July 2014 | back-issues, fiction
That autumn morning as we neared our tree, Grandpa stopped hard and pressed a meaty finger to my lips. A snowshoe hare had taken refuge under our Sugar Maple, shaded pistachio and apple.
“God’s little creatures need heartening too.” His voice was like gravel, even his whispers were wieldy.
I was nine, unwilling to share. So while he watched the young leveret frolic and scout, I pursed my lips, folded my arms and forsook the blessed gift.
Eventually, the hare scampered on, “One day boy, you’ll find peace in others’ joy.” We strode to our precious tree and sat beside each other in the stillness. Her seeds had fallen early – they were crisp like toast. Grandpa swept some kernels into his hardy hands and flung them high; they rained down like tiny winged horseshoes…
“A Sugar Maple seed carries partners, a boy and a girl. See?” Every Sunday walk included lessons in nature – but I didn’t mind. “Through mighty gales and sweltering heat, they are bound.
“If they break apart?”
Grandpa culled a samara and split it, “Then it was meant to be.” He blew its parts into the wind, “Sometimes, a seedling flies higher alone.”
He died that spring.
…
Ma daubed at the grief on my face, “the foliage is striking this year.”
Our maple stood prodigious, her branches reaching out like a prayer. I perched beneath her.
There’s such betrayal in her eyes…
The leaves crunched like paper under my feet.
But suspicion is folly…and sinful…
To the right, a silver hare peeked around a mossy stump then continued grazing.
I ambled away but glimpsed over my shoulder to behold the elfin critter, carousing under our tree.
“Enjoy.” I grinned. A sole seedling danced in the solace.
…
And my wife bedded down with her lover.
Chad Broughman
July 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Here’s to staying up late
and watching Pulp Fiction
instead of staying up late
because your mind is cycling with stress.
Here’s to eating the best
oven pizza you’ve ever had
after days of not being able
to keep food down.
Here’s to harsh cigarettes
and a longneck lighter
on a metal table
while winds howl at the moon.
It’s talking about it
so you don’t need to drink about it.
Knowing and being known is
saying “fuck” instead of pretend smiling.
It’s being touched without jumping,
and unbraiding and fading
with heavy eyelids
that can safely close.
It’s not about waking up,
it’s about falling back asleep
after a glance to ensure
not everyone disappears.
Hearing one person say,
“You aren’t as dark as I thought.”
Hearing another person say
that they pray for you
and hearing yourself say;
“I’m not a whore.”
Here’s to all that.
That’s what today is.
Amanda Ramirez
July 2014 | back-issues, poetry
I am reading secrets of yellow
tomato plants, studying life-lines
on their leaf-shaped palms.
Home from school the neighbor boy leans
over the fence. Asks about my day.
I’d tell him I found a lump
under my skin. I think it will end me.
Like a fly on meat
it’s hatched its eggs.
I’d tell him how my husband knew
a year ago, my mother three
decades before that.
I’d tell him but we’re done
talking. He hangs a thick arm
over the chain-linked fence.
Last week we admired our shadows
over cardboard guns held together
with rubber bands and silver
tape. He told me he’s an artist—
that sometimes he watches me
from his kitchen window.
I want to say that I’m an artist too
but the arrangement has turned
somehow, fast like a fire, or slow
like a leaf.
Tamra Carraher
Tamra Carraher has published two books of poems and illustrations for children titled PICTURE/BOOK and Bluefish Haiku and is currently exhibiting line drawings of poems at Bahdeebahdu in Philadelphia. Her poetry has been featured in the online literary journal Toe Good Poetry. She received an MFA from New England College in January 2014 and has worked as an Associate Editor for the Naugatuck River Review.
July 2014 | back-issues, fiction
No Good Deed
He might have been twenty-five, or fifty. His face was so dirty it was impossible to tell.
Mayra first saw him picking through a pile of litter near her dormitory. His purposeful search stopped with the discovery of a half-eaten cheeseburger. Horrified, Mayra watched the burger travel from the grass to the man’s mouth and disappear in two bites.
Her friend Lauren, a social-work major, said, “That’s Big Bill. Shelters don’t take him because he’s usually drunk, but he’s harmless.”
He’s still a person with dignity, thought Mayra, who tried hard to see the spiritual beauty in everyone. She gave him a ten. He thanked her.
