July 2019 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
He is a bird of bad moral character. He does not get his living honestly. —Ben Franklin
Right after my mother moved
to South Carolina, a man approached her
after church to show her the Confederate flag
in a stained glass window.
If this took place in a novel,
most readers would be able to deconstruct
the authorial intent
implied by a white man
showing a black woman
his heritage.
In Los Angeles, I drove an Oldsmobile,
a symbol of American engineering,
mass production, luxury . . .
It was a couch on wheels,
and one the most likely vehicles
to be used in the commission of a crime.
I could roam the streets of South Central
with impunity,
but in the Valley
I’d be pulled over for DWB.
In the rain and through a green-caged enclosure,
I marveled at a maimed bald eagle
and pondered at how
before the Constitution, the presidency,
the Bill of Rights, we placed it on a seal,
minted it,
then took it near extinction.
It shrugged its 6-feet of wings
and let out
an impressive scat.
Michele Reese
Michele Reese is a Daughter of the American Revolution and the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant. Her poetry focuses on this place of intersection as well as others including race, gender, and sexuality. She is the author of the poetry collection Following Phia. Her poems have also been published in several journals and anthologies including Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, The Oklahoma Review, Poetry Midwest, The Paris Review, The Tulane Review, Chemistry of Color: Cave Canem South Poets Responding to Art, Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race, and Home is Where: An Anthology of African American Poets from the Carolinas. She is currently a Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Sumter.
July 2019 | poetry
A turnstile coin
falls in slow motion,
hits with a rattle and a clink.
Rolling to a stop at his feet.
I bend to pick it up,
retrieving long lost visions
of a love that used to be.
Turning from the past,
I walk away.
A burning ache
pulls at me,
filling my heart with sorrow.
I look back one last time.
Coin pocketed,
I board the train
to my redemption.
Ann Christine Tabaka
Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry, has been internationally published, and won poetry awards from numerous publications. She is the author of 9 poetry books. Christine lives in Delaware, USA. She loves gardening and cooking. Chris lives with her husband and two cats. Her most recent credits are: Ethos Literary Journal, North of Oxford, Pomona Valley Review, Page & Spine, West Texas Literary Review, The Hungry Chimera, Sheila-Na-Gig, Synchronized Chaos, Pangolin Review, Foliate Oak Review, Better Than Starbucks!, The Write Launch, The Stray Branch, The McKinley Review, Fourth & Sycamore.
July 2019 | poetry
openmouthed, we grasp our children
this is what it means to start
from the beginning
shivering in one’s skin
what it means to start
a truce with face and form
soothing in one’s skin
the familial, a mother’s love
a truce without face forms
a dead son awash, the tiny body
familial (a brother) loved
now lifeless arms
dead son awash, a tiny body
to his mother still through gunfire
now lifeless, disarmed
on the corner by the playground
his mother still, though gunfire
crosses her son, the border (lengthwise)
on the corner, the playground
widens with neglect
cross with her son at the border
from the beginning
we widen with neglect’s
openmouth gasp, our children
Brenda Serpick
Brenda Serpick received her MFA in poetry from The New School and is the author of three chapbooks: ‘the other conjunction in it’ (Furniture Press), ‘No Sequence But Luck’ (3 Sad Tigers Press) and ‘The Female Skeleton Makes Her Debut’ (Hophophop Press). She was a participating poet for Tupelo Press’ 30/30 Project (July 2016), and her poems have appeared in Requited, Tule Review, The Potomac, Free State Review, eccolinguistics, Printer’s Devil Review, Spiral Orb, LIT, Lungfull! Magazine, and Boog City – among other fine journals. She currently teaches English and creative writing for Baltimore City Public Schools.
July 2019 | poetry
My days are measured
By bottles of discount wine,
My weeks by clean linens;
Each morning
I seek salvation
in a cafe benison.
Sleep, sleep divine,
Why should eternal sleep
not be heaven?
For religion begins
Where knowledge ends.
My little fame in life,
I know,
Will be confined
to a freeway sign:
“Missing Elderly,”
numinous against
a gray morning sky,
Flashing, flashing, flashing
above a highway exit.
The door was closed
and did not open,
So how did the cat
go out again?
But remembering to floss
gives each day
a bright new meaning.
So knowledge ends
Where religion begins.
Italy’s third volcano,
what’s it called?
Not Etna or Vesuvius,
The one in the movie we saw?
I forget, though I should know;
And not Olympus,
with Hera and Zeus
and Jove.
For us mortals what does it signify,
purchasing stain remover
by the gallon?
Pessimism of drooled spaghetti
or long life’s delusive
grand ambition?
All hail Staphylococcus,
with my name on it;
Where fear reigns,
religion gains.
Dough, the financial guru says,
you’ll need ’til you’re ninety five,
or perhaps, I think,
to .38,
Or maybe I’ll rob a bank
or fail to pay my taxes
for a prison bunk
and hospital bed.
But what about the poor teller,
the cop
and the unlucky feller
who has to clean up the mess?
But hark!
The coffee grinder churns,
the espresso machine
still renders,
so why should I surrender?
Yea, verily, I declare
on my life’s embers
that where true knowledge ends
unyielding ignorance begins
and religion wins.
James Garrison
A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Duke Law School, James Garrison practiced law until returning to his first loves: writing and reading good literature. His novel, QL 4 (TouchPoint Press 2017), set in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, has won awards for literary fiction and military fiction, and it was a Distinguished Favorite for the 2019 Independent Press Awards and a finalist for the 2018 Montaigne Medal. His creative nonfiction works and poems have appeared in online magazines and anthologies. Sheila-Na-Gig nominated his poem “Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry”‘ for a 2018 Pushcart prize.
July 2019 | poetry
she hurts
she hurt
she heard
sheep herd
she purged
she pulled
she prayed
she pushed
she played
she paid
she laid
she lays deep in bed
she begged
she bled
she read
she sees red
she led
she is lead
she said
she shed
she shreds
she bred
she bent
she broken
she bruised
she awoken
she amused
she abuser
she abused
she confronted
she confused
she consume
she confess
she undressed
she less
she more
she a mess
she a mistake
she make
she take
she been taken
she was asleep
but now she awaken
Mary Ade
Mary Ade is a visual and textual artist based in Indiana. Her deeply personal work seeks to encourage vulnerability within herself and others.
July 2019 | poetry
(mornings are for suicides)
the way we dazzle
in confrontation with reality
oblong cornered cult in the sapped death dream
tonal physique of the prominent doom plume
like exposed cricks in fameless antiques
bird swarm in black-thought trees
come by clock : massive grave space
all properties of ovarian follicle and soft steel
winded legs sway like daisy stems
inhabiting concrete snares
now panhandling the rouge of creased cheekbones
pinched veils of late summer
petals
painfully
pallid gall of the lily flushed sour
like the whole furloughed town
that worked at the trainyard,
was shut down,
now there is no direction out
Jes C. Kuhn
Jes C. Kuhn is the author of three volumes of poetry, ‘Thigh Gap and the Vow of Poverty’, ‘American Sundays or pulling color from dead murals to paint living mirages’ and ‘The Penny Thief Sonnets’. His poetry, creative non-fiction and blog posts have been published in Corridors, Two Hawks Quarterly and Water~Stone Review, among others. He is currently enrolled in Hamline University’s MFA-Creative Writing Program. Kuhn lives, writes and teaches in Haunted, WI.
