July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
A Meditation
weakness never goes out of the body, we only learn how to use it.
*
death is built into us, it’s better that way:
we already have enough debt to repay.
*
what we really want is touch,
although, for mankind, it will never be enough
Cafe Life
coffee cups cream-purling with a swirl.
walls, milkweed-green and gray-naked against the dull-burnt blaze. a capped chap in a raincoat; tongue-rough.
some spots on the jotted carte; flecks on a wet-cedar bough.
from some youthful corner:
a radiation of red and a blueprint-blue tint shooting from screens.
against the pane-brace:
bristlecone sprigs scrapping themselves square: The world still asking us to watch.
there is faith here, too: a thing of gunk-strung feathers. this cafe life is life itself:
the host of hope and loss.
–C. Dylan Bassett is a poet and artist from Las Vegas, NV.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
I tell you I’ve seen corridors.
More than many, fewer than few.
Corridors that lead to pain,
Drawn out from the plants and weeds.
Delinquent in the autumn breeze.
Corridors of burlap love,
Common clothed in revelry.
Corridors that feed an urge
And milk it, drain it, constantly,
Then carve it, broken, on the street.
These corridors of death and wine,
Corridors of ragged breaths
And stencils on an evening sky.
Corridors that coax you in.
Corridors that spit you out.
Corridors that command a break,
From synapse wars and obscured eyes.
I tell you I’ve seen corridors.
More than many, fewer than few.
Corridors that have no names
And corridors that do.
–Matt Medved
Matt Medved is a recent graduate from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he majored in journalism, minored in political science and had a concentration in creative writing. Matt has covered stories in South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Korea and Australia in the form of hard news and narrative features. He traveled to Harare to cover the 2008 Zimbabwean presidential elections and has written extensively on South African street children and prison gangsters. Matt is currently pursuing degrees in international law and international affairs at George Washington University.
April 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Bea Epstein
Momma was worried. “Three weeks until Paul’s Bar Mitzvah, and Beebee still has nothing beautiful to wear.” Saturday after Saturday, we traipsed all over Brooklyn, from one store to the next, trying on party dresses. I fell in love with a black velvet dress with a white stand-up collar and lacy ruffles down the front. Momma shook her head. No black dress at a Bar Mitzvah. Frieda, Momma’s best friend, took us to Greenberg’s Dresses for Girls. Mrs. Greenberg showed us a white chiffon dress with a slip underneath. She suggested we dye the slip light blue, so I could be blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag. Momma thought about it for a minute, but shook her head.
Aunt Rose, Momma’s sister, who loved fine things, suggested we meet her at Lord and Taylor, on Fifth Avenue. “I know it’s expensive, but the quality is tops.” Momma was tired of shopping and ready to end the search, even if it meant a big splurge. She shrugged her shoulders and agreed to meet there.
The next Saturday morning, Momma and I walked ten blocks to the 7th Avenue subway and rode to 34th Street in Manhattan. Coming up out of the darkened subway, we were greeted by the noise of traffic in Herald Square. 34th Street was crowded with shoppers. We walked along, stopping to look at mannequins in the windows of Macy’s and Orbach’s. One more long block and we arrived at the quiet refinement of Fifth Avenue. Neither Momma nor I had ever been there before.
Aunt Rose was waiting in front of the large stone building. We pushed through the glass revolving door and entered the store. I froze. Shoppers in elegant dresses, examining treasures, glided from one display of glittering jewels to the next. Brightly lit crystal chandeliers cascaded from the ceiling. The air was thick with the intoxicating scent of heavy perfume. Wide-eyed, I drank it all in.
We approached a saleswoman in high heels, hair perfectly coiffed, eyelids painted iridescent blue, brilliant red lips fixed in a broad, permanent smile. “May I help you?”
Momma pointed to me. “I need a dress for my—”
The woman glanced at me. “Oh yes, of course. You want the Children’s Chubby Department. Take the elevator to the second floor.”
Ears burning with shame, I stared at the intricate pattern of the black and white tiled floor, the magic of the moment draining away.
Bea Epstein is a a psychotherapist and writer living in Rockville, Maryland. Her work has appeared in “My Words Are Gonna Linger” 2009, in “Pegasus” 2010 and in Storyteller Magazine”, March 2011
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Timothy Dyson
Blood pressure is low today
she wears bunny rabbit slippers to work
her shoes in a sack
and last night came the call
from her sister in Shenandoah
when she bailed Bud out of jail
he never came back
After eight hours
running the bottle cap machine
five minutes to clean up
before stepping into a dream
about five days in Niagara in 1963
full of ice wine and strawberries
February love frozen as cream
Turning the corner
her daughter with a black eye
and her suitcase
meets her halfway
between dinner and disaster
they have not spoken for years
but this day is different
one of them needs some tenderness
the other starts walking faster
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Christopher Brown
When did the waves reach the cities?
I wasn’t aware the tides could topple our temples.
Is this the end of narcissism? Of pride?
It is a possibility, yet such a negative thought.
A nomadic lifestyle thrives upon the ego.
Weakness is simply a doorway to failure.
This is knowledge spoken by the lips of children.
Yet, as life decrees so often, I thrive on hesitation.
Costly, self-destructive, ignorant hesitation.
Chances gone as the winds of change scream through my existence.
This endless ocean of black and white thought,
These eternal fields of extremist figurative speech,
They entangle me in a past my future can’t explain today.
I have hope, and that makes everything surreal.
It’s a shame that life survives on the antithesis of dreams.
Hope has no place in a realists environment.
Dreams are homeless and abandoned.
Where did my arrogance go?
Where has my pride fled to?
Is this the struggle I am destined to inherit?
Questions are floods,
And I’m lost in a desert.
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by George Ovitt
The ‘F’ Word
Waiting in line with my children at the market,
A woman cradles a phone against her ear and
Pronounces alto voce the word that daily fills
The air like jagged hail or a plague of frogs.
In this age of loud voices only the buzz saw
Of vulgarity is audible—softer words are lost.
When my mother would burn herself on the range
She hissed “darn” or, in her black moods, “drat,”
And even then she apologized, warning us
Against cheap talk and reminding us that words
Are gifts that we give to one another.
My father said “damn” each Thanksgiving,
When he would burn the turkey,
Otherwise he was silent, knowing, I suppose
In the way that he knew that words are betrayals.
In my own dark moments, I too say nothing,
Pouring into the silence my hopes and curses alike.
To the woman on line I mouthed a quiet “please”
To which she says, unsmiling, that I should fuck myself.
Marriage
On the social page each Sunday I scan the faces of the long-married.
Men with thick hair and wide lapels, with, I imagine, cigarette packs
In the starched pockets of their shirts, their new brides holding lilies
Or roses, wearing crosses on their thin necks, smiling into the future.
Sailors, soldiers—sixty years ago was the War—brides wooed on liberty,
Hasty weddings before shipping out, a way, I suppose, of betting on living;
As they have, see, here they are now, thicker, with tired eyes, as if this
Ancient face were a mask placed over the young and hopeful one,
As if the years hadn’t passed, the nights spent arguing or making love,
Pacing outside hospital rooms or sitting bored in church, taking long
Walks on empty beaches, remembering or trying to forget, growing
Apart from one another, growing apart, finally, from one’s self.
This moment, just now, sitting in the studio, squinting into the lights,
Pressed together, afraid—but who isn’t—of who you would become.
George Ovitt lives in Albuqueque with his family. He is an Army veteran and has worked as a cook, beer truck driver, and guitarist in a rock band. He still plays blues guitar, teaches high school, and writes short stories and poems.
