Boundaries

April 2020 | poetry

I am a stranger

 

I am not your bird

I am not your sea

 

I am not your inspiration

I am not your tree

 

I am not your ear ear

I am not your flirt

 

I am not your overseer

I am not your dirt

 

I am not your Ledbetter

I am not your Freud

 

I am not your fairy tale

I am not your every wish for

 

I am not your Prophet

I am not your favor and favor and favor

 

I am a

stranger

 

Wendy Gist

 

Wendy Gist was raised in the forest of the Southwest on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in For Women Who Roar, Fourth River, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Rio Grande Review, Soundings Review, St. Austin Review, Sundog Lit, The Chaffey Review, Tulane Review and other fine journals. Gist has worked as a professional contributing writer for many leading publications including Better Nutrition, Caribbean Travel and Life, eDiets, New Mexico Magazine, Pilates Style, Today’s Diet and Nutrition, and numerous others (national and international). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the chapbook Moods of the Dream Fog (Finishing Line Press, 2016). She was named semifinalist for The Best Small Fictions, 2017.

Michael Hower

April 2020 | visual art

Dome

Eden

Michael Hower

Michael Hower is an abandonment and graffiti photographer from Pennsylvania. His experience with digital photography began seven years ago. Over that time, he has explored numerous abandoned places over the Mid-Atlantic. His work has been displayed widely in over a hundred and fifty exhibitions and publications, featuring in shows at the Biggs Museum of Art, DE; Pennsylvania College of Technology, PA; Pennsylvania State Museum, PA and Marshall University, WV. The artwork is not just the photograph. The process starts before the photograph and continues after it is made. It begins with historical research and ends with the telling of forgotten stories. Michael photographs history by looking for places of deep significance, like the place featured here in the series “Perspectives in Eden,” the Irem Shrine in Wilkes-Barre. The Irem Shrine, an example of Moorish revival architecture was long home to the Shriners and had been a preeminent public events space in Northeast Pennsylvania for decades. The building’s doors have been shuttered for many years, but new ownership hopes to breathe new life into this forgotten jewel. “Perspectives in Eden” focus on the expansive main events hall along with its antechambers.

No Strings Attached

January 2020 | poetry

In Darwin,

Minnesota

the biggest ball

 

of twine

is unencumbered

by human

 

frailty.

No discontented lovers

struggling with rope

 

burn

anxious to be free.

No lasso-

 

twirling cowpokes

waiting in ambush

for that special

 

someone.

No timber-hitched

twosomes and threesomes

 

double knotted

like old sneakers.

No families

 

held together

by spit

and slip

 

knots.

Just a ball of

purposeless string

 

bigger now

than the town

hall.

 

Steve Deutsch

 

Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. His recent publications have or will appear in Evening Street, Better Than Starbucks, Flashes of Brilliance, SanAntonio Review, Softblow, Mojave River Review, The Broadkill Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Panoply, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Thimble Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, Borfski Press, Streetlight Press, Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble, New Verse News and The Ekphrastic Review. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His Chapbook, “Perhaps You Can,” was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press.

How To Recognize An American

January 2020 | poetry, Pushcart nominee

In those days of “The Ugly American”

and Gary Powers, his U-2 Incident,

we lived and traveled in Scotland and Europe.

It was mostly the intense teenage boys

who yelled, “Yankee, go home!”

or maybe the coal man, if you could

parse out a few understandable words,

who insulted our Canadian friends

by mistaking them for one of us.

Sure, speaking would give us away,

but how did they know us on the streets?

Walking with hands in pockets, some said,

or overcoats, a wimp’s shame

according to the hardy Scot

with his damp-to-the-bone chill and Gulf Stream,

not guessing Arctic winds and ices.

Years later, the writer was unmasked

in Austria without a word,  without a pocket,

without a coat. “Because you smiled at me,”

the face of officialdom admitted.

“We don’t mind. It’s nice.”*

We carry our terrarium worlds with us,

never guessing how we seem, yet ever fretting

over imagined opinions. (My female generation

always tucking bra straps, hitching slips …

.”what’s a slip?” …while the young

shape their selfies and let it all show,

have different hang-ups.)

Is it American to always

go “spot checking” ourselves?

The Brit’s American joke back then

was the Yank, hand to mouth,

nose to armpit, checking for suspect odors….

checking….checking … is it only human?

only American?….. or only me?

 

*from  Lynda Lynn Haupt, MOZART’S STARLING

 

 

Carol Hamilton

 

Carol Hamilton has recent and upcoming publications in San Pedro River Review, Dryland, Pinyon, Commonweal, Southwestern American Literature, Pour Vida, Adirondack Review, The Maynard, Sanskrit Literary Magazine, U.S.1 Worksheet, Broad River Review, Fire Poetry Review, Homestead Review, Shot Glass Journal, Poem, Haight Ashbury Poetry Journal, Sandy River Review, Blue Unicorn, former people Journal, Main Street Rag, Pigeonholes Review, Poetica Review, Zingara Review, Broad River Review and others. She has published 17 books: children’s novels, legends and poetry, most recently, SUCH DEATHS from Virtual Arts Cooperative Press Purple Flag Series. She is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma.

 

 

 

Eric Blanchard

January 2020 | poetry

Inspiration

 

The blank page is inspiration—

 

a silent beckoning

in the mind’s ears.

 

Listen.

It is just like the ocean’s coy whisper

in a conch shell,

whooshing.

 

A toddler scampers across it,

leaving word-like footprints.

 

Lacking social concerns,

he builds sandcastles of

 

random syllables.

Unwittingly,

 

the wave grows toward

tsunami,

 

washes away innocence,

 

replaces it with complex

tortured syntax

 

and walks away.

 

 

 

Planning My Road Trip

 

            This will be epic!

 

I am planning my road trip.

(Who am I kidding? I am daydreaming.)

Really, I will have to be frugal

and pack light,

 

but for an extended adventure—

bring only essentials. Roll my bedroll

tightly, strap it

tightly to the luggage rack.

 

The saddlebags are filled

with necessities: road flares, inner tube,

a selective assortment of tools.

 

A duffel of clothes fit for all seasons

sits on the passenger pillion (rides bitch,

if you will),

which would otherwise be empty.

 

My route has been mapped out,

with various alternatives tossed about,

like a maverick or nomad.

 

I will visit forty-eight states

(and at least one foreign country) alone.

Of course, many things,

 

like consumables, I can gather

on the road;

beg, borrow, steal the rest. I will need

a pup tent and a Coleman stove

 

for the road-side campsites

I will sleep at to save money

on occasion, weather permitting.

 

It will be bare-bones and dirt-cheap.

(Yes, even in my dreams.)  Now,

if only I still had my hog. . . . It won’t

be the same in an RV.

 

Eric Blanchard

Growing up in Texas, Eric dreamed of dropping out of high school, but when the haze of adolescence cleared, he found himself in law school instead. After being a trial lawyer for a decade and a half, he ran away to Ohio, where he taught school and lived life for about a minute. Eventually, he returned home to help care for his parents. Eric’s poetry has been included in numerous collections, both online and in hard copy. In 2013, his prose poem “The Meeting Ran Long” was nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net anthology. His chapbook, The Good Parts, will be published in January 2020 by Finishing Line Press.