About Audrey T. Carroll
Audrey T. Carroll is a Queens, NYC native whose obsessions include kittens, coffee, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Rooster Teeth community. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Fiction International, The Fem, Feminine Inquiry, the A3 Review, and others. Her poetry collection, Queen of Pentacles, is available from Choose the Sword Press. She can be found at http://audreytcarrollwrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter. 7/23/2016 0 Comments Brains EnoughBy Bruce Sager
If I were a woman, I’d wish for casual beauty, brains enough to hide it, breasts tipped like two pink eyes looking heavenward towards the eyes of god. I’d wish for a man whose hand is never a hammer. I’d wish for a man – between sessions of love so hot Apollo would sweat – who’d break me up, who’d choke me with laughter. I’d wish for the impossible: for love, for heat to last. And when it cooled, a forest. I’d wish for a forest spread so far beyond our lawns that when I wandered into it no one could find me, ever. I’d bury myself in leaves and live on bird’s eggs, on berries. Years might pass. When I’d had enough I’d show up at home, at midnight. You know what I want, I’d say. And he’d know. By Christ, he’d know. About Bruce Sager Bruce Sager, a recent winner of the William Matthews Poetry Prize, lives in Westminster, Maryland. His work has won publication through competitions judged by Billy Collins, Dick Allen and William Stafford. Currently available through Amazon: Famous, winner of the Harriss Poetry Prize. Forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing, Ontario: TAU (poetry) and Hoby Blue Banks in Exactly 1,000 Words, More or Less (short stories). Forthcoming from BrickHouse Books, Baltimore: What Language Would Please Its Ear? and Swale (both poetry) 7/11/2016 0 Comments Two Color Poems by a Once-SightedBy M. Leona Godin
Study of the artist in white A prepared canvas hangs On pristine plaster walls. In clean apron, Bleached brilliant, starched crisp, The artist enters. With hieroglyphs and prayers, The artist sculpts touch Out of Stoney void. Staring into frozen tundra The artist, dazzled, Sees white hot visionscapes, Where another sees only emptiness. The artist, pressed down by Weightless bubbles, Pushes thoughts up into them With black ink and spray paint, Let there be light, And my crystalline mind Will shatter it into colors! Sea Foam Aphrodite, goddess of love, Emerged from sea foam, A gift from calamity, A painting in the mind’s eye... The little artist sits On her lime green chair At a myrtle table, Mixing sea foam green, A color that softens The edges of waves. Suddenly, she sprouts Teal feathered wings And beats them vigorously. Thrice round her spring green room She circles, Then out the window Into grass green freedom. There she will see Turquoise seas and emerald cities, Deep green jungles And moss covered graves. Although she will not see The Darkness coming, She will see A thousand greens grow In a single night’s dream. About M. Leona Godin M. Leona Godin is a blind writer, performer and doctor of philosophy. She received her PhD in Early Modern Literature from NYU's English department and currently lives in Astoria, Queens. She has written and produced two plays: The Star of Happiness, about Helen Keller's time on vaudeville and The Spectator & the Blind Man, about the very sexy history of the invention of braille. Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in FLAPPERHOUSE, Newtown Literary, Danse Macabre, and Quail Bell Magazine, where she writes a regular column called Distill My Heart, about all things aromatic and alcoholic. Read all things Godin at DrMLGodin.com. 7/9/2016 0 Comments I TasteBy Gretchen Gales -after Ray Gonzalez I taste waves against the boat my great- Grandparents left Austria-Hungary in, My blood calling me to rule the Empire. I taste my grandmother slamming the door, Opening the window only When my grandfather agreed to her demands. I taste the scratch of pencils Against blueprints, 1992 when my childhood home was born. I taste the low rumble Of Daddy’s aging red tractor, terror As I grip the wheel, sitting in his lap, age four. I taste the crunching of airline peanuts 1999, and silence deafening, 2001. I taste my name called For third, a year later first, The enslavement Of my heart in George Strait’s “I Cross My Heart” its liberation In Gaga’s “Gypsy.” I taste the sound of chocolate fondue Smacking against my teeth, A quality photo at Senior Prom. I taste my Uncle Fred’s forgotten pills Shuffling in his plaid, flannel button-up pocket, The whack of his face hitting the table. I can still taste the gurgling Into my ears during baptism, The uneasy murmurs of our freshman selves. I taste 8 a.m. roosters at 6:00. I taste hissing, the slash of his tires, my keys carving a custom message on the front of the hood. Rage echoing in my house, abandoned.
