole a piece of our Italy
\n and dressed it down in cans of fish
\ncioppino melts on the tongue
\nbut casserole
\nwhispers us a word closer to American
\nshe\u2019d never forgive herself
\nif the sauce wasn\u2019t real
\nour sauces are always real
\n    a farina\u2019s sauce
\nis her signature
\n 
\nMama added cheese to the top
\nbecause we love salt
\nand tonight
\n i\u2019m adding tomatoes
\nfor my california girl
\n  it\u2019s mine and i bought real
\nparmesan just for this
\n 
\n 
\nThe casserole in question (photo by the poet)
\n 
\n \"\"<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nStevie Lamblin<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n(from the Hoetry collection)
\n 
\nFANCY FEAST
\n 
\nSlippy drippy grip-me slide
\nnow is wet what once was dry
\nStretchy pet-me turbo jet
\nshower me in feline sweat
\n 
\nELMER’S
\n 
\nWhen pussy 1 meets pussy 2 and silkiness ensues
\nthe pleasure centers of my brain don\u2019t quite know what to do
\nI always loved the feeling of such width and girth inside
\nThat is, until I gave the feel of tiny hands a try
\nWhen finger 1 meets finger 2 and silkiness ensues
\nthe muscles in my legs convulse until I lady glue<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMarie C. Lecrivain<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWHY DAVID CARRADINE
\nWAS A KARMIC MASOCHIST
\n 
\nYou can first spot it
\nin the film Boxcar Bertha;<\/i>
\nthat moment, as Union Bob,
\nwhen he\u2019s crucified
\nto the door of the train,
\nhis piercing screams
\nbordered on ecstacy.
\n 
\nIn every episode of Kung Fu,<\/i>
\nhe\u2019s tied up (and down),
\nput in cuffs and chains,
\nand hung from the rafters
\nlike a Thanksgiving turkey
\nin a farmer\u2019s barn.
\n 
\nIt was in the way
\nhe held himself close,
\nlike a wonderful, terrible secret.
\n 
\nIt was written in the marks
\non his neck when police found
\nhim bound to a travel hanger
\nin a hotel closet, his pupils
\nblack, blind, and stilled
\nfrom the final satiation
\nla grande mort<\/i> brings.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMichael H. Levin<\/strong>
\n 
\nIN THE CROOK OF HIS ARM
\n 
\nI\u2019m held, straddling his lanky thigh,
\nwrapped in a double-breasted coat
\nand sweater that enlarge
\nmy toddler frame.
\nWe\u2019re on a bench, outside. He wears
\na regulation tie,
\nthe khaki G.I. shirt that
\nstill hangs in my back-of-closet
\nand my mind, too fragile now
\nto take down or to wear. It seems
\nI\u2019ve just been jounced on his big knee:
\nmy breathless glance hints
\nrecent glee. Remembered clip-clops
\ncan\u2019t be traced to this March scene.
\nThey rise instead from hours
\nI bounced my own small sons,
\nblurred imprints from a different time.
\n 
\nWhy does this picture
\nmove me so? Perhaps it\u2019s his
\nenchanted gaze, the smile
\nof one who seldom smiled in
\nlater days. Perhaps it\u2019s (looking back)
\nhow young he seems: broad face aligned
\nprecisely with my tiny shoulder-edge;
\nthe tendoned hand that steadies me,
\nhis red-gold hair slicked sideways
\nfrom a part I don\u2019t recall. There are
\nno wrinkles here; no chasms carved
\nby worry or despair. No slow
\nretreat beneath the pressures
\nof disease and fear. I want to
\ntwist round and return his grin
\nand state at last his many gifts
\nthat went unsaid, and say that no one
\n 
\nis to blame for afterwards;
\nand — once more sheltered from the
\nuniverse — to nestle in.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMA|DE<\/strong>
\n 
\nVERTICAL LOGIC AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD
\n 
\nWhen my French exit meets your l\u2019esprit de l\u2019escalier,<\/i>
\na door is always left open between us.
\nWhose feet will move through that gaping mouth first?
\nI\u2019m done with doubt but
\nyou will still always doubt that;
\nso I hope for you to call me back
\nand you wait for the return of my goodbye.
\nThe first time was in the middle of a thunderstorm.
\nThere was a party, so I forgive you, I guess,
\nfor letting me wreck my velvet in the rain,
\nfor the fact that when I left,
\nonly my wet shoes had anything to say.
\nThere was no turning back. Our love was
\ncaught hiding inside a kiss blown south.
\nI waved, dismissive; let it wait
\nfor some other scavenger\u2019s craw.
\nLiar, illusive contortionist \u2014 those
\nfireflies don\u2019t spark new conversations.
\nI should have taken you to stand under flinty stars.
\nYou should have forked a socket into my mouth.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBob MacKenzie<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nI would sit with you on a park bench
\nearly evening rain whispering to us
\nsheltered under just one umbrella
\nloving each other without saying
\n 
\nI would hold you close in the rain
\nloving you quietly and completely
\nas though this bench were all time
\nand all eternity were ours to share
\n 
\nI would love you in the rain as always
\nI have loved you in sunshine or shadows
\nmy heart and soul become yours alone
\nyou and I forever together in the rain<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDS Maolalai<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nIT MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE & I LOOK AT MY FEET A LOT
\n 
\nI always forget
\nhow young u are
\nwhen I see u
\nchatting with ur friends –
\n& it makes me uncomfortable
\n& I look at my feet a lot
\n& put my hands in my pockets
\nwhile u talk to them in chinese
\nand do those sexy
\nhigh laughs
\nthat 18 y\/o chinese girls do
\nand I fiddle with receipts in my pockets
\n& old lighters that don’t work anymore
\n& then worry I look like I’m playing with myself
\n& later on u tell me
\nwhat the 2 of u were talking about
\n& what u want me to know
\nabout what they said about me
\n& normally its just talk
\nabout college
\n& jokes about how tall I am
\nbut I do notice,
\nu kno,
\nwhen they look at me
\nall the way up
\neven though I amn’t saying much
\nbecause it’s weird
\nto interrupt in english
\nwhen ur talking in chinese
\nto ask about the weather
\nespecially since u arent talking about the weather
\nor anything
\nwhen ur talking in chinese,
\nur talking in chinese
\nabout me
\n& probably
\nabout how uncomfortable I’m looking
\nwhile I’m being awkward
\nlooking at my feet
\naround ur 18 y\/o
\nchinese friends.
\n 
\n 
\nALINA AND THAT GUY SHE’S SEEING
\n 
\nhe says he’s in his 40s,
\nlined into his 60s,
\nsays he paints a little
\nand tries to write plays.
\nmostly I think
\nhe drugs, drinks, jerks off
\nand meths
\nuntil hes blinking still awake 2 or 3 days later.
\nhe dresses in scarfs and white shirts and button suits like an artist,
\nreads books and finnegans wake to people passing in the park, says he used to be a doctor,
\nused to be mad, used to have a car and a wife
\nwith a sunroof and windows that he’d drive open and fast
\nand all over the country,
\nlives above an icecream shop in a one bedroom apartment,
\nhas a broken nose,
\nbroken eyes,
\nbroken
\nboring
\nrepeated ideas.
\n 
\nand alina?
\nshes like 20 or so;
\nvery cute, very eyes,
\nvery fairy blue hair always up like electric,
\nwears two coats at a time and makes friends somehow with everyone,
\nonly ever got with him because she knew he could get meth
\nbut shes not a meth head yet; no, she’s an artist too,
\nsays shes an artist,
\nsays shes going to be something maybe
\nbut goes 2 or 3 days sometimes without being anything but fucked
\nand getting coffee and talking
\nand telling people about her starsign
\nand deeply kissing them in the park
\nwhen they tell her they read books.
\n 
\nand I don’t know,
\nI got to know her a bit,
\nand then him too,
\nan offer of a cigarette and listening to her talk
\nand before I even knew it we were fucking in my shower
\nwhile her girlfriend read books
\nand drew pictures on my bed
\na little shy and a little
\nnot very comfortable with sex.
\nthis was a friday night and the weekend
\nmostly went on going that way;
\nshe going out and I
\ngetting some sleep,
\nand she coming back whenever she wanted
\nsomething in between her legs
\nand it was good
\nso good
\none of best weekend I’ve had,
\nbest sex in ages,
\nbest talking – she talked like stars,
\ntalked about stars,
\nand then it was over
\n 
\nbecause I had work monday morning
\nand she didn’t get
\nwhy I wouldn’t be around
\nand wouldn’t be fucking her
\nand wouldn’t have time to do anything at night but sleep
\nand she I guess went back to him
\nfor some fucking
\nand the meth,
\nthis guy,
\n40 years old
\nwho used to be friends with her father,
\nand now sometimes in the market I see them,
\na little strung out maybe
\nbut she still pretty
\nat 21,
\n 
\nand I say hi,
\nsmoke a cigarette with them,
\nget hit for a fiver
\nand pretend it doesn’t bother me.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJeremy Nathan Marks<\/strong>
\n 
\nLADY LUSTITIA (IT TURNS OUT)
\n 
\n-for Aretha Franklin & Angela Davis
\n 
\nIt turns out that I should read everything<\/i> into music-
\n 
\nThat piano intro into Think . . . <\/i>
\nit\u2019s just the footfalls of four youths
\nan afternoon before they were shot down
\nin the Algiers Motel in the hometown of
\n 
\nThe Queen of Soul.
