Steadfast

Wordlessly, she positions him beside her, leaning against the boat’s railing for support. She is now somebody’s wife. She is satisfied with their pose—only slightly more intimate than a prom photograph. Even now, twenty-five years later, I can hear the tension in her mouth. Her gaze is direct, flat. Her thoughts are elsewhere. The photographer fiddles with the aperture, trying not to overexpose the fleshy whiteness of her skin, a princess in her past life.

My father is my mother’s contrast. He is brown and complacent. No matter how many times the photographer counts to three, advances the film, my father’s lips stay a stodgy tan line. His eyes are narrow behind the enormity of his glasses, three years out of style.

I try to imagine the moment my mother has described in detail, the one the photographer captured and my father later destroyed—the only time she ever saw my father cry. The newlyweds drop their arms, turn away. Bride and groom, shoulder to shoulder at the rail, contemplating the churning water below. A cork pops behind them. After a moment, he lifts his hand. He wipes his face. His head dips slightly. Her eyes do not turn to acknowledge his movement. Her hands grip the wood in front of her. A small breeze catches his hair, flutters her veil. They are quiet, their bodies stiff. The boat skips over a wave, lurching like a subway train. They stand together. They do not flinch.

 

by Moriah Howell

Moriah Howell was born and raised in Penns Valley, a rural community outside State College, Pennsylvania. She is currently an MFA student at Temple University, focusing on fiction. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction as well, but feels she was meant to write fiction. Her dream job would be an editor at a publishing house, as well as an author, and she hopes to make those dreams come true.

Tick Tock

The ticks I pick from your flesh

have the verve of John Donne’s flea

but much more adhesive

with the fervor of Lyme Disease.

 

The garden’s a death trap,

the primrose and forget-me-nots

funereal and dungeon-breathed.

Spreading composed mulch to conceal

 

the yawn of a hundred open graves

I tire of myself and slacken

almost enough to lie down

and allow the grubs to engage me

 

in their shy waxen petulance.

Meanwhile in pale innocence

you punctuate yourself with ticks

by kneeling to yank the weeds

 

eager to elbow out the flowers.

Something about our seasonal

bloodletting lingers. Sprains,

torn tendons, even broken wrists

 

spike the long dark winters. Blackflies

riot in spring, summer features

splinters from stacking firewood

to season before the cold arrives.

 

But the ticks linger all year long—

their hard metal bodies, springy

eight legs, driven by blood-thirst

ripe as a rage for celebrity.

 

Arachnids, not insects, they deploy

their motivation so adroitly

we feel them crawling through our sleep.

In the north, they gang up on moose

 

and kill with a quarter million

individual nibbles per pelt.

They stick to us both, but lately

you’ve been sporting them the way

 

ex-smokers sport nicotine patches

on parts of the body that matter.

I flush them into our septic tank

where they probably thrive and plot

 

a future so bloody no one

but ticks will survive, draining

the blush of sunset to leave

a fog-gray landscape writhing.

 

by William Doreski

 

Lunar Dogma

She believes the snow is a mirror

Turned upwards toward her face,

A catalyst for the frigid light

Burning in the old, dappled pines.

 

She believes that love

Is one or two canoes

Drifting in soft degrees

Over dark, polished waters.

 

She believes the young boy

Carrying his notebook beneath her shadow

Is a lost star following home

Her wintry beckons.

 

She believes we will one day remember

Her cold serious heartbeat,

Sending up bright untethered rockets

She pretends are prayers.

 

by Seth Jani

 

Seth Jani currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). His own work has appeared throughout the small press in such places as The Foundling Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Gingerbread House and Gravel. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com.

Her First Word

Her first word was material.

The adults wondered why she skipped

all the warm-up words like mama and daddy.

 

So odd, they commented.

Why did that word emerge first

from the buttery spread of childhood?

 

Her home smelled like codfish balls and beer.

The Mona Lisa, torn from a magazine,

hung on a wall.

 

Pickpockets and drunks stopped by

while her uncle looked for coins on the sidewalk.

Her other uncle worked nights as a jailer.

 

He locked up family members as a joke.

Her grandmother had no teeth.

Her aunt thought Jell-O was alive.

 

When the girl grew up, she seldom uttered the word material.

She did not build things or sew things.

She lived simply and was not materialistic.

 

Maybe as a child she knew that her family would provide

colorful material for her stories.

Maybe her first word was a warning to them to behave.