7/2/2016 1 Comment Untitled #4By Kristine Slentz Splendid persona Penis of pleasant proportion Eventually showing real soul Noticeable nuances Chase away sadness induced love Ever the blandest relationship Reaching resisting point Breaking up, finally A day before one year then It was left to rest for four Letting your grieving betrayal soak Educating me on lonely lust Yet, always to be the coward selfish
7/2/2016 3 Comments WHERE I'M FROMBy Joe Johnston
there is a little motel on the back highway, seven cabins and a clubhouse and a pool. cabins three and six pulse with flypaper every September but they're rarely booked except for high school homecoming and after prom in the spring when the sunflowers are a distant postcard. An RC Cola machine hums outside the front office, the blue and red faded from too many summers and too few quarters dropped into the slot week in and out. Where I'm from progress is measured via stringers of panfish and the price of gasoline. Time forgets and timekeepers make slingshots and whiskey cocktails and egg concoctions, hoping for a FedEx delivery of chirking cheer among the football fall and pending river freeze. The motel is called the Sail Inn. The sheets are blue and have sailboats and life preservers repeating crosswise. About Joe Johnston Joseph Johnston is a writer and filmmaker from Michigan. His work has appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Old Northwest Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Arcadia. He is currently working on a documentary about boxing in Detroit. 7/2/2016 2 Comments Miriam Sagan Poem Series1.
tree of white star flowers bird flashing a saturated and metallic blue gossip of this and that all the women you loved in between our first times and now how you don’t really know what it means to walk along a muddy river in this part of the country coming off the trail and into the dusk of the neighborhood how darkness makes habitation private a young pregnant woman takes his hand and even she who has every reason to doesn’t truly believe how things are changing 2. in the square beneath the sculpture’s new brutalism skyscraper’s late capitalism, I beat my anger into something if not exactly a ploughshare at least a cane to lean on, as school children crowd and gape at the aquarium’s flatfish, the mystery of the amphibious, I saw you turn you were walking towards me you just didn’t yet know it 3. flamenco dancer in the pouring rain, after midnight I sat zazen by the window lit by falling snow, when my father died all that was left was my mother’s shattered mind, she said she’d had a high fever for many years and couldn’t remember him, anything, a double rainbow appears over the bride and groom and the song that goes “magdalena, I haven’t forgotten you” girl, in a polka dot dress” if the sutras are to be believed Buddha nature is everywhere and the void in labor 4. in the morning we saw it a ring of feathers in the yard the horned owl that lives between our house and the C de Bacas in this funky neighborhood had grabbed one of the mourning dove flock as if out of thinnest hair eaten everything as owls do-- beak feet fat bone and left just the fairy ring of grey and white feathers lowing about in the spring breeze I have nothing to add to this or to subtract 5. I don’t care if I live or die-- it isn’t all bad as a way to get through the day. still I know I’ll dip the parsley in the salt water to remind myself of the tears of slavery. at the party I can’t help but wonder how hard can it be for such a beautiful woman-- and needy too-- to find a man who’ll stay… in the dream the tower room I’d rented for years was suddenly painted oaxacan blue, and full of tents hung in silk and velvet, and street festivals, and unlocked doors. you said that even though you were leaving you thought I could make a living there. About Miriam Sagan Miriam Sagan is the author of 30 published books, including the novel Black Rainbow (Sherman Asher, 2015) and Geographic: A Memoir of Time and Space (Casa de Snapdragon, 2016). She founded and heads the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College. Her blog Miriam’s Well (http://miriamswell.wordpress.com) has a thousand daily readers. She is at work on a utopian feminist novella and a disability memoir. She has been a writer in residence in two national parks, at Yaddo, MacDowell, Colorado Art Ranch, Andrew’s Experimental Forest, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Iceland’s Gullkistan Residency for creative people, and another dozen or so remote and unique places. Her awards include the Santa fe Mayr’s award for Excellence in the Arts, the Poetry Gratitude Award from New Mexico Literary Arts, and A Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa. 6/27/2016 2 Comments Cancer VoodooBy Jude Roy
The cancer shrunk Daddy, stretched skin taut over bones, until he looked like a Dachau victim, had the same lost, bewildered look in his eyes. He cried one night, head resting on Momma’s chest, “Don’t let me die.” Momma patted him on the back like she did when I had a nightmare and she couldn’t do anything about it. “There, there,” she chanted like a Sunday prayer. About Jude Roy Jude Roy's fiction, non-fiction, and poetry has appeared in numerous publications such as The Southern Review, American Short Fiction, Southern Indiana Review, Prism International, The Dead Mule, and many more. Originally from Chataignier, Louisiana, he currently lives and teaches in Madisonville, Kentucky. 6/27/2016 0 Comments ToothacheBy P.C. Vandall
There will be no bridges over foamy waters or dark caves with stalagmites dripping down. I want a man who can smile his way to Friday and shine all day Sun- day. I’m done with niblets of corn, rusted front grills and babbling brooks. To be blunt, the dull, fake and crooked ones really bore me and I’ve become a bit bi-molar when picking out my men. My perfect man- dible is clean-cut, polished and bright. He’s perfectly veneered with white picket fences lined in a row. He’s brilliant, finely chiseled, and razor sharp. I fall teeth over kneecaps to be with him, spoil him rotten but In the end, he brushes me off and leaves me like a chewed up wad of Chiklets gum. There is no jaws of life to save me, no icy lake to numb the pain. The only pearl of wisdom I can give is some cavities should never be filled. About P.C. Vandall Pamela is the author of three collections of poetry: “Something from Nothing,” (Writing Knights Press) “Woodwinds” (Lipstick Press) and “Matrimonial Cake” (Red Dashboard). Her next book of poetry debuts in spring 2017 with Oolichan Books. When Pamela is not writing, she's sleeping. She believes sleep is death without the commitment. |