January 2016 | poetry
You’re in the pickup with Scotty B and buzzing with anticipation cause you’re about to score and this makes your skin tingle thinking about the rush of dopamine and potential for sudden violence that comes with every deal and to feed the synergy you reach for the volume on the stereo just as the song ends and the void of sound takes you back to the bar
where amid the neon and dinge of a dive turned trendy you caught the lean through the corner of your eye before the kiss between two guys who looked like college kids enjoying a night on-the-slum and unaware of the culture shift when you leave the sandstone and iron of Okie Yuppie U.
Your first instinct was fear so you scanned the bar while telling yourself this is Tulsa and waited for the slur you’ve heard so many times it has no impact anymore and your mind went back to the night you and Scotty B were good and lit and laughing and you placed a hand on the curve of his ribs in a manner that made his spine stiffen as he shrugged away and this instant had you at the brink of fight or flight until Scotty B pretended nothing happened and you let your fists uncurl.
This is Tulsa. And you can’t understand the way things are changing because you know it never will for you with your line of descent traced through generations of Hank and Merle and Cash on vinyl and your father singing Garth’s ode with the bulls and blood and dust and mud and in the silence between songs you turn to Scotty B and twang out the drawl real nice when you tell him used to be they called this shit Horse back in the seventies and that’s the best name for a drug they ever was.
by Geoff Peck
Geoff Peck received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of North Dakota. His fiction and poetry have appeared in over a dozen journals and he has been nominated for Best New American Poets after winning the Academy of American Poets Thomas McGrath Award.
January 2016 | nonfiction
His biceps strain and relax beneath working hands, transferring bright flowers and plants into moist soil. Sweat silks his skin in the summer warmth, digging, planting, wiping his brow. I stand at a window in the Financial Aid hallway, sipping my coffee. Professor what’s-his-name listed off parts of The Allegory of the Cave today, all the while this man had begun transforming the dusty, rectangular void of a courtyard into a lively space where the sun shines in at ten o’clock. It’s beautiful, with its fresh sod and artisan benches. I shake off the stench of body odor and marker fumes that couldn’t reach the window in our classroom. I sip my coffee. I stare.
I don’t know how, but I know that much more can be learned by watching this man work with the earth than sitting in a philosophy lecture. I wonder if this landscaper is internally complaining. Does he like working for the company whose logo spreads on his t-shirt? If not, his body tells a different story. He makes it look so effortless. Like when your Dad showed you how to paint a wall or wash a car when you were young and you wondered how he could move so swiftly. His movements fit him like a glove, as I stand and watch in awe. A beautiful human man. Natural. Vibrant. Respectable. Nothing on that campus was ever more beautiful.
…You won’t be able to smoke out there.
by Erica Jacquemin
Erica Jacquemin is an American woman traveling the world and writing about it, as seems that pieces of her being are scattered across the globe for her to find. Her afflatus comes from the immense beauty of this planet, the languages and cultures she wanders into, romantic relationships, and the Italian language. She is from the Northeast of The United States but calls Italy home.
January 2016 | poetry
Observations In Lieu Of An Elegy
Â
Scooter Monzingo is dead.
The weather is crisp, the streets
Are exceptionally clean.
His wife is amazed at how
Natural he looks, the way
His fingers gracefully mesh.
It is six o’clock. In Rome,
In a cheap villa, a young
American housewife is
Seducing a gigolo.
She insists his name is Frank.
What an ugly word! Franck thinks.
It is six o’clock. Demure
Millie Hobbes is pawning her
Gramophone. She has plans, big
Plans. Someday her neighbors will
See her and say, Who would have
Thought it? She can hardly wait.
It is six o’clock. Rainstorms
Lash the coast of Uruguay.
In a crowded marketplace,
A slow-eyed senorita
Has begun to menstruate
For the first time. People stare.
If he were alive today,
Scooter Monzingo would say
4,800 words,
Move 700 muscles,
Eat over 3 pounds of food,
And breathe. Which is average.
The Miracle
Â
Who could ever imagine this breach
Of sun? Not even the priests
Grazed by the moon and eager
To serve could say for sure. Oh,
They fasted, wept, and prayed. With
The passion of despair, they
Brought hundreds to the knife. Lord,
The stench. Baskets stuffed with soft
Steaming entrails. But nowhere
Was an answer to be found.
Encouraged, then, by what they
Could not see, they counted up
Their blessings in disguise. They
Danced, they sang, they fell back on
Tradition and, praising all
Such miracles of mystery,
They blessed the bloody fields.
by Paul Lubenkov
After a lengthy career as an executive with Eastman Kodak and Fuji Photo Film, I have returned full circle to my first post graduate job: College Instructor. Although it is certainly intimidating to return to the classroom, it is incredibly rewarding to be able to give back. Poems recently published and accepted for publication in The Sierra Nevada Review, The Stillwater Review, The Outrider Review, River Poets Journal, Falling Star Magazine, and The Tule Review.
January 2016 | poetry
A morbid fear of guns
whose array of co-morbidities
encompass
suppressed rage
post-traumatic stress disorder
delusional disorder
and panic disorder
this complex specific phobia
and avoidance
displacement
and transference
Or how else do hoplophobiacs
get from point A
to point B
without a gun permit
with a gun
without a firing mechanism
and without bullets
and the hallowed halls of Congress
clogged with lead?
by Patrick Theron Erickson
Patrick, a resident of Garland, Texas, a Tree City just south of Duck Creek, is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself, a former shepherd of sheep, a small flock with no sheep dog and no hang-dog expression. Secretariat is his mentor, though he has never been an achiever and has never gained on the competition. He resonates to a friend’s definition of change; though a bit dated with the advent of wi fi, it has the ring of truth to it: change coming at us a lot faster because you can punch a whole lot more, a whole lot faster down digital broadband “glass” fiber than an old copper co-axial landline cable. Of late Patrick’s work has appeared in Poetry Pacific; Red Fez; SubtleTea; The Oddville Press; Literary Juice; Poetry Quarterly; and will appear in the Fall 2015 issue of The Penwood Review.
January 2016 | fiction
Hot in the schoolhouse we study mathematics, geography. We are told many times that the maps teach history too. We learn of the African Union; we learn of the Empire of Mali, and are told that it was long ago. We learn of Portugal, and of the British in swathes of dull red. Sometimes the sea sweeps into the mangroves, and sometimes the forest bears fruit.
Stephanie, my pen friend, writes that she is entranced with the idea of the hippos, and asks me to send a picture. Hippos are hard to draw. Last summer I saw a fisherman too close to the water: he was torn in half, one part disappearing into the frothing pool and one part spat into the mud. Occasionally we make masks and pretend to be animals: cows, sharks and other harmless beasts. To like a hippo you must have to be very far away. In the mud and the water, I thought the colours of the half-swallowed man looked like the map in our schoolhouse: red, blue, brown.
I try to imagine where Stephanie learns geography; I try to see what a city would look like. Stephanie sends pictures with buildings like picked-clean whalebones thrown into the sky. Outside the schoolhouse, our mathematics rulers double as weapons, sometimes as spades. Later, in the evenings, I like to carve, carefully working at a new mask while the red sun falls into the sea.
by Phil Robinson-Self
Phil Self lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and considers the weather to be not as bad as people say. His fiction has featured in Flash Fiction Magazine, Paragraph Planet, The Pygmy Giant, Apocrypha and Abstractions, and elsewhere. On balance, he would probably like to be your friend.