\n 
\nThose rising horns in Sweet Sweet Baby . . . <\/i>
\nthree hundred and fifty years of tidal Mississippi
\nrising to raise a gin fan and Huck\u2019s raft
\nplus the flotsam rope they cut for some boys from Scottsboro
\n 
\nAll thrown off a Tallahatchie Bridge to go down to the Gulf.
\n 
\nLet it all wash out among the hulls
\nof sunken ships and blown well heads spewing
\nthe blackest crude onto those white sands
\nof a Riviera in Mississippi where they wouldn\u2019t serve
\n 
\nThe Queen of Soul.
\n 
\nThe backbeat to The Weight . . . <\/i>
\nwell, shit . . .
\nIt turns out that the weight itself was something
\nsome Canadian of Mohawk blood
\nchannelled like another black man felt the Wabash Cannonball
\nthumping through his pulmonary until he just had to become
\n 
\nA Pullman Porter.
\nA communist.
\nOne among countless standing with patches
\nbehind a hammer and a hoe.
\n 
\nAll of them
\nand how many women
\nhow many? <\/i>
\nnow soundtracking the debutante balls
\non countless new plantations
\nfrom Oakland in Michigan
\nto Sunflower County
\nand the precincts of starvation wage
\ntrash collectors in Shelby
\nthat\u2019s Memphis, baby <\/i>
\n 
\nRock steady.
\n 
\nThe Queen was there,
\nis there,
\nmust always be where mourners
\nand eye-of-the-needle transponders
\nmove like Miss Angela herself
\nthrough the halls of blind Lady Lustitia;
\nhow long she gon\u2019 wait?
\n 
\nYou listening?
\nThe Queen ain\u2019t done preaching.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nThomas M. McDade<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nOPORTO, PORTUGAL, 1976
\n 
\nIs the peg legged fellow I spot
\nfrom a vintage trolley window
\nan actor portraying Ahab or Silver?
\nHe\u2019s staring at the stubborn
\nbeak of a sunken harbor ship.
\nI exit near a yin and yang wall:
\nElvis and Hitler graffiti.
\nNearby St. Francis Church
\nconnects to a bank.
\nBy a barely flowing
\nfountain a flea market
\na sombrero sporting barker
\ncaptures and leads me
\nto a shoe stand.
\nIts sign warning
\nof a Looking and Buying Price.
\nA tavern shill who won\u2019t
\ntake answer no shuffles
\nme into a room where movie posters:
\nQuo Vadis, Guns of Navarone
\nare bordered by red and green
\nlights he crafted himself
\nto recall the ship that sailed
\nhis father to America.
\nRushed through a curtain of flies
\na bartender greets me.
\nHe\u2019s a Blackbeard twin.
\nThe owner graciously slides
\na chair out from a table.
\nI rush to the street
\ndrop coins in a beggar
\nwoman\u2019s basket.
\nJust swift eye-to-eye,
\na cork is where her nose
\nshould be.
\nI consider the ease of joy
\nand the raw theft of it.
\nMen fish near a pipe
\nspewing sewage
\ninto the Douro.
\nChildren float on tubes
\nnot one waving
\na Jolly Roger.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBrandy McKenzie<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nALL THE THINGS I NEVER DID FOR YOU,
\nAND ALL THE THINGS I NEVER MEANT TO DO
\n 
\nEvery day, I mean to do more than I have.
\nEvery day, I start a sentence and never
\n 
\nI mean, you are somewhere, right?
\nThe anonymous night-lit city rolling
\n 
\nacross the screen. I guess one of those
\nis yours & I feel like I’ve tossed
\n 
\nhandfuls of change into a black stream.
\nGlints and rumors. Someone says
\n 
\nthey’ve heard you speak. You stole all
\nmy best stories. Here, there’s a new
\n 
\npath; here, there’s a new man.
\nI’m so lonely in this town. Most
\n 
\nof the people I know and love are
\nhere. But let’s get back to those.
\n 
\nThese things I mean to do hang over me.
\nThese words set deep on my tongue
\n 
\nand unspoken, waiting to find you.
\nI can listen to the traffic and the
\n 
\nneighbors’ conversations. I can see
\nthe echoes of your pubescent longing,
\n 
\ngirl, your hair walks past me as I lead
\nmy new lover to a festival of color, air, and fire.
\n 
\n 
\nMOVING ON
\n 
\nI\u2019m tired & scattered & look back too often.
\nI hear footsteps; I imagine the memory
\nof green grass and violets scratching my feet.
\n 
\nI hear voices of people who loved me,
\nfeel their hot breath in my ear.
\n 
\nI bear scars on my knuckles, flesh torn
\non bricks lifting cities I used to know.
\nIn my knee there is asphalt, in the other, gravel.
\n 
\nWhen I fell as a child, wounds open and closed
\nlike flowers, trapping places like pollen within.
\n 
\nI hear you talking to me. I hear you praying
\nelsewhere. I hear the love you give each other
\nin the night, the day, the morning.
\nI hear your screams of pleasure and terror.
\n 
\nThe dirt on my shoes is yours. They were new
\nthe first time they walked in your house.
\n 
\nLike dogs, we know these things. Like beasts,
\nwe try not to mourn them. My body
\nworks in pieces. Some move forward, some back.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobert Minicucci<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n86
\n 
\nHe had the answer ready
\nto the question asked.
\n 
\nHe slides out of the MRI machine.
\nTwo women peer down, looking gravely concerned.
\n\u201cHow old are you?\u201d they ask.
\n\u201c86,\u201d he says.
\n 
\nThey pause.
\nHe waits at the other end of the pause for grave news.
\n\u201cWhy do you look as young as you do?\u201d
\n 
\n\u201cMy wife,\u201d he says. No hesitation.
\n 
\nNow in the kitchen,
\nhe takes her hand, still calls her kid.
\nShe knows and treats him no differently.
\n 
\nThey just want it to be as before,
\nbefore the cancer began eating him.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAlice Morris<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCUTTING WITH A THIN WIRE
\n 
\nTess works at the cheese counter.
\nIn the backroom, her boss has her slice off fuzzy molds that grow
\non expired cheeses.
\nThen she rewraps, retags, returns
\nthis cheese to the cool case.
\n 
\nTess was recently rear-ended as she slowed for a yellow light.
\nShe was so \u201cshook\u201d she looked into the rear-view mirror to see
\nif she was still alive.
\n 
\nShe was young, so the cop said the accident was her fault.
\nTess won the case in court.
\nShe\u2019s never been to court about illegal cheese recycling.
\nNeither has her boss.
\n 
\nOnce, Tess read\u2013
\n 
\nEverything sliced thin enough is transparent.<\/i>
\n 
\nTess thinks about this as she uses the thin wire
\nto cut mold from cheese, as she cuts some of the old cheese
\ninto small artistic sculptures
\nthat she sells to appreciative customers.
\n 
\nTess wonders though, how thin is she willing to slice
\nher conscience for a boss?
\n 
\nTess needs a new used car.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJohn C. Morrison<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nLIKE INDUSTRY
\n 
\nDon\u2019t be pouty
\nbecause I\u2019ve given up on me.
\nYou go on and see
\nthe queen. Wear a hat.
\nKiss her royal.
\n 
\nAnd I\u2019ve turned
\nyou away like a free
\ntable saw. Who leaves
\na free table saw and gas grill
\n 
\nat the curb with Take Me!<\/i>
\nscrawled for a sign? Someone
\nmissing a finger, someone
\nwho can\u2019t stand how wood
\nscreams. If we want another clue
\nwe\u2019ll need bank records
\n 
\nand a forensic analysis.
\nHighly specialized.
\nDried blood or barbecue sauce.
\nI know a thirteen year old
\nwho uses a home kit.
\nAlso collects opossum
\nskeletons. Finds a kill
\n 
\nthe side of the road, buries
\nbeneath the rhododendron
\nand digs up after seventeen
\nmonths. Cleans each bone
\nwith mercuric acid. And while
\nodd, he\u2019s good with foul
\nodors and patience
\nand at least one other
\nhigh virtue in decline.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n Robert Nisbet<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nBALM
\n 
\nWe were kids, some five years short
\nof being blokes. We\u2019d cycle to Broad Haven,
\nride out through banks of grasses,
\nseeding, alive with sun and insects.
\nThen on to the beach, the salt air, seaweed.
\n 
\nOn winter Saturdays, we\u2019d watch Superman
\nat the cinema club. We\u2019d read The Beano.
