April 2012 | back-issues, fiction
by Tyler Gillespie
Remember that time when we were in Target, and you put a bottle of champagne in the refrigerated section, because we wanted chilled champagne (the only way I’d drink it) and Target only had room-temperature champagne, so we needed to chill it ourselves?
And the champagne bottle blended-in with the wines and we laughed because we thought that this was true about most people and things (they blend in).
And we left Target and came back to the store two hours later and the champagne was cold.
And we laughed when the cashier asked us about it.
And we drank the champagne from sippy-cups.
And you told me that you loved me, but I didn’t listen because you always say things like that.
And I don’t believe you.
April 2012 | back-issues, poetry
A change could be a bloom
as well as a withering.
Her half‐world suspended between
two superstructures: a mystique of waxed floors
and shattered mirrors, spiderwebbed with cracks.
On the rim of her sky
were only hints of sunrise,
like goldfish swimming in ink.
No one was disturbed
by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones,
the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils,
the movements of her braid.
She bleached out herself, gradually
the way of old photographs, in a slow bath of acid:
first moles and pimples, then her shadings and face,
until nothing remained but general outlines;
a wax doll to stick pins into.
by Andrea Starr Pelose
The above poem is a cento poem that experiments with lines from novels, manipulating them, and thus creating a new work of poetry. A list of the works used can be provided upon request.
April 2012 | back-issues, poetry
I am riding the spooked horse
through a world of shadows –
In my visions,
there is nothing but ghosts
of all things.
There is another world
behind the one we live in.
Everything I see here,
is a shadow
from that world.
When I am riding,
things I see before me
disappear.
There is no more grass
or trees, skies or rocks.
When I am standing still,
I am traveling
on a horse made of bellows.
by Craig Shay
