October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Goodbye sound of sliding screen door, and the look of your skin under those lights, dainty and dangling overhead, blues fading green and soon, or at least I thought, soon—you’d come waltzing out to that song we always play, always sing, always saying remember this one, and take from me the last I have to give.
Goodbye sweat-born ache, small apartment smelling of iridescence, and goodbye hand on my chest, slap across my face, kiss on the lips when I ask for one on the cheek.
Goodbye, goodbye, like a hymn, something slipped from the side of my mouth as I’m pretending not to watch you change. Nothing explicit, no nudity or pale revealing under shaky lamps. No, I’m often with my fingers before my eyes, you’re half spread just beyond me, like we’re dancing two separate edges of the night.
Go on now, pull closed the window, check the locks tight, until morning there’s only cool reflections across the pavement; go on now, good night, ease under your sheets, keeping time like a train station, and soon there’s only secrets left floating, a journey out of sync, I hear you whispering one step ahead of me,
Soon you’ll be calling to ask where are you now? Soon there’ll be nothing to explain, to mumble; nothing to slip beneath the cracked door.
Goodbye back stairs, natural curve as we pressed our mistakes together; goodbye look in your eye, sting of poison, shaved ice and two fingers vodka in a rocks glass.
Goodbye, soft call into the empty night;
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye—
by Douglas Sullivan
Douglas has returned to the West, after years exploring the South and Northeast coasts. Besides a Bachelor’s degree in English, his experiences range from managing a boutique coffee shop to fitness video production. He prefers not to be in one state for too long, and maintains a keen respect for accuracy of statement. He has recent fiction publications in: Crime Factory Magazine, Sleet Magazine, and with Vagabondage Press.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
so arctic
inside,
they stand
Matryoshka dolls
listening
for tiny words
echoes
of hope
in each other’s
eyes
but then
the breeze
comes
blowing red
into their
noses
forming
creases around
their eyes
it feels
so cold
here
because
they can’t
feel
each other’s
thoughts
anymore.
by Andy Kubai
Andy Kubai is a writer and dreamer living in Austin, Texas. He is pursuing a BA in Creative Writing from St. Edward’s University, and a well-examined life. His fiction and poetry have been featured in the Yahara Journal and Inkstains and Heartbeats (as lifeencoded). He is working on a collection of loosely connected flash fiction.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
An Old Man’s Day
Now is not the time for love. She’s only been gone a year. I wear black to mark her death. I visit her grave every week. I cannot bring a woman into this.
She brings me coffee at the café and offers me breakfast, though I never eat. I drink my coffee and read the paper, looking for my wife’s face in the pictures. It’s never there, but I have to look.
I walk through town now and watch the cars on the street. All it would take is a simple mis-step and I’d be done. I’d go to my wife at last and we would be happy.
It’s time to move on, my therapist says. You need to find someone new. But I’m not ready. My apartment is full of her photos. I can’t take them down. They keep me safe.
On the bus, a woman sits next to me. She asks where I’m going. Home, I say. She nods. Me too. We sit silently for awhile before she asks my name. Isaac, I say. She is Miranda.
The sun has fallen now. Streetlamps are hazy in the fog. I walk the last couple of blocks to my apartment and pour myself a glass of wine. I sit and stare at my wife’s face on the wall.
Miss you, I say. I want you back. The silence is heavy here. The apartment grows dim with the night air. I finish my wine and go to bed. At least in my dreams I’m never alone.
Ordinary
She is an ordinary woman. She works a job and comes home to her ordinary home and makes an ordinary meal. Her son is late from practice at the pool and she waits for him while washing dishes. He comes home and they talk about ordinary courtesy. They do not yell or fight, but they talk of ordinary things.
When we were in love, she did all of the ordinary things and I watched her working all of the ordinary hours of the day. At night, we went to bed and had ordinary sex, but it was an obligation. We were married. This was what married people did.
Now we are not a couple anymore. We do not talk or touch. We see each other at our son’s meets and games, but we stay away from each other as best we can. It’s awkward as a broken stool. We balance on the legs left to us and do the best we can. This is an ordinary divorce, only without the ordinary fights.
An ordinary night falls and she goes to her bed and lies there thinking ordinary thoughts. I miss her. It’s that simple, but she has no time for me. Our ordinary lives have gone separate ways and we have nothing left, but ordinary loneliness.
by William L. Alton
William L. Alton was born November 5, 1969 and started writing in the Eighties while incarcerated in a psychiatric prison. Since then his work has appeared in Main Channel Voices, World Audience and Breadcrumb Scabs among others. In 2010, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has published one book titled Heroes of Silence. He earned his both BA and MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon where he continues to live.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
The storm brought the ocean into our home.
Even after the worst of the blowing was over, mother’s body couldn’t survive in the cold and the wet for long. I could only wrap her in a quilt, put her to bed, and wait.
The rainfall had become gentle, and the thunder sounded like a back cracking as I stood over her, knee-deep in seawater, watching her breath slow.
Tiny fish swam between my toes. I remained motionless, my skin puckering as I watched her breath slow, then slow, then stop.
When she died, there was a flicker of lightning, and her soul went into this mouse.
She stays dry by hiding in the ceiling and lives on the cracker crumbs I leave for her on a rafter.
I’ve started a shoebox apartment for her, for when the water goes down. I have a folded sock, which will eventually dry, for a bed, and a threadspool for a table.
Her body, I’ve kept just as she left it – in case she gets homesick.
The rain is now a mist. I sit in a saturated armchair and play solitaire on her quilt by candlelight, waiting for the water to go down, as teeny, tiny fish swim between my toes.
by M. N. Hanson
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
A Borrowed View
In a borrowed room
the hitchhikers
share a diminished view
of the city at dawn:
the sunrise fractured
by clouds
and the Waffle House sign
and of course the interstate.
With blurry eyes
they can’t fully see
or remember which direction
they came from
or where they want to go.
Almost before
this experience is over
it has been added
to the other experiences
so similar in all
the important ways
that they run together,
which wouldn’t be so bad
if this moment of confusion
weren’t the only thing
they could safely rely on.
The Red Cedar
Every year someone drowns
in this river
which is named
for the cedar leaves
coloring its water.
It is always
a college student,
a dreamer or
outcast or sometimes
just someone
coming home from
the bar too late
with too much
on their mind.
No one is ever
sure of what drew
them toward the water’s
edge. Perhaps the way
ducks huddle against
the bank or tree roots
hang over the water
like a step,
like an invitation
to some unknown world
where movement is
a given and progress
and destruction
are often the same.
by John Abbott
John Abbott is a writer, musician, and English instructor who lives with his wife and daughter in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Potomac Review, Georgetown Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Arcadia, Atticus Review, upstreet, Underground Voices, Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction, and many others. His first chapbook “There Should Be Signs Here” is forthcoming from Wormwood Chapbooks. For more information about his writing, please visit www.johnabbottauthor.com