\nLater, a little older, look at the nudes
\nin the barber shop mags. But with springtime,
\nSaturdays were the beach again, the cycling
\npast hedges laden with mayflower
\nand the coming summer. It was a balm.
\n(Girls, and the fact of girls, plagued us just then.)
\n 
\nHaving sluiced through shoreline waves,
\nwe\u2019d sit, in warm moist air, by the rock pools,
\nby the sight and touch of plant life,
\nthe fronds and caves of tiny animals.
\n 
\nCycling home, we never talked of this at all.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMindy Ohringer<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nSOME GIRLS ON SWINGS
\n 
\nRide the rollercoaster of a secret life
\nA boyfriend! A boyfriend!
\ndays spent plump with love
\na besotted cat has swallowed her canary.
\n 
\nHe emails me.
\nHe emails me not.
\nHe emails me.
\nHe emails me not.
\n 
\nThe days are dull, the nights are hell
\nI stomp across suburban tundra.
\ngloved fingertips grasping
\nsuspended metal chains.
\n 
\nFrozen breaths count to one hundred
\ntoes pointed, swinging skyward
\nchilled limbs expand and contract
\nabdomen flattened, calories burnt into nothingness.
\n 
\nI try not to know
\nwhat I already know.
\nThere\u2019s a trail of bread crumbs in the snow,
\nshould he wish to follow.
\n 
\n 
\nART DECO LOVE
\n 
\nWe do what we know how to do
\nso we can stay together.
\nMiami palms shade melted passion.
\nMarital Deep State endures.
\n 
\nLanguid mid-life innocent
\nwrapped in periwinkle summer sheets
\nbeautiful, helpless, mine.
\nHis mother died.
\nI must act responsibly.
\n 
\n 
\nBEHIND TWO DOORS
\n 
\nInto this hapless cauldron,
\nI poured yearnings diced and sliced
\nDesire stirs.
\nLace curtains lowered \u2013 no prying eyes for private revelation.
\nLurking behind green and red doors
\nI am Lady and Tiger.
\n 
\nThere\u2019s burnt sage, sprinkled turmeric, sifted flax seed, strewn petals of Knockout Rose,
\nMyrrh and Frankincense of thrice-starred, twice-promised Bethlehem,
\nLies leavened with Jean Nate bubbles and atomized Chanel No. 5
\nThis Blue Hour of Paris,
\na gloaming, a time to pose\u2026
\nDoorbell salutation summons dissolution.
\n 
\nWho wove fragrant lies into windblown hair?
\nWho whispered truths between legs gently spread?
\nYour promise echoed through dusty linoleum corridors.
\nYour oil, anointed skin, cerebellum, and soul
\nI wait impatiently behind green and red doors
\nReturn! Return! Before…Before I am too late.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMarc Olmsted<\/strong> 
\n 
\nWORSE TEETH
\n(ANIMALS DIDN’T)
\n 
\nMy brother stopped brushing his teeth
\nbecause animals didn’t
\nrenting that in-law off Ventura Blvd. 1966
\nHe looked like Che but with worse teeth
\nMessiah-haired a muscular rock drummer
\ntil the beer took over his body –
\nwhen he vomited blood
\nI quit drinking<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nErik Lloyd Olson<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nUNDERGROUND
\n 
\nAs was his custom, Samuel Bernat,
\nface pale and rigid like a clockless dial,
\ndressed in a gray suit and a bowler hat,
\nhaving to take the C Line north, saw at
\nthe gaping terminal\u2019s dim center isle
\na man in a gray suit and bowler hat
\nwhose pale face matched the station\u2019s eye-white tile;
\nmeanwhile, across the tracks from the turnstile
\na man in a gray suit and hat, who sat,
\ngazed dumbly down the stairs, where from an aisle
\na man in a gray suit and bowler hat
\ngazed up, whose face was that of Samuel Bernat.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJennie E. Owen<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE BABY FACED POETS
\n 
\nI\u2019ve missed my chance
\nwith the baby faced poets. Too soft
\nthese days, to fit either hip to hip or square. Too late
\nto be the bright new voice of verse
\n(or even worse, a second-hand shady one)
\n 
\nI\u2019ve missed my chance
\nas a baby faced poet. Too old
\nto fuck and bugger my punctuation on stage, to straddle
\nenjambments and rebirth old boyfriends.
\n 
\nToo old to watch them, now middle aged, sliver, wet and steaming
\ninto the orchestra pit. Too tired
\nto mock their cock mottled lies.
\n 
\nI\u2019ve lost my currency, between the lines;
\nbut still try to attract charity
\nin the tone of a metaphor. A raised penciled eyebrow
\na shift in tempo, all too fast for me to follow.
\n 
\nI\u2019ve missed my chance
\nWith the baby faced poets.
\nI creak and rustle, try to hustle,
\nbut remain too old for them to handle.
\nToo saggy to snap back a line-break.
\nToo authentic to be real.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKenneth Pobo<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMY LIFE
\n 
\nThis morning after I visit with the crinum lily that took five years to finally bloom, I go inside and reconsider my life. Hungry cats come by. White growth has spoiled the bread. Who is writing my life?
\n 
\nMy friend Bailey says Shakespeare wrote everyone\u2019s life. A heady task! How do we know that Shakes even wrote his own life? It\u2019s hard pleasing kings and queens, hard pleasing a goldfish in a bowl. Hank Williams was, by all reports, heterosexual. He didn\u2019t write my life despite some parallels. Maybe \u201cI\u2019m So Lonesome I Could Cry.\u201d When I was young, I thought maybe Sylvia Plath wrote my life. Or Poe. Or Tommy James and the Shondells. Or Mary Tyler Moore, especially the episode where Chuckles The Clown dies. No,
\n 
\nI guess I\u2019m the only one writing my life. It needs revision. First thought, best thought? My first thoughts often get me pulled over. I write my life. With invisible ink.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPhill Provance<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTHE POET AS THE SEA
\n(At the Kursaal by Southend Pier<\/i>)
\n 
\nHow nice would it be to be
\nthe sea when you first take a
\ndip in spring. Sploshing full of
\nwatery thoughts, I\u2019d feel you
\n 
\nplunge in,
\nthen race my current towards the
\nbeach, to rinse you in warm tides,
\nthe whishing seagulls drifting in
\nin languid, long, low dives.
\n 
\nOf course,
\nwhat modesty exists between
\na swimmer and the sea? Amidst
\nthe sunlight\u2019s tickling gleam, I
\ncouldn\u2019t help myself
\n 
\nbut stream
\ninto your two-piece top and slish
\nalong your belly, hips and thighs
\nuntil, at last, I\u2019d splash into
\nyour nostrils, mouth and eyes.
\n 
\n 
\nSNAPCHAT TRIOLET
\n 
\nThey finally tore down the house on West Church
\nwhere all the kids used to get stoned and get plastered.
\nAfter the sheriff performed a tax search,
\n 
\nthey finally tore down the house. On West Church
\nall you see by the overgrown birch
\nare scaly tar shingles on one rotted rafter.
\n 
\nNow that they\u2019ve torn down the house on West Church
\nwhere do we go to get stoned and get plastered?
\n 
\n 
\nHARD KNOCKS
\n 
\nWrapped in a coat, by the roots of a tree,
\nwith a marigold cap on his dusty-blond noggin
\na shaken-up toddler no older than three
\n 
\nunzips his coat. By the roots of the tree
\nscattered the breadth of the snow-cloaked creek
\nlie the shattered remains of a scarlet toboggan.
\n 
\nOut of his coat, the boy leans on the tree
\nas the marigold sun lights the welt on his noggin.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBen Rasnic<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nI AM NOT A ROBOT
\n 
\nIt is not enough
\nthat I offer up my user name
\n& password, my mother\u2019s
\nmaiden name, the city where I was born
\n& the name of my first pet;
\n 
\nnow I have to identify
\nthe squares of fuzzy photos
\nthat have traffic signs or trees
\nor parts of automobiles &
\n 
\nthe real clincher,
\nI have to check the box marked
\n\u201cI am not a robot\u201d
\nas if I would fucking tell you
\nif I was.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMaree Reedman<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nALL THERE IS
\n 
\nThere is no comfort in being an atheist,
\nno comfort at all
\nexcept Stephen Hawking thought the same.
\nMy friend told me again about her father-in-law dying,
\nhow his spirit ebbed from the room.
\nI sat with my father for five days.
