In the end,

I arrive backward—

not the way I learned it

in the book,

but pulled by the body’s

wordless logic,

lever and bone.

I can see where I began,

the shore of a dream lake

where I put in every morning.

My crewmates sweat

and huff and secretly fear

I won’t keep up, but they

are illusion

and distance is illusion,

the water, the carpet

rolling to meet my strokes.

Books kneel on shelves,

chairs have parted with their ghosts.

The door is open

to the rest of the house,

the otherworld of day.

Behind me—who knows

what’s coming? Who can say

I haven’t moved an inch?

I tell you, I saw the reeds

slide by. I heard

the ducks on wings

nearly graze my shoulder

as they rowed

the invisible air.

© 2012 Amy Miller
Originally appeared in Alehouse

Sunnyvale

He came home to two martinis

and Art Buchwald out loud

in his black bucket chair,

steam creeping out the kitchen door.

By dinner he’d rolled his sleeves,

Indian-brown arms

like snakes under skin,

and we knew to pass the plates

without a sound.

If he was happy, he’d tell us

about the railroad—

emptied the toilets

right onto the tracks—

or the slaughterhouse

or the aircraft carrier nose-up

and falling fast.

Fish sticks hung in mid-air

and crashed the conning towers

of our tater tots. Milk bled out

the mouths of glasses.

Later, he’d change

and walk to the garage,

wrestle metal for hours

and shoot the bright rivets

through round, clean holes.

© 2012 Amy Miller
Originally appeared in Alehouse

Know this: You
will end up hating it. Half-
done, the blanket will wind
through your sleep
in marled blue, horse-blanket
blue, a shower of chaff
in the barnlight,
red-flecked like the roan
you dreamed of riding. You wake
to solid white.

2. The Hook

An oar pulling the water. Pull
the face of it through, pull
the night behind you. Set
the face of it down. Rest.
Your hands must learn
the language of water, where
it ends, where the air begins,
where the dock is waiting,
stoic, hushed, a placid pole
that wants the rope.

3. The Knot

Build them alike, and they’re
an auspicious chain, as if
you never planned to pull them apart, as if
the knot were the aim and not
a mistake made over.

4. The Wool

Try not to think. The world is full
of things like this. In the morning,
you know the sheep are rising
like everyone else, and that
is living enough. At night, try not
to think of shears, or pens,
or moonlight speckled
through a ruined roof. Say
if they lived with you, you’d
take only what they brushed off
on a bush. You’d watch them
from the house,
clipping the hills like razors.
You’d never presume
to call them yours.

© 2012 Amy Miller
Originally appeared in Rattapallax

I’m trying to write

but can’t

stop thinking about Frank Stanford.

How he shot

himself in the heart

three times

with a small caliber pistol.

Probably

the same kind

that killed Penny

the night of our groom’s dinner

for the thirty feeder pigs. The thieves

didn’t take anything

else, just the piglets,

didn’t know

they were missing until

daddy’s count was off

the next morning. I can see

the black hole

between the dog’s mud

brown eyes and

how the skull

brains and

blood were scattered

on the ground like busted eggs.

How looking at the exit

wound from behind

the dog’s head,

it looked like someone took

a hammer

and smashed out

the back of the twilit sky.

I feel like I can smell

the powder burns on Stanford’s hands,

sulfur reek like trying to

warm your hands by cupping

palms around lit fuse

firecrackers. I can see

the hole in the dog’s face and how

it died with a frozen snarl,

lips stretched to show

the roots of its teeth and

the black spots on its gums.

I imagine Stanford tried

to breathe between

each bullet and whisper

the name of

each woman

he had loved.

I wonder if

the walls of his heart

were worn

thin through

the pain of loving

two women at once

and if the chambers

collapsed in on

themselves without

a final beat;

gurgled,

spit and

sprayed

a speckling of blood

onto the table

where the moon first said

I love you.

2.         An Act of Contrition

Before I get attacked for

my inaccuracies about Frank Stanford

I want to

apologize to his wife

and CD Wright.

I can hardly imagine losing someone

you love in so

tragic and unfortuitous a way

I want to meet them

in the middle and say

I loved him too.

Maybe not him

as the person but him

as the writer who would make me

think for hours about

the pain of having my eyes

sucked out by soda straws. Who would enjoy

the tasteless jelly and

hard disk of my lens?

How they would have to suck

and suck to pluck the retina from my brain with a

pop

and final slurp

like a stale string of

spaghetti. I imagine I have offended

his women invading their last private

memories, infected those stained mental

pictures with speculation and half-truths. How

I would hate if they stepped into

my life and tried to picture my

grandfather’s deathbed and wondered about

his hollow cheeks and eyes

glossed with dementia, his

mouth permanently agape. How

grandmother’s tented hands tried to wet his

lips and tongue with a moist

sponge. His choking on the excess

drops; swinging wild

fists and bruising her

arms. She swore he was mad

drunk again,

pulling his belt through

the loops

and snapping it like a bull whip.

Ready to go

after the kids for smoking

that goddamned dope in the house.

Not sure if

he could even smell

the shit over the whiskey

soaking his shirt and vomit

mottling his beard. How

he had no last words just

a grunt

a last effort to stave off

death. How he never

rose and met the light but

sunk into the mattress

as we said the rosary. How

he just died and

no one noticed

until the smell

of his bowels and piss

plugged our noses.

