Just Started School

July 2023 | poetry

Mother didn’t talk much.

Didn’t want to fall foul

of the thought police.

There was the ugly guy with the cruel, crooked mouth

who owned the house and loved his chickens.

He believed.

 

‘Heil Hitler’.

We’d brought our blackboards.

My old teacher had a desk on a raised platform.

 

When it was all over,

Mother hung out a white sheet

from the bedroom window.

 

The new teacher taught us Russian.

Bald underneath this huge black fur hat.

His yellow teeth as large as a horse’s. Threw

that unruly boy down the school’s stone steps.

 

The wheels of tanks looming over me.

My brother made me an airplane from balsawood.

We continued to listen to AFN Europe—

my brother had crafted a crystal radio

from a cigar box.

 

The Russians changed the street names

and the portraits on the school walls.

 

Rose Mary Boehm

Rose Mary Boehm is a German-born British national living and writing in Lima, Peru, and author of two novels as well as seven poetry collections. Her poetry has been published widely in mostly US poetry reviews (online and print). She was twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her latest: Do Oceans Have Underwater Borders? (Kelsay Books July 2022), Whistling in the Dark (Cyberwit July 2022), and Saudade (December 2022) are available on Amazon. www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com

Swear to God? Or How to Seduce the Most Beautiful Girl in Town

July 2023 | nonfiction

Male high school students back in the 1950s were prone, like teenage boys everywhere, to boast about their exploits. Whenever one of them told a story that was hard to believe, the others would blurt, “Swear to God?” The storyteller was required to reply: “Swear to God!” The tale often involved some sexual exploit that had about as much chance of being true as the teller’s having recently been transported by aliens to the moon. Never mind: if it was lurid enough or entertaining enough, fantasy would happily substitute for reality. For enormous whoppers, the other boys would say not merely, “Swear to God?” but also “Mother’s honor?” To which the proper response was: “Mother’s honor” uttered with right hand raised, left hand over the heart, and eyes tilted heavenward. It is unclear which was more sacred, whether “Swear to God?” ranked first because it was invoked first, with “Mother’s honor?” called upon simply to bolster the case or whether “Mother’s honor?” ranked higher because it was invoked last and was the ultimate court of appeal. There were other solicitations, such as “No shit?” and “Cross your heart?” but “Swear to God? and “Mother’s honor?” got top billing. One particularly tall tale required that we pull out all the ritual stops. My glibbest sixteen-year-old friend, for whom truth was absolutely no constraint, concocted a story of how the most beautiful older girl in town had succumbed to his charms. She was in her mid-twenties, had dark, dreamy eyes, full, sexy lips, large pert breasts, and an irresistible beauty mark halfway down her right cheek. The seduction tale proceeded in a heated frenzy for at least fifteen minutes during which my friend omitted no obscene detail whatsoever and his panting cohort listened in rapt awe. At the climax of which, so to speak, the group shouted: “No Shit?! Cross your heart?! Mother’s honor?! SWEAR TO GOD?!” To which my friend calmly replied, with his right hand raised, left hand over his heart and eyes titled heavenward: “No shit. Cross my heart. Mother’s honor. Swear to God.”

 

David Blumenfeld

David Blumenfeld (aka Dean Flowerfield) is a former philosophy professor and associate dean who in retirement returned to writing poetry, creative nonfiction, and children’s literature, which he abandoned in his thirties to devote full-time to philosophy. One of his recent pieces was cited in Best American Essays, 2022 as a “notable essay;” another received a Pushcart Prize nomination; a third was “highly commended” in the 2022 Autumn Voices international poetry competition and will soon be republished in Five Points. His work for children has appeared in The Caterpillar, Balloons Lit. Journal, Smarty Pants, Carmina, and various anthologies.  www.davidcblumenfeld.com

Moon in Daylight

April 2023 | poetry

Palely the residues of evening coalesce

to form this faint ablation sailing over head,

this lustrous oculus in daybreak’s alabaster dome,

this remnant of the jeweled dark that wanly

drifts across the dawn’s triumphant light.

 

O fading psychopomp of evening’s gaudy glitter,

priestess of our midnight signs and assignations,

in morning’s scant attire you prophesy the vacancy

of noon where thought hangs heavy in the mind

and yearning looms like smoke in sunlit haze.

 

Yet how much nearer now in gauzy negligée you seem

than in the incandescent robe you wore last night,

how menacingly close do you appear and closing fast,

as though some furtive faintness hurrying after us

lay almost in our reach but too remote to grasp.

 

DB Jonas

DB Jonas is an orchardist living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of northern New Mexico. Born in California in 1951, he was raised in Japan and Mexico. His work has recently appeared in Tar River, Blue Unicorn, Whistling Shade, Neologism, Consilience Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, The Decadent Review, The Amphibian, Revue {R}évolution, Kairos, and others. His first collection, Tarantula Season, is scheduled for release in 2023.

Ron Theel

April 2023 | visual art

Twisted

 

Ron Theel

Ron Theel is a freelance writer, mixed media artist, and photographer living in Syracuse, New York. His writing and/or artwork has appeared in “The RavensPerch,” “The Bluebird Word,” “Open: Journal of Arts & Letters,” and forthcoming in “Beyond Words,” and “Pithead Chapel. Many of Ron’s photographs capture partial images from the natural world; bits and pieces that are often overlooked as we get caught up in the frenzy of everyday life.

Yujin Suh

April 2023 | visual art

Mountain Tunnel

 

Yujin Suh

Yujin Suh is a 11th grade student at Seoul Foreign School located in Seoul, Korea. Her major focus in art relates to painting with social aspects. She uses her fine arts skills into using various media such as watercolor, oil painting, acrylics and more. Her recent accomplishments are Innovator Award at the Conrad Challenge and High Merit award at 2021 Celebrating Art Fall. Yujin plans to continue her work in art and literature to build her future.