\nNot a thing, except he turned to face me
\nto listen to me talking,
\nreciting poetry, telling him stories,
\nhow much I loved him
\nand once, when holding his hand, I jumped at a noise,
\nas his body did too,
\nstill connected, like feeling a baby
\nkicking inside the mother\u2019s stomach.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nBrandon T. Roach<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nTRANSLATING D\u2019S
\n 
\nWhat are Sundays for
\nfootball and beer is the definitive
\nanswer
\nthe afraid go to church
\nbut when you are 35 in July
\nyou take the family to
\nThe Corrales Municipal Pool
\nand stare
\nat the big-titted Mexican
\nwomen
\nIf we\u2019re lucky
\na toddler will pull the strings
\non a tight-fitting bikini
\n 
\nThis is one way to pass
\nthe time midway
\nthrough life during a parched
\nburning summer
\n 
\nWhat is striking about
\nthe scenery
\nis that my kids look like
\nmovie stars
\n(they are)
\nand my wife has the best ass
\nin this whole piss-filled world
\n(she does)
\n 
\n 
\nTOOTH ACHE
\n 
\nThe kids are eating apples
\non the couch
\nLet\u2019s try and chew with our mouths
\nclosed
\nI write impatiently
\ntrying to keep my sanity
\ntightly bound
\nThe vacuum cleaner fires up
\nfor the first time
\nin several weeks
\nthe TV volume goes up
\nendlessly up
\nsomehow
\nI can still hear them
\nchomping down the apple tree
\n 
\nTry to write
\nTry to keep
\nsanity
\n 
\nLet\u2019s chew with our fucking mouths
\nclosed, please
\n 
\n 
\nPARASITIC CO.
\n 
\nI heard a story about a woman
\nlosing her sight rapidly
\nshe went to the eye doctor
\nthey gave her a new pair of glasses
\na few weeks went by and the vision
\nblurred, time for new glasses
\nThe woman needs to SEE
\nten days later, less vision
\nmore glasses
\nfinally, they sent her
\nto the big city doctors
\n 
\nHe poked his fingers in her eyes
\ntook some x-rays and exclaimed
\nWorms!
\nShe had parasitic worms in her eyes
\neating at the reflecting region
\nWhen they pulled them out
\nthey totaled one, two, three
\nthe largest measuring 37mm
\nthat\u2019s and inch and a half, folks
\n 
\nMen understand little of women
\nand she bled to death right there
\non the observation table asking
\nthe doctor for a drink of water<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSam Rose<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nCONCAVE
\n 
\nMy heartbeat makes my loose-fitting
\nt-shirt flutter rhythmically
\nover my chest. I stop breathing
\nso I can see the full effect,
\nwatch the fabric
\nfall in, fall out.
\nBraless breasts separated as if
\nin argument, creating a cavity
\nat my centre. Each tiny shudder
\nmakes me feel thinner
\nthan I am, more fragile
\nthan I am. Makes me wonder
\nwhat I am.
\nEvery pound of my chest disturbs
\nthe white cotton, reveals my
\ntorso as empty. A trampoline
\nfor tiny ghosts, only the bounces
\nto be seen. Only the tremors
\nof the canvas to be found, the concave
\nand the rebound.
\nI am only little,
\nI am only gentle,
\nI am only nothing.
\nBut we keep going. One organ at a time,
\none anomaly at a time.
\nKeep cutting it out until there is
\nnothing left.
\nWhat will be left of me,
\nin the end?
\nOnly tiny ghosts jumping,
\nonly a tiny heart thumping wildly
\nat nothing.
\nFall in, fall out.
\n 
\n 
\nWHEN I DIE I WANT TO BE A TREE
\n 
\nI have been thinking about death a lot \u2013
\npicking out my plot instead of turning away
\nand I have decided that I want you to hollow
\nout a tree trunk and place me inside. Don\u2019t
\nchop it down, leave it growing and upright. Keep
\nthe top open so that crows can make nests
\nin my hair. It is always a mess anyway. Leave me
\nthere with my arms splayed like branches
\nso the local kids tell each other terrible stories
\nabout the dead scarecrow woman who lives
\nin the woods. I wouldn\u2019t want my stories to stop
\nafter I have lost the power to tell them myself.
\nCould you also make sure I am wearing a welcoming
\nsmile, not a grimace, as even though my face will be
\nhidden within my standing grave, I still want to be the
\nlight relief. And we mustn\u2019t call it a grave. I was never
\nthat serious, more of a hedonist with tendencies
\ntowards deceitfulness and an unreasonable amount
\nof laughter which I also think must continue. So with
\nthat in mind, could you record the sound of my
\nsnorts, my giggles, my guffaws and sometimes
\nplay them in the forest, in the dark? Set up your old
\nboom box among the rocks and put it on repeat. I just
\nwant to lark about and as the afterlife is still uncertain
\nI need my body to do the work. Just set this up
\nfor me and we can both enjoy the looks of terror
\non people\u2019s faces as they rush by. Maybe when you die
\nyou can be a tree here, too. I have been thinking
\nabout life a lot \u2013 losing the plot instead of turning
\naway and I have decided that I want you to turn me
\ninto a wildlife reserve, maybe take a knife to my
\nstomach where squirrels can burrow when it gets cold
\nand insects can borrow my eye sockets to use as their home
\nand the stories about the dead scarecrow woman
\nwho lives in the woods will never stop being told.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nM.C. Rush<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nDISCONTINUITY
\n 
\nHow much does our function align with our intent?
\nHow much does our form support our designs?
\n 
\nAll civilities, all barbarisms,
\nall identities, all distinctions,
\nevery approach, each separation,
\nevery insufficiency, each abundance.
\n 
\nThe sea that moves toward us
\nand the sea that moves away from us.
\n 
\nHow do you get your why?
\n 
\nAt this time
\nwe cannot confirm or deny
\nanything.
\n 
\n 
\nIN RUINS
\n 
\nBefore all is said and done,
\nbut after some is done and said,
\nwe will all take refuge in ruins.
\nHuman ruins, inhuman.
\nRemembering discontinuous relationships
\npunctuated with drift. Remembering
\nwhen we wanted so much and thought
\nourselves willing to take it.
\nWhen there was more to feel
\nthan leaning our brow against cold limestone.
\nWe pursued everything that moved in the name
\nof peace, and now, when everything (well, most
\neverything) has fallen and shattered,
\nwe hide inside and deny release.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGerard Sarnat<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nDURING 27SEPT\u201918 MEAN DRUNK LUNCH BREAK
\n 
\nWhile watching the Christine Blasey Ford\/
\nBrett Kavanaugh Hearing
\nbefore the US Senate Judiciary Committee
\nwith wife and daughters
\n 
\nGoogling the \u201cportrayal of women in fiction\u201d
\nthen doodling, meh, it is
\na well-known fact that historically literature
\nminimizes their rendering
\n 
\ncompared to that of men, which has recently
\nled to The Bechdel Test
\n(named after Alison, an American cartoonist)
\nwhich has raised the bar
\n 
\non representation to ask whether work features
\nat least 2 females who talk
\nto each other about community other than a man
\nplus both must be named.
\n 
\nWe are all impressed (so far) by how the witness
\ninteracts with hired gun
\nquestioner Rachel Mitchell as Republican Senators
\nsit there anonymously.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nClaire Scott<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMY NAME
\n 
\nMy name stamped on my forehead at birth.
\nClaire Louise. The name chosen for me.
\nClaimed by parents, aunts, uncles and all the greats
\nand great-greats traipsing ahead, lugging expectations.
\nMy name like a caryatid supporting generations
\nof the disappointed, the defeated, the discouraged.
\nWings sheared, I speak the words of others.
\nI walk over earth plowed and planted long ago
\nretracing steps of unfinished lives.
\nNurse Grandma Pearl, bending over fevers
\nand rashes, eyeing doctors with envy,
\nUncle Sam, an eyeshade accountant
\nwho couldn\u2019t afford an MBA.
\nCan I slip out of my name like a chrysalis,
\nerase the outline of myself: daughter\/niece\/granddaughter,
\nand choose the name I want: Lea Marie.
\nGiving birth to myself,
\nwings open with possibility.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDarcy Smith<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nODE TO BRIGIT
\n 
\nMy head burns rhymed couplets torn
\nfrom myth. Pastoral nightmares, curled
\nlips that long to taste the rim of dawn.
\n 
\nYou snake inside my eyes,
\neach sestina tossed into your waves,
\nlike knotted hair that tears my drafts back
\n 
\nto a sky of tongues impossible to parse.
\nMy mouth lined with pitted stars,
\nfound forms taste like blades
\n 
\nof summer. We\u2019re flamed sonnets, un-
\nspoken. Rooms of parchment, dark-edged
\nreams rewritten, restless for the line that
\n 
\nbreaks beyond the ocean floor into embryos,
\nbirthing a garland of lotus villanelles. Let me
\nlay with you Brigit, with the sweet promise
\n 
\nof a poem birthed in evening\u2019s curve. Let me
\ncradle our nested lyrics. Your earlobe soft
\nagainst my chest, our screams swallow daylight.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMichael T. Smith<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nGOOGLE TRANSLATE
\n\u201cGoogle Translate\u201d was created by writing a poem, translating it
\ninto Mandarin, and then translating it back into English.<\/i>
\n 
\n(V.1)
\n 
\nWhat can I say that isn\u2019t offensive —
\n 
\nParticularly, I ask, when
\nThe words have teeth?
\nDerrida would say the script is under
\nErasure. So that only ghosts and things of no substance
\nPass along the mouth to the page.
