January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Would you look at my beautiful
Skeleton broken in two, twice
The shell of a skeleton in a mirror?
You who cannot recognize the you
In me underneath my skeleton mirror,
The belly I am no longer approved in.
Swallow familiar shadows- not seen
Before my eyes; look down as your sex
Swallows me entirely, leaving me whole.
Look hard to see the secret hidden stars
When you find darkness in a shadow mirror,
Mirrored by twice the shell of a skeleton.
by Paige Simkins
Paige is a poet who lives with her dog, Sir Simon, in Tampa, Florida. She holds a Bachelor degree in English (Creative Writing) and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science. She works as a Public Librarian and is very passionate about poetry, libraries, VW Beetles, and visual art.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Question mark meanders
like a curl of smoke ascending heavenward,
a supple supplicant, innocent yet insistent,
only to cool, drift sideways,
bend back under itself–
expectant and intrusive
its round, ripe belly
belies the truth
of what it holds–
then descending,
a dagger
ready
to
dig
in
deep
*
It was a simple question.
Is this your son’s coat?
But I answered an unasked question–
twisted, stained, bloody and ripped raw–
unmasking my horror and grief.
*
Years later, they stated it simply,
Joseph is still alive.
Standing among his gifts of wagons
and donkeys and food and riches
I added two words–My son–
forming a question that punctuated their tacit deceit–
a jagged gash
puncturing the tender trust between us.
by Alan Toltzis
Alan Toltzis is a strategic marketing consultant living in the Philadelphia area. One of his poems was published in Focus Midwest. He is writing a long series of poems that uses the Torah as a starting place.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The flame on the candle wick sways
The ghost has entered the room
and he looks exactly
like me when I was a child
by Ashlie Allen
Ashlie Allen writes fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in The Jet Fuel, The Screech Owl, The Crab Fat Literary Magazine, The East Coast Literary Review, The Squawk Back, Conclave: A Journal of Character and others. Besides writing, she has plans to become photographer.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
My Detox Distilled
Life radicalized,
into roots.
But fear loomed like
a stitched whale song.
Laying in the fetal position
wrapped in the arms of solitude,
worse than trapped, no bird songs—
under the cover of a static quilt,
with imprisoned hushed mind voices
beneath and their spun spiraling eyes,
whispers that cycle like lightning
along the trails, bolting down
around Remorse Passage, surging across Regret Line,
plowing straight into Resentment Way,
silent electronic surges boom,
amplified by the hollowed inner walls.
A steel wheelbarrow dumps pile after
pile of hot steamy hopelessness
into the echoing abyss, packing it tight
like a trunk, until it overflows.
Then light cuts down the stock,
and carries the whole heap—
back to the radical,
a mere pretext
without context
masquerading
in extremes.
Wayward Abolition
Dark spread across the land
in strange westward blows,
from the mouth of a Titan.
Black blanketed the forest,
the gray squirrels hid in trees,
the rabbits to their burrows.
An egg was left by a mother
in the middle of the forest’s
floor. Silent guilt oozed from
the egg toward its neglector,
suffocating her to death.
Night set in for the long hall,
weighing down the trees,
and the bushes longed to see
the sun dancing around the earth
with free food like Jesus.
The once pleased owl
grew tired of the perpetual
blackness, became depressed
as he stared out at the sky,
missing the absence of difference.
And the moon no longer shone,
it slinked back into the abyss.
The owl stopped hooting
and started to lose its feathers.
by S. Babin
S. Babin holds a BA in English Literature from the Ohio State University, and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He lives with his family, and works in Columbus, Ohio. His work will be forthcoming in The Wayfarer; Spark: A Creative Anthology; Bop Dead City; Cactus Heart; Star 82 Review; and many more.
January 2015 | back-issues, fiction
After I dropped out of university I spent some time working on my uncle’s farm. My uncle was called Frank and wasn’t much to look at, the whiskey had done that to him, whiskey and heartache. He was getting on now so I chopped wood for the fire and made dinner as best as I could. In the evenings I lost myself in Tolstoy.
My uncle got me into butchery. The first thirteen pigs I killed I named. The last thirteen I resorted to using numbers. Perhaps I was feeling more human.
The one person I killed, in an accident, her name I have long since forgotten.
I remember the date it happened though, that’s something.
When the summer was over I started back for the city and found myself in a diner with a woman I did not know. I told her that I loved her right there and then and knew from the moment I set eyes upon her that we were to be married. She was called Mercy and she thought what I said and did was very strange but that she would leave it go this time because I had a tired face and when men are tired they do foolish things.
Frank died a little while after that and the pigs cannibalised each other before the last one finally starved to death. I don’t know if she had a name or a number.
I married Mercy but she left me after a few years and married another pig farmer because he was heartbroken and she felt pity for him. I told her as she was leaving that she had too much faith in the word and she said she knew this to be true.
by Roy Endean
Roy Endean lives in the south of Ireland. His work has appeared in Brand Magazine, The Steel Toe Review and Corium, and has been performed by The Accidental Theatre Company. He is the recent recipient of the Burbage New Writing Prize.