 

by Suzanne O’Connell

 

Suzanne O’Connell lives in Los Angeles where she is a poet and a clinical social worker. Her work can be found in Forge, Atlanta Review, Blue Lake Review, Crack The Spine, The Manhattanville Review, G.W. Review, Reed Magazine, The Griffin, Sanskrit, Permafrost, Foliate Oak, Talking River, Organs of Vision and Speech Literary Magazine, Willow Review, The Tower Journal, Thin Air Magazine, Mas Tequila Review, The Evansville Review, The Round, Serving House Journal, Poetry Super Highway, poeticdiversity, Fre&D, The Tower Journal, Silver Birch Press, The Louisville Review, Lummox Press, The Four Seasons Anthology, and Licking River Review. She was a recipient of Willow Review’s annual award for 2014 for her poem “Purple Summers.” She is a member of Jack Grapes’ L.A. Poets and Writers Collective.

 

Pistons Outpace Reluctant Marching

When war draws people into positions
Where they face the unfaceable
Tired after toiling or driven to their demise
Outpacing the wish for life
When mortality has no returns
Beyond reluctant excitement
And fear of terror erupts
Tightening chest and claustrophobing tranquility
Until patience runs out and death or revolt become options
And anxiety reaches in to squeeze your heart like a loving octopus
That might just take your life
Away from you

 

by Josef Krebs

 

Josef Krebs’ poetry appears in Agenda, Bicycle Review, Calliope, Mouse Tales Press, The Corner Club Press, and The FictionWeek Literary Review. He’s written three novels, five screenplays, and a book of poetry. His film was successfully screened at Santa Cruz and Short Film Corner of Cannes film festivals. The past 5 years He’s been working as a freelance writer for Sound&Vision having previously worked at the magazine fulltime for 15 years as a staff writer and editor.

Signs that Your Mother Was a Hoarder

Cigarette butts and the ash of Salem Lights in never-emptied

glass ashtrays.  Crumpled take-out paper bags from Wendy’s piled

next to the couch.  Mold growing on the pink rubber mat

in the bathtub.  Cardigans, size M, in heather, taupe, and buttery yellow

with mother-of-pearl buttons heaped on the dresser.  A letter

dated 1967 from a newly married friend tucked away in a drawer.

 

Paper and plastic bags packed with unopened groceries

picked up just because they were on sale

down at the Stop n’ Shop:  crackers, grape juice,

garbage bags, detergent.  Childhood photographs fallen

from albums.  Recipe books splattered with pasta sauce

and bacon grease. A green Singer sewing machine bearing

a tangled spool of navy thread.  Rotting food

on dishes in the sink.  Cobwebs.

 

Still-soaked storage containers from the flood of last year’s

hurricane.  A Polaroid camera in its canvas case.  An engraving

machine with tiles reading “Shuneka Harrison,” my sister’s best

childhood friend, in the font tray.  Spiders’ egg sacs dangling

from ceiling corners.  Family videos on microfilm.  Receipts

for child support for a boy named Donnie we’ve never

heard of before.  The smell of cat urine.  Four eyebrow curlers.

 

Boxes of shoes that have never been worn.  Shoes that have the soles

worn through.  Ziplocked packages of meat long expired

in the basement freezer.  Every cancelled check ever written

for mortgage, taxes, cable T. V., and the lawnmower man.  A child’s

red plastic barrette.  One thousand nine Harlequin romance novels

in dusty paper shopping bags.  The skeleton

of a small animal.  A rusty projector.

 

Flies that avoid the sticky-tape traps that have been set

for them.  Rolled-up half-used tubes of Denture Grip.  Hundreds

of dollars in loose change.  A white leather jewelry box containing

the baby teeth we left for the Tooth Fairy in exchange

for a quarter.  Empty prescription pill bottles for high

blood pressure.  A tube of MAC coral lipstick.

 

A stray ketchup packet that has exploded onto the wall.  Piles

of department store clothes, most with tags.  The exoskeletons

of insects.  Mesh laundry bags filled with nude-colored

Maidenform bras.  A Newport High School yearbook stuffed

with autographed picture cards.  Bags of polyester shirts

that my father wore before he died.  Rusted curling irons

and a burnt-out blowdryer.

 

Sweaters that smell like Bath and Body Works’ vanilla-sugar

lotion.  Depends Undergarments.  Handwritten recipes in elegant

script. A manila envelope containing our elementary school

report cards.  A silver hoop earring without its mate.

 

When the dumpsters are full and the floors are bare,

it no longer feels like home.

 

by Christine Taylor

 

Christine Taylor resides in her hometown Plainfield, New Jersey, and is an English teacher and part-time librarian at a local independent school and the mother of several poorly behaved cats (and a couple dogs). Her previously published work appears in PeaceCorpsWriters and Modern Haiku.

 

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