\n 
\nSimple instructions:
\nBe sure to write concisely.
\nBe sure to hand wash only
\nUse only complete sentences,
\nAnd do not leave out in the sun.
\n 
\nThere\u2019s something
\n(It\u2019s almost like all communication)
\nWhere you take the words I send,
\nAnd in the receiving rewrite them in your ear,
\nAnd rewrite them in the history of the moment
\n(But never physically)
\nAnd make.
\n 
\nIt\u2019s something dada \u2013
\nThat\u2019s capital: DADA.
\n 
\nBut it\u2019s only so it can give impressions on people\u2019s minds:
\nPoetry, anyway, is just prose that\u2019s been
\nAssaulted.
\nYou\u2019d think we\u2019d be in agreement.
\n 
\nI\u2019m not complicated.
\nI\u2019m just trying to reach you.
\n 
\n 
\n(V.2)
\n 
\nWhat can I say is not offended \u2013
\nIn particular, I asked, when
\nDo these words have teeth?
\nDerrida will say that the script is under
\nErase. So only the ghost and nothing
\nAlong the mouth to the page.
\nSimple Explanation:
\nMust be written concise.
\nBe sure to wash your hands
\nOnly use the complete sentence,
\nDo not give up in the sun.
\nThere is something
\n(It’s almost like all the communication)
\nWhere did you take me,
\nRewrite them in your ear in your ear,
\nAnd rewrite them in the history of this moment
\n(But never the body)
\nAnd do it.
\nThis is something dada \u2013
\nThis is the capital: DADA.
\n 
\nHowever, the only way to bring people to the impression:
\nIn any case, poetry is prose
\nAttack.
\nYou will think we will agree.
\n 
\nI’m not complicated.
\nI just want to contact you.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAlec Solomita<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nLE VRAI ROI<\/i>
\n 
\nNo, I don\u2019t want Vicodin, OxyContin
\nor fentanyl \u2014 the dauphin and his boys.
\nOpioids! What a weak word!
\nPills for panty-waists!
\nI want le vrai roi.<\/i>
\n 
\nI want a den as dark as sleep,
\nfull of bunk beds and Oriental ministrations,
\ngreat mysteries just out of reach of my languid fingers,
\nwaxing and waning in the bowls of clay pipes.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSavannah Trent<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nLOVE
\n 
\nkeying a Lexus
\nat the Cheesecake Factory
\nthe first time
\nthe gyno uses
\na speculum
\n 
\ntoo tight cock ring
\n 
\n 
\nVROOM VROOM
\n 
\nThis is a poem about car sex
\nhow some man revved my
\nengine. Pushed the right buttons,
\nhow my hands slipped on the
\nthrottle. Do you like manual or
\nautomatic? I prefer cars with
\nleather interiors; good conductors.
\nAn un-vacuumed car
\nis a lot like untrimmed pubes
\npoking out swimsuit bottoms
\nTake me for a spin, but make sure
\nyou wipe the seats.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE CRITIC SAYS
\n 
\nWe must be agnostic.
\n 
\nWe lack certainty.
\n 
\nAmerican poetry states
\nthe obvious. A wheelbarrow
\nis just red. Totes manure.
\n 
\nWhy do I look for small things?
\nupturned shoe, the last pea
\nin the pod?
\n 
\nWhat if my horse won\u2019t drink?<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLauren Vermette<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nMY VULVA
\n 
\nis a slit between white-washed boards
\nthat the innkeeper could not afford to fill:
\n 
\na gap just wide enough for the hall-light
\nto seep through with an egg-yolk glow
\n 
\nthat slips between my lover\u2019s taut eyelids,
\nforces them open to acknowledge its presence
\n 
\ncauses us to spend all night trying to mend
\nthis vivid crack in an otherwise solid wall.
\n 
\n 
\nTROPHY
\n 
\nAll I can focus on are the nails
\ndriven through the webbing
\nof the swan\u2019s feet and the light
\n 
\nglinting off her glass eyes:
\ncold as a steel pocketknife
\nand twice as sharp.
\n 
\nI stare back, breath trapped
\nin the vise of my chest,
\nburning hot and heavy
\n 
\nas the center of a planet
\nflipping poles, so unlike
\nher body\u2019s empty cavity
\n 
\nstretched over a wooden
\nmannequin, its solidity
\nmockery of the hollowed
\n 
\nbones that once held
\nher aloft. I can still feel
\nthe curve of the trigger.
\n 
\n 
\nHOW NOT TO LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY
\n 
\nI.
\nWhen your high school sweetheart
\nleaves you for college, date a local
\non the sly. When you are ratted out,
\nbreak up over email.
\n 
\nII.
\nBegin an unrequited pursuit
\nof your high school\u2019s star
\nlacrosse goalie.
\n 
\nHis hairline is already receding
\nand he reeks of soured sweat,
\nbut you want a piece of his ass.
\n 
\nWhen you state to him
\nthat you want him to be
\nyour first, use his full name.
\n 
\nWhen his only response is to ask:
\nHow did you know my middle name?<\/i>
\nget out of the car before you cry.
\n 
\nIII.
\nAs senior prom approaches,
\nland yourself a date: a geeky,
\nmouse-haired boy that you find
\nattractive enough for a first fuck.
\n 
\nPitch a tent with him
\nin a rundown campground.
\n 
\nWhen not even gasoline
\nwill ignite the damp wood,
\ngive up on lighting a fire
\nand crawl into the tent.
\n 
\nLie on your back.
\nAs he presses against
\nyour entrance and whispers,
\nAre you sure?<\/i>
\n 
\nTell him: Life is pain,
\nso let\u2019s get it on.<\/i><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nTyson West<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWILD CHILD’S LAST GIFT
\n 
\nthe cops took you down in the parking lot
\nwe wondered how much longer you would live
\nyou knew the meth was bad but took the shot
\nthe cops took you down in the parking lot
\nmed techs started your heart but blood did not
\narrive in time \u2013 your thoughts went inactive
\nbrain dead you still had a flourish to give
\ndonating lungs and heart were all you got
\nleft from wild streets \u2013 they\u2019ll reach the calm you fought
\nthe cops took you down in the parking lot
\nwe wonder how much longer you will live
\n 
\n 
\nTHE EDGE OF PERFECT
\n 
\nCold ocean breakers slam the precipice
\nWe park some ninety feet back from the edge
\nThough flawed ourselves we made a perfect pledge
\nTo shape our kids so nothing be amiss
\n 
\nIn laughter and chaos there is no bliss
\nOur structure is no crime as they allege
\nCold ocean breakers slam the precipice
\nWe linger a moment before the edge
\n 
\nI ask you dear, if we are up for this
\n\u201cI love you \u2013 let\u2019s do it\u201d you did not hedge
\nTwixt love and perfect, death can drive no wedge
\nIt gnaws on us that we missed our final kiss
\nCold ocean breakers slam the precipice
\nWe speed through our kids\u2019 screams across our edge<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJoe Williams<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nFIRST MOVEMENT
\n 
\nAt the bar, I make my accidental introduction.
\nI note how you conduct yourself with grace.
\nYour accent pitches perfectly a melody so sweet,
\nevery cadence, every flourish in its place.
\nYou snare me, the vibrato in my tenor plain to hear.
\nQuavering, I miss a beat or two.
\nI pause, compose myself, and make my overture.
\nPrima donna, I must duet with you.
\n 
\n 
\nREADING
\n 
\n\u2018What are you reading?\u2019
\n\u2018I\u2019m reading the Internet.\u2019
\n\u2018Is it any good?\u2019
\n\u2018It\u2019s a bit long.\u2019<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nLaura Winkelspecht<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nGEOMETRY
\n 
\nHe watches
\nas I fold sheets
\nacross my body,
\na geometric striptease
\nas the rectangles
\ngrow smaller.
\nThe cotton,
\nstill warm
\nfrom the dryer,
\nforgotten
\nas my cheeks
\ncatch fire.
\n 
\nOur bodies
\nmeet
\nbetween
\nneglected
\nhospital corners.
\nWe end
\na tangled
\ntriangle
\nof arms
\nand legs
\nand sheets.
\n 
\n 
\nMAYBE A DREAM IN A GARAGE
\n 
\nI still see him standing with his head
\nangled under the hood of a car
\n 
\na grimy rag stuffed in his pocket
\nhis hands dirty and capable
\n 
\nas he reaches into
\nthe open carcass of an engine.
\n 
\nTools glint under fluorescent light,
\nbegrudging stars in the constellation
\n 
\nof his everyday ingenuity.
\n\u201cHand me that wrench,\u201d
\n 
\nhe seems to say, vaguely pointing.
\n\u201cThis one?\u201d I ask as I hold it out.
\n 
\nHe glances his thanks to where I stand.
\n\u201cHow much longer will you be?\u201d I ask.
