Poetry
Introduction to Poetry for Issue 39 by John C. Manone
First, I want to recognize the nominees for a couple prestiegious awards: 2018 Puschcart Prize “Sakura” Rekha Valliappan Issue 37 May 2018 “A Postcard to Janice” William Doreski Issue 37 May 2018 “I will tell you only this” Babo Kamel Issue 38: Aug 2018 “The Psycho-Maid’s Dream” Mack W. Mani Issue 39: Nov 2018 “Cardinal” Patricia [...]
Poetry
rain is jewel blue and the forest’s amber traps wildlife in its crystal gazes we remember a time of oceans through songs and stories but our only experience is of what blue rain we collect and the sparse dew we harvest from butterfly wings but now let skeletal birds fly through scarlet air and let [...]
Poetry
The Never Dormant Sea by Jennifer Ihasz
We weren’t holding hands in that cold sunset another lingering fall day at the beach our wayward son before us. He toddled his steps hampered by the weight of his own clothes but still determined enough to drag himself toward danger to the icy knife of that trickled heave of shore its noise and foam [...]
Poetry
The Plastic Woman by Charles Leggett
—Fifty-minute Thai solo performance piece adapted from Rong Wongsawan’s novel, Leaving, 1974, Perth Arts Festival, Western Australia, February 2002 “An artificial product of great beauty” originating in the factory of scientists the program blurb calls naughty, the Plastic Woman instigates desire —obsessive, sexual—in the entire male populace. But one day, she inquires of her “playmates”: [...]
Poetry
The Psycho-Maid’s Dream by Mack W. Mani
Built to be a hunter, all wide hips, dark cicada lips, her every word a nightful cry. She is a construct out of Hell, an amalgam of movie monsters and medieval paintings— the scabbed and sloughing flesh completes the image. She can torture you to ecstasy as easily as you or I would cross the [...]
Poetry
My husband fingers the piano late into the night. Ghostly strains consume me as I lay in bed, my hipbones tenting the white sheets, my chilled fingertips counting the tilled lines of rib that expand with frozen breaths; exhalations pool in my sunken belly. Milky weight in my breasts: round, blue-veined fruit, leaking. Dawn [...]
Poetry
Feathers, Vatican-red, flit among the branches of a juniper tree. Cardinals eat the blue berries. January diamond-dusts the tips of branches— tiny diadems reflecting sun’s climb in eastern sky. The Cherokee believe words spoken toward the east will make it all the way to God. A cardinal’s whistle attracts a mate, just one for [...]
Fiction
Solvency Struggles by Ben Nein
Gil Hadrian stood over the body of Lord Mikael Faridar and examined the grisly scene in the bright light of morning. He might have thought wild animals had gotten in if it weren’t for the bloody footprints that led away from the victim to a window. Someone tore the Merchant Lord to pieces, and their [...]
Fiction
Coming to Coals Station by Laura J. Campbell
Cessyna could hear the train rattle by on the tracks as she sat in her chair next to the open window, sipping on inexpensive red wine poured into a little purple plastic cup. She was feeling lonely. Two deaths and one break-up in the space of the last month were taking their toll on her [...]
Fiction
Encapsulate by Matthew Cornachione
A pine branch slapped her face. Painful, frustrating, but not harmful. Irrelevant compared to what lay ahead. Gabby ducked beneath the bough and continued down the hillside. She quickened her pace as the trees thinned. Then she broke through to the edge of the field and there it was. A hundred yards away embedded in [...]
Fiction
Serpent of Worlds by R.D. Harris
I made camp on the fringe of a meadow. The clearing was settled in a hollow and seemed cozy enough. Lengthy blades of grass formed prickly silhouettes as the afternoon died away. Beasts hidden in darkness would soon make their hunts, but they feared a fire. Packs of both koobasuk and meadow hounds shied away [...]