“You’re just enabling him,” Lauren rebuked.
“But someone’s got to help.”
And she did, organizing a benefit concert and convincing the university to hire Bill as a janitor. When Bill stepped into the entrance of his new apartment, reporters were there to capture the moment. Conscious of the spotlight, he examined the secondhand furniture and full pantry with stoic gratitude.
Mayra chose to major in journalism after reading the feature article and deciding she could do better. A year later she won an internship at the local newspaper.
She interviewed Bill and discovered he was homeless again and unemployed. His breath reeked of vodka. She choked back her heartbreak, filed the story, and resolved to forget.
Two days later, she received an email.
Thank you so much for writing about Bill Arnolds. I’ve been searching for him for years. He’s my son.
Guilt
“Joe, get rid of that gum! You’re goin’ to church!”
Joe extracted the pink blob and smashed it into the coin slot of the parking meter, then ran to catch up with his mother.
His older sister Maggie scolded him. “That was nasty. God will get you for that.”
During Mass, Father Mayhew opened a birdcage and released two doves. As they escaped toward the open window, one defecated on Joe’s head.
Maggie elbowed him. “I told you. That was God.”
No, Joe thought, that was just a bird. And for that, he felt guiltier than he’d ever felt before.
Anna Zumbro
July 2014 | back-issues, poetry
GHOST PLANE
FOR HELIOS AIRWAYS FLIGHT 522
Logic unhinges. Hallucinations
shuffle down the isles. A stray laugh
rises. Oxygen masks are little more
than decoys; we keep them strapped
to our cheeks, but can’t recall why.
Children hush, turn a dull blue.
Pilots slump across the controls
like scarecrows. The first nervous
dozen are luckiest, but after hours
of circling, we all quiet. Some swoon,
mutter as if gripped by nightmares.
A flight attendant breaches the cockpit
just as the engine is choked by flames.
Does he pant his last breath into a bank
of blinking lights, or meet the mountain’s
grey gaze? Do wildflowers flow down
the slope like a braid over a bare
shoulder? And does he reach out
to touch it, run it through
shaking, mortal fingers?
MASTER BIRDMAN
An aeroplane in the hands of Lincoln Beachey is poetry.
– Orville Wright
Stockings roll down; hair is unpinned.
Slim digits slip into my flying gloves,
cradle a helmet perfumed by hair tonic.
I draw gasps but slink out at daybreak.
Air’s the absolute, bears both gulls
and my crude craft, “a beat-up orange
crate.” Air wordlessly waits, its vastness
a dare, a glove swatted at my cheek.
So I must glide updrafts, plummet
to graze the ground with one fingertip.
The body submits, but it’s bloody, bones
heavier than hollow. So, it must breach
like a birth, sputter into a final spiral.
They’ll say I drowned, that it took hours
to fish me out by the suit I always wore
to fly. But they’ll do worse, grasping
the bars of a hospital bed, gulping
pudding from a plastic spoon. Better
to perform an aerial spin, misjudge
and get what they always expected—
swallow jellyfish and krill, midwifed
into blackness by silent, damp beasts.
WEIGHT OF THE WORLD
IN THE VOICE OF A MINOR DIETY
Feet wrapped in grave-gauze, I hunch to suck ink
off newspaper corners. So, tell me—war is spreading;
the latest madman pumped the morning full of bullets;
the ocean laps the toes of the Rockies. I used to float,
barely break a blade when I crossed the lawn, the choir’s
harmonies like bellows, a child’s sleeping chest. Then
I shrunk to a shadow, words an untidy clump of yarn
in my mouth. Pass the latest screen and light me from
below like a ghost story; give me the artless and brief,
no epics to draw up earthworms like a thunderstorm.
You’ve stuck too many grubby, doubting digits in my
direction. I’ll enter with the beggars, virgin-hungry
as a volcano; but I’d stop all this ill wishing, scanning
the horizon for quaking, if you’d just dig a coin from
your pocket, flick it, tenderly, down the storm drain.
by Luiza Flynn-Goodlett
Luiza Flynn-Goodlett migrated to the Bay Area, after completion of her MFA at The New School. She was awarded the Andrea Klein Willison Prize for Poetry upon graduation from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Oberon Poetry, Meridian, Lumina, CALYX Journal, and Prism Review. She recently completed her first book, Congress of Mud.