\n 
\nBut he can\u2019t answer
\nand as the scene fades to grief,
\n 
\nI know I can\u2019t measure this time
\nand he can\u2019t fix this breakdown.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nStella Wulf<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nHOSTILE ENVIRONMENT
\n 
\nThe Home Office has issued the following A – Z of undesirable aliens:<\/i>
\n 
\nAldermen, Balder men, Cats and Dogs
\n(non sentient beings excluding Moggs)
\nEskimos, Elephants, anything grey,
\nanything wrinkled, anything gay.
\n 
\nFig packers, Gigolos, Hewers of ice,
\nJokers, Kelp Gatherers, Pickers of lice,
\nMudlarks and Matadors, Men who can\u2019t jive
\nanyone north of the M25.
\n 
\nNutters, Otters, Potters and Queers,
\nRotters, Stutterers, Shedders of Tears,
\nUmpires, Ushers, Unbenders of spoons,
\nUnclassified persons from here to the moon.
\n 
\nVintners and Vignerons, all who bring cheer,
\nWhelk fishers, Warp Spoolers, Wasps who drink beer,
\nthose in the welfare and food bank queue,
\nX-men and Zulus, YOU, YOU, and YOU.
\n 
\n 
\nLIZZIE REFLECTS ON HER HANDS
\n 
\nMy stepmother has elegant hands,
\nsuch long fingers,
\nslim and tapered,
\nstrong nails,
\nneatly trimmed,
\nhands I could never hold.
\n 
\nMy father\u2019s, gene-grafted,
\nsit cupped in my lap,
\nlifeline incised in palm,
\nnails flat as spades,
\nbroken so low,
\nI cut them
\nto the quick.
\n 
\nI want to shake them.
\nMrs Borden\u2019s lie,
\nwhite as lilies
\nin a leaching pool,
\nmy father\u2019s,
\nunclenched
\nin sleep,
\nrest
\nin peace.
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nArtists’ Bios<\/strong>
\n 
\nA multi-media artist living near Washington, DC, Jeff Bagato<\/a><\/strong> produces poetry and prose as well as electronic music and glitch video. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including Rusty Truck, Chiron Review, Stepaway, The Five-Two, Outlaw Poetry, Empty Mirror, Otoliths, and Your One Phone Call. His published books include Savage Magic (poetry) and Computing Angels (fiction). A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at http:\/\/jeffbagato.wordpress.com.
\n 
\n 
\nDevon Balwit<\/a><\/strong> lives scarily close to the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Her individual poems can be found here or are forthcoming in anthologies and journals such as The Cincinnati Review, apt, Posit, Grist, The Aeolian Harp Folio, Triggerfish, Fifth Wednesday, The Free State Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Rattle, etc. For more, and for her chapbooks and collections, see her website at: https:\/\/pelapdx.wixsite.com\/devonbalwitpoet
\n 
\n 
\nJon Bennett<\/a><\/strong> writes and plays music in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. You can find more of his work on Pandora and Spotify, or by connecting with him on Facebook at www.facebook.com\/jon.bennett.967.
\n 
\n 
\nCover Artist Mark Blickley<\/strong><\/a> is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center as well as the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Scholarship Award for Drama. He is the author of Sacred Misfits<\/i> (Red Hen Press), Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes from the Underground (Moira Books) and the forthcoming text based art chapbook, Dream Streams<\/i> (Clare Songbirds Publishing). His video Speaking in Bootongue was selected to the London Experimental Film Festival. He is a 2018 Audie Award Finalist for his contribution to the original audio book, Nevertheless We Persisted.<\/i>
\n 
\n 
\nAce Boggess<\/a><\/strong> is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea, 2016). His poetry has appeared in Harvard Review, Rhino, North Dakota Quarterly, and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
\n 
\n 
\nJim Bourey<\/a><\/strong> is an old poet from the northern Adirondack Mountains. His chapbook \u201cSilence, Interrupted\u201d was published by the Broadkill River Press and won a first prize in the Delaware Press Association competition. (Big time) His work has appeared in Mojave River Review, Stillwater Review, Paddock Review, Broadkill Review and other journals. He is also a regular contributor of reviews for the Broadkill Review. He can often be found reading aloud in dark rooms.
\n 
\n 
\nNeva Bryan<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s poems and short stories appear in nearly fifty literary journals and online magazines nationwide, including Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, Still: The Journal, and an upcoming issue of Canary: A Literary Journal of the Environmental Crisis. She is a contributor to two anthologies, We All Live Downstream: Writings about Mountaintop Removal and the Anthology of Appalachian Writers (Wiley Cash edition). Neva lives in the mountain coalfields of Virginia with her husband.
\n 
\n 
\nRachel Burns<\/a><\/strong> has poetry published in literary magazines The Lake, South, Fenland, Reed, Head Stuff, Lonesome October, South Bank Poetry, Smeuse, Southlight, The Herald Newspaper, Toasted Cheese and A Restricted View From Under The Hedge. Poems anthologised in #MeToo, Poems for Grenfell Tower and Please Hear What I’m Not Saying.
\n 
\n 
\nJohn Byrne<\/a><\/strong> lives in Albany, Oregon with Cheryl French, an artist, and Hotspur, a cat. He writes plays and mostly formal poetry. His work has appeared in small theaters and small print and electronic magazines around the country. He likes formal verse and baroque music largely because he has trouble coping with too many choices.
\n 
\n 
\nNikki Byrnside<\/a><\/strong> lives and works in Urbana, IL. Nikki spends most of her time chasing rainbows that start and end in the junkyard. She seeks the meaning of life and is sure the answer lies in the back of a pickup truck that will come rolling her way any day. She is getting better every day at astral projection, so when that book falls off your bedroom dresser, yes, that is her, and yes, she is watching.
\n 
\n 
\nCR Callahan<\/a><\/strong> received a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Florida. He has published work in The North American Review, Rhino, and Rat’s Ass Review. He lives and writes in Washington state. When he is not writing, he is hiking, backpacking or fly fishing somewhere in the mountains.
\n 
\n 
\nWendy Taylor Carlisle<\/a><\/strong> lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of two books and five chapbooks and has a new book coming out in the fall. For more about her work, check her website at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com.
\n 
\n 
\nA recent entrant into the poetry world, Rebecca Clifford<\/a><\/strong> is a member of Hamilton Poetry Centre, Tower Poetry Society, the Canadian Association of Children\u2019s Authors, Illustrators and Performers, the Society of Children\u2019s Book Writers and Illustrators, and a regular contributor to the Niagara Anglican newspaper. Her work has been included in The Ontario Poetry Society\u2019s Ultra Short Anthologies, Banister Verse Afire Anthology, the Tower Anthologies, and The Rural Route magazine. She is a two time winner of the Haldimand Annual Poetry Competition. Rebecca lives in rural Ontario with her husband.
\n 
\n 
\nMichael Coolen<\/a><\/strong> has been published widely, including in Oregon Humanities, The Gold Man Review, Clementine Poetry Journal, Synesthesia Magazine, Broken, The Poetry Quarterly, Oregon Poetry Association, et al. He is also a published composer, with works performed around the world, including at Carnegie Hall, MoMA, and the Christie Gallery in New York.
\n 
\n 
\nJoe Cottonwood<\/a><\/strong> is a carpenter by day, writer by night. Sometimes with some poems he nails it. He lives under redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His most recent book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the PacificCoast<\/i>. joecottonwood.com
\n 
\n 
\nTerry Culleton<\/a><\/strong>‘s collections of formally crafted narrative and lyric poems, A Communion of Saints<\/i> (Anaphora Literary Press, 2011), Eternal Life<\/i> (Anaphora Literary Press, 2015), are available at select bookstores, as well as at amazon.com. Poems from his forthcoming collection of sonnets, A Tree and Gone<\/i>, have appeared in various magazines. His poetry has been featured on NPR, and groups of his poems have been set to music by composers Darryl Harper and Don Jamison.
\n 
\n 
\nBatuhan Dedde<\/a><\/strong> was born in Istanbul in 1987. He has published several books, including the poetry collections K\u0131rm\u0131z\u0131 Eroin: Tahta Putun \u015eiirleri (Red Heroin: Wooden Idol Poems) in 2013, Dayan\u0131lmaz Ac\u0131lar Orkestras\u0131 (Orchestra of Unbearable Sufferings) in 2015, and Biz Ona \u015eiir \u00d6\u011fretmedik (It Wasn’t Us Who Taught Him Poetry, his collected poems) in 2017. His work brings together the sensibilities of the American Beats and the Turkish Second New movement. The poem SONG OF THE BUTCHER’S STEEL III was translated by Donny Smith<\/strong>, who was born in Nebraska and teaches at a high school in Istanbul. Mr. Smith’s books of translations include Cutting Off the Head of the Gorgon by Wenceslao Maldonado,Pigeonwoman by Cemal S\u00fcreya (with A. Karakaya), andI Too Went to the Hunt of a Deer by L\u00e2le M\u00fcld\u00fcr.
\n 
\n 
\nSteve Denehan<\/a><\/strong> lives in Kildare, Ireland with his wife Eimear and daughter Robin.  Recent publication credits include Better Than Starbucks, Fowl Feathered Review, Terror House Magazine, Dual Coast, The Opiate, Sky Island Journal, Poetry Quarterly, Evening Street Review, The Folded Word, Ink In Thirds and Third Wednesday.  His chapbook, “Of Thunder, Pearls and Birdsong” is available from Fowlpox Press.
\n 
\n 
\nAlyra Far<\/a><\/strong> lives under the climate changed skies of the Pacific Northwest.
\n 
\n 
\nComing out of those diesel lean years, J. Fisher<\/a><\/strong> has been splitting time and talents between dull labor and glorious excess. His first three formal collections were published through Frontenac House: Death Day Erection(2003), bulletin from the low light (2006), iii (2012).).His poems and short prose are in print and electric mediums from Balzac to Berlin.
\n 
\n 
\nJean-Luc Fontaine<\/a><\/strong> resides in New York where he teaches the arts at an-Luc Fontaine elementary school in the Bronx. He enjoys cheap coffee and falling asleep on subway cars.
\n 
\n 
\nKarin L. Frank<\/a><\/strong> is an award-winning author from the Kansas City area. Her poems and prose have been published in both literary journals and genre magazines in the U.S. and abroad.
\n 
\n 
\nMeg Freer<\/a><\/strong> grew up in Montana and lives in Ontario. Her poems have won awards and have been accepted for publication in chapbook anthologies and journals such as NatureWriting, COG, Young Ravens Literary Review, Eastern Iowa Review and Literary Nest. In 2017 she won a writing fellowship and attended the Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi. She enjoys being active outdoors year-round, taking photos, and running, and wishes she had more time for writing poetry.
\n 
\n 
\nMac Gay<\/a><\/strong> is author of 3 chapbooks with a full-length collection,Ghost Hunt<\/i>, forthcoming in 2019 from Eyewear Publishing Ltd. He is runner up for the 2018 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize and his chapbook, Farm Alarm<\/i>, will be published by Texas Review Press in 2019. His poems have been featured in many journals, including Atlanta Review, Cutbank, The Raintown Review. He teaches at Perimeter College of Georgia State University.
\n 
\n 
\nAlison Gerhard<\/a><\/strong> is a researcher and disability activist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She is currently completing her master’s degree in inorganic chemistry. Her work will appear in a forthcoming issue of Wordgathering.
\n 
\n 
\nWilliam Gillespie<\/a><\/strong> has published 11 and 2\/6ths books of fiction and poetry under six different names, including the novel Keyhole Factory by William Gillespie (Soft Skull, 2012). He works for the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering in Urbana, Illinois.
\n 
\n 
\nJohn Grey<\/a><\/strong> is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Poetry East and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Harpur Palate, the Hawaii Review and Visions International.
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Helweg-Larsen<\/a><\/strong>‘s poetry is published in the UK, US and Canada. His chapbook poem on writing poetry “Calling The Poem” is available as a free download from Snakeskin Poetry Webzine, issue 236. He is Series Editor for Sampson Low’s “Potcake Chapbooks – Form in Formless Times”, and lives in his hometown of Governor’s Harbour in the Bahamas.
\n 
\n 
\nHartley Hutchinson<\/a><\/strong> is a recent University of Toronto graduate who completed her BA with a major in English and minors in Creative Writing and Film Studies. Hartley\u2019s short story, Casserole, will appear in the Fall 2018 issue of The Awakenings Review<\/i>. She currently works as the intern at a small town library in Muskoka, reading and writing regularly on the side.
\n 
\n 
\nDerek Kannemeyer<\/a><\/strong> was born in Cape Town, South Africa, raised in London, England, and lives and writes in Richmond, Virginia. His work has appeared in Fiction International, Rattapallax, Smartish Pace, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. His 2018 publications include a light verse collection, a chapbook, and bits and pieces in half a dozen journals. He has a web site but can’t get it to do what he wants.
\n 
\n 
\nMickey Kulp<\/a><\/strong> is a writer and father who is not allowed to buy his own clothes. His work has appeared in numerous consumer magazines, newspapers, literary journals, and three books of poetry. In 2018, he created the \u2018Books and Beer\u2019 reading series to benefit the local food co-op. He lives with his wife and a dozen larcenous squirrels in Atlanta, GA. His next book is coagulating nicely. More at www.MickeyKulp.com.
\n 
\n 
\nKamryn Kurtzner<\/a><\/strong> is a poet residing in San Francisco. She has been published previously in Rat’s Ass Review and most recently in The Lavender Review.
\n 
\n 
\nStevie Lamblin<\/a><\/strong>: Male name, Androgynous brain; Double hole, Artistic soul. Stevie was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. She currently works full time as a dancer with the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company while pursuing her Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.
\n 
\n 
\nMarie C Lecrivain<\/a><\/strong> is the executive editor\/publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles<\/i>. Her work has appeared in Nonbinary Review, Spillway, Orbis, A New Ulster,<\/i> and others. She’s the author of several volumes of poetry and fiction, including the upcoming Fourth Planet From the Sun<\/i> (\u00a9 2019 Rum Razor Press).
\n 
\n 
\nMichael H. Levin<\/a><\/strong> is a lawyer, solar energy developer and writer based in Washington DC .  His work has appeared in over 50 periodicals or anthologies and has received numerous poetry and feature journalism awards.  His collection Watered Colors<\/i> (Poetica) was named a Best Poetry Book for May 2014 by the Washington Independent Review of Books. A new collection, Man Overboard<\/i> (Finishing Line Press) was released September 2018. His third collection, Falcons<\/i>, is in process. He and his wife, Nora Jean Levin, recently wrote and co-produced Two Pianos: Playing for Life<\/i>, a historically-themed drama with live classical music about young women pianists performing under and after the Third Reich that premiered in Philadelphia June 2018. See www.michaellevinpoetry.com.
\n 
\n 
\nMA|DE<\/a><\/strong> is a collective gesture, a unity of two voices fused into a poetic third. It is the name given to the joint authorship of Toronto-based creators Mark Laliberte<\/strong> and Jade Wallace<\/strong>, artists whose active solo practices differ quite radically from one another. MA|DE\u2019s collaborative writing formalizes a process that began as an extended conversation between two people newly discovering one another. Over a number of months, the pair messaged, texted, emailed, telephoned, conversed in person, left links on social media for the other to find, and mailed letters; their long, exploratory conversations opened up a language-space all their own. MA|DE is currently working on their first full-length collection of poetry, which formulates a set of shared visions, symbols, and ciphers that invites the reader into their complex, continually expanding internal universe. Poems forthcoming in poetry is dead<\/i>and PRISM international<\/i> (we\u2019re also being interviewed by the editor of PRISM<\/i> about our collaborative writing process).
\n 
\n 
\nBob MacKenzie<\/a><\/strong> has been published across North America and as far away as Australia, in many journals including the Dalhousie Review, University of Windsor Review, and Ball State University Forum. He\u2019s published eight books of poetry and been featured in numerous anthologies. With the band Poem de Terre, he\u2019s performed his poetry live with original music and released six albums. Bob\u2019s latest book is \u201csomewhere still in wind the tree is bending\u201d (Silver Bow Publishing, 2018).
\n 
\n 
\nDS Maolalai<\/a><\/strong> recently returned to Ireland after four years away, now spending his days working maintenance dispatch for a bank and his nights looking out the window and wishing he had a view. His first collection, Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden, was published in 2016 by the Encircle Press. He has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
\n 
\n 
\nJeremy Nathan Marks<\/a><\/strong> is a London, Canada-based American writer. Recent poetry appears in Chiron Review, The Wire\u2019s Dream, Landlocked Lyres, Unlikely Stories, The Blue Nib, Credo Espoir, Spectrum, The Wild Word, Mojave River Review, and The Blue Hour IV. Jeremy is a 2017 Pushcart nominee in poetry.
\n 
\n 
\nThomas M. McDade<\/a><\/strong> is a 72-year-old resident of Fredericksburg, VA, previously CT & RI. He is a graduate of Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Virginia Beach, VA. At sea aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE\/FF 1091).
\n 
\n 
\nBrandy McKenzie<\/a><\/strong> holds an MFA in writing from the University of Oregon, has published poems in more than three dozen literary magazines, won various awards, been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and worked on the editorial boards of three different nationally distributed literary magazines. These days, though, she mostly works as a paralegal, teaches critical thinking and writing to community college students, and tries to provoke conversation about strangeness of our shared waking dream.
\n 
\n 
\nRobert Minicucci<\/a><\/strong> recently came back to poetry and had his first poems published this summer. The first one is in the online ezine\/journal “Spank The Carp.\u201d Another was in a NH-based poetry zine called “Good Fat\u201d, which was created by Mike Nelson, the Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH. Robert lives near Exeter with his family and Josie, a brindle rescue hound that enjoys howling along to Stevie Ray Vaughan.
\n 
\nAlice Morris<\/a><\/strong> \u2013 MS from Johns Hopkins, artwork published in The New York Art Review<\/i> and a West Virginia textbook. Poetry included in reviews and anthologies, most recently, Sanctuary<\/i>, endorsed by a Pulitzer Prize winner. 2018 prize winner in a Clutch-themed fiction contest, and received the Florence C. Coltman Award for Creative Writing.
\n 
\n 
\nJohn C. Morrison<\/a><\/strong> won the Rhea Seymour Gorsline Poetry Competition for his book Heaven of the Moment,<\/i> which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in poetry. His poems have appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry Northwest<\/i>, the Cimarron Review,<\/i> and rhino<\/i>\/, among other literary journals. He teaches poetry as an associate fellow at the Attic Institute in Portland, Oregon.
\n 
\n 
\nRobert Nisbet<\/a><\/strong> is a Welsh poet who has been published widely in Britain and the USA, with frequent appearances in Red River Review, San Pedro River Review and Panoplyzine, which made him one of their Featured Poets in their Fall 2017 issue.
\n 
\n 
\nA writer, poet, and activist, Mindy Ohringer<\/a><\/strong> considers the intersection of Utopia Parkway and Union Turnpike to be her ancestral home. Her politically charged writing about love, politics, and history has appeared in “The Thieving Magpie”, “October Hill Magazine”, “The Greenwich Village Literary Review”, “New Choices, “The Columbia Spectator”, and “MORE.com” In June, she participated in Marge Piercy’s juried poetry intensive. Her blog https:\/\/mindyohringer.com explores how the personal and political intertwine.
\n 
\n 
\nMarc Olmstead<\/a><\/strong> is a poet who lives in the Pacific Northwest.
\n 
\n 
\nErik Lloyd Olson<\/a><\/strong> was raised on both sides of the Atlantic but now lives and works in Portland, Oregon. His poetry has been published in literary journals including The Road Not Taken, Asses of Parnassus,<\/i> and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily<\/i>. He studied poetry at Portland State University, as well as at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters under poet David Biespiel.
\n 
\n 
\nJennie E. Owen<\/a><\/strong>‘s writing has won competitions and has been widely published online, in literary journals, and anthologies. She has MAs in both English and Creative Writing. She is a Lecturer of Creative Writing and lives in Mawdesley, Lancashire with her husband and three children.
\n 
\n 
\nKenneth Pobo<\/a><\/strong> has a book of prose poems forthcoming from Clare Songbirds Publishing House called The Antlantis Hit Parade. Catch his Internet music show, Obscure Oldies, on Saturdays.
\n 
\n 
\nPhill Provance<\/a><\/strong> is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Day the Sun Rolled Out of the Sky<\/i> (Cy Gist, 2010) and Given to Sudden Laughter<\/i>(Cy Gist, 2019). His work has appeared in The Baltimore Sun, CCR, decomP, and many others and has received various honors, including being named a finalist for the 2017 Crab Creek Review Poetry Contest by Diane Seuss. An MFA candidate at WV Wesleyan, he lives in Illinois.
\n 
\n 
\nBen Rasnic<\/a><\/strong> currently resides in Bowie, Maryland. Author of four published collections (three available from amazon.com), Ben’s poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.
\n 
\n 
\nMaree Reedman<\/a><\/strong> lives in Brisbane, Australia, with her cockatiels and husband. She wrote her first poem when she was a prison psychologist, noticing how willie wagtails waltzed on the barbed wire. Her poetry has been published in recent Grieve Anthologies Hecate,<\/i> and StylusLit,<\/i> and has won awards in the Ipswich Poetry Feast, including a mentorship with Carmen Leigh Keates. She likes to read and write poetry that has a story; in fact, she is a story addict.
\n 
\n 
\nBrandon T. Roach<\/a><\/strong> currently resides in Albuquerque where he burns quietly under the sun.
\n 
\n 
\nSam Rose<\/a><\/strong> is a writer and editor from Northamptonshire, England. She is the editor of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine and The Creative Truth. Her work has appeared in Scarlet Leaf Review, Poetry Pacific, Haiku Journal, In Between Hangovers, and others. Sam is a cancer survivor and primarily uses her experiences with this to write poetry and memoir. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to rock music and eating too much chocolate.
\n 
\n 
\nM. C. Rush<\/a><\/strong> currently resides in rural Louisiana, has most recently published poems in streetcake magazine, Third Wednesday, The Hamilton Stone Review, Pirene’s Fountain,<\/i> and Next Line, Please: Prompts to Inspire Poets and Writers<\/i> (edited by David Lehman), as well as a forthcoming chapbook, The Animal Commitments.
\n 
\n 
\nGerard Sarnat<\/a><\/strong> MD\u2019s been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards and won other prizes. KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY was selected for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day nationwide. \u201cAmber Of Memory\u201d was the single poem chosen for his 50th Harvard reunion Dylan symposium; The Harvard Advocate accepted a second. Gerard\u2019s a physician who\u2019s built\/staffed homeless clinics, a Stanford professor\/healthcare CEO. Collections: Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes, 17s, Melting the Ice King (2016). Married since 1969; he has seven grand\/kids.
\n 
\n 
\nClair Scott<\/a><\/strong> is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called<\/i> and the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters\u2019 Journey in Photography and Poetry<\/i>.
\n 
\n 
\nDarcy Smith<\/a><\/strong> works as a sign language interpreter. Her poems have appeared in Boyne Berries, Up The River, Chronogram, MER, GTK, Sadie Girl Press, Universal Table, Arsenic Lobster and Between the Lines. Darcy is a Buddhist and a kickboxer. Her current obsession is executing a six punch three kick combination with perfect form.
\n 
\n 
\nMichael T. Smith<\/a><\/strong> is an Assistant Professor of the Polytechnic Institute at Purdue University, where he received his PhD in English. He teaches cross-disciplinary courses that blend humanities with other areas. He has published over 60 poems in over 30 different journals. He loves to travel.
\n 
\n 
\nAlec Solomita<\/a><\/strong> has published fiction in The Mississippi Review, Southwest Review, Southword,<\/i> and Peacock<\/i>, among other journals. His poetry has appeared in Literary Orphans, Far Off Places, MockingHeart Review, Driftwood Press, Rat\u2019s Ass Review,<\/i> and elsewhere. His chapbook, \u201cDo Not Forsake Me,<\/i>\u201d was published by Finishing Line Press in 2017. Three of his poems will appear in the forthcoming edition of Fulcrum: An International Anthology of Poetry and Aesthetics.<\/i> He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
\n 
\n 
\nSavannah Trent<\/a><\/strong> is a MFA candidate at Miami University, Ohio. She has a chronic coffee addiction and writes too much about corn.
\n 
\n 
\nLauren Vermette<\/a><\/strong> is a word-painter living in Dover, NH. When she is not slinging ink at paper canvases, she spends her time snarling yarn into wearable works of art.
\n 
\n 
\nTyson West<\/a><\/strong> has published speculative fiction and poetry in free verse, form verse and haiku distilled from his mystical relationship with noxious weeds and magpies in Eastern Washington. He has no plans to quit his day job in real estate. His poetry collection Home-Canned Forbidden Fruit<\/i> is available from Gribble Press.
\n 
\n 
\nJoe Williams<\/a><\/strong> is a former starving musician who transformed into a starving writer and poet in 2015, entirely by mistake. He lives in Leeds, UK and appears regularly at events in Northern England. He has been published in numerous anthologies, and in magazines online and in print. In 2017 he won the prestigious Open Mic Competition at Ilkley Literature Festival and had his debut poetry pamphlet, \u2018Killing the Piano\u2019, published by Half Moon Books. www.joewilliams.co.uk
\n 
\n 
\nLaura Winkelspecht<\/a><\/strong> is a poet and writer from Wisconsin who writes with the hope of finding some lightning among the lightning bugs. She has been published in One Sentence Poems, Clementine Poetry Journal, Millwork,<\/i> and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.
\n 
\n 
\nStella Wulf<\/a><\/strong> hails from North Wales but now lives in S W France. Her poems are widely published both in print and online, and appear in several anthologies including, The Very Best of 52, three drops, Clear Poetry, and #MeToo. She has an MA in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her pamphlet, After Eden, was recently published by 4word press.
\n 
\n 
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\n <\/p>\n

\n

Edited by Roderick Bates<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

RAT’S ASS REVIEW FALL-WINTER ISSUE 2018 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<\/p>\n<\/h4>\n

 
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\n 
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          (Cover Art Frog Concerto by Mark Blickley)       Jeff Bagato   TRAILING THE BLUES     He took a folded wad of bills two inches thick from his pocket, and peeled off fifty, fifty, fifty dropped for a stack of pick-fours, scratch-offs and megamillions, hoping for an easy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3030,"parent":0,"menu_order":21,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2944","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nWinter 2018 Issue -<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ratsassreview.net\/?page_id=2944\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Winter 2018 Issue -\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" 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