© 2012 Travis Andries

hug keeps me warm as we begin

to prepare our Sunday feast.

You in your cracked brown shoes,

scuffed with dreams and hopes;

me, in Mary Janes squealing with newness.

Across the kitchen counter

your Lithuanian lilt rolls as we flatten

out dough, plump with nuts and raisins.

I watch your hands spotted and gnarled,

pound what will rise with heat and time.

“A pinch of dis, a smidgeon of dat,”

Your voice, like summer cornstalks,

rustles over pots and pans gurgling on the stove.

Kneading and braiding the Christmas bread.

© 2012 Camerone Thorson

when she was living in Knoxville, applying for teaching

jobs when one came up at a Quaker college. She read

the dogma, and there wasn’t one, but she found a meeting

house that Sunday in the woods. The Friends

believe in silent worship, which she hoped might solve

her contention of thoughts when people talked

about anything holy. She liked that they didn’t

have a locus of the service in the form of a preacher,

but communed waiting for the spirit to come

through anyone. It seemed applicable

to the classroom she was always trying to shift

around with questions they had to re-make like beds.

At the first meeting she attended, no one spoke,

so it was like meditation in folding chairs

where everyone sat as if around a dinner table

listening to the birds and people’s stomachs pinging

in the quiet intimacy of sighs. She was convinced

there was something to it, and liked its high windows

onto the yellow birches outside. The second time

was so crowded she joined people sitting on the floor.

A woman with an Appalachian accent thick as cornbread

spoke up about a movie she “wartched,” then

out of nowhere some fifteen minutes later,

an old man said he used to fly planes in the Army

to poor regions where kids gathered around soldiers

to beg for money. Once he gave a dollar to an eight

year old, recognizing the moment he did it

heʼd gone wrong. The boy took off running.

An older boy chased after but, unable to outpace him,

grabbed a rock from the ground & stopped him.

The soldier held the boyʼs head

while his life slid out of his arms.

If this gathering operated according to southern

etiquette, no one would have spoken

into the gravity of that silence. But the spirit rose up

in another woman to talk about the school system,

which Lord knows, has needed fixing a long time.
© 2012 Amy Wright

I wake in the half-world of our time,

Willing the whittle of my thoughts

Into a wind-shaped mask.

So much takes shape as I sift through these words.

Here’s a once fallow wish

That’s taken root

On my tongue’s brim; a sprout

Ascending through the sway of this line.

Here’s a sweetness that won’t recede

As I press forward; the weave

Of a well-felt moment

Removing a shard from my torn cuff.

Here’s the sea’s pitch and pull; the roiling
Of winnowed dreams; a light that clings

To the nib of my thoughts.

Nothing seems shallow;

Limiting.

© 2012 Joseph Murphy

The Seeker

My cares seemed an illusion

That mild day: fists

Unclenched; clarity;

Renewal.

I’d begun to sift

Through clutter and symbol;

Rethink my track,

Ear to ground.

Rising, spirited, determined:

I knew I’d find you; breathe life

Into your chalked image;

Coax hope from the grit; restore

My dust-covered globe.

I soon began to sort

Through phrases I’d broken,

Hunting for the right one

To wish upon.

I hadn’t yet begun to wonder

Which illusion I’d live: the brilliance

Of our joined bodies,

Or a glance

Milled from thought.

 © 2012 Joseph Murphy

slowly & gently

Engulfing the throat

Parting the lips mechanically to gasp a squeaky, whispered gasp before the mouth

filled with water

Drowning the tongue

Causing the dam to close suddenly

Forcing the stream back into the canal wrapped

tightly in flesh

Knowing the moving lump would be pleasing

In the same moment, nostrils flared like matador’s & eye’s, like San Francisco soil,

widen, bulge

Transforming an almond to a marble- glassed by tears that formed & never fell

Flexing muscles about body the all the while

Immobilizing it with strong thighs & child-like hands that grip handfuls of

impressionable skin.

© 2012 Courtney Rosboro

The children of the

21^st Century

Living in penitentiaries

We write

To you the authors

Of our social landscape

Our glam-scape

Ehem, “Please..

Stop polluting

Our progressive minds

With sleazy corruption.”

We understand

That it’s hard

to let go sometimes…

but destruction

of our creative

young souls

is a social crime

buried under grit and grime.

We Free

The children of the

21^st Century

Are climbing out of dungeons

We’re  breaking out of your towers

And taking back what’s rightfully ours.

© 2012 Amira Awaad

With slick black hair, mine curls into question marks.
Thick, full eye brows; a rounded chin like lemon rind;
With lips like cracks creeping into the wall of his mouth,

And a suggested smile, also like mine
—Through eyes dizzied with love
And imperfections.

The similarities melt into something
Undiscovered, unknown.

The card: Mecánico Perito en Reparaciones
De Maquinas de Coser[1], indicates a life seasoned
By levers, foot controls and the wild buzz

Of needles. The work is guaranteed, unlike the card.
It will never guess it is a broken promise.
It will never know

It is the only thing I have that he has touched.

How Sister Veronica
will open the sick-room blinds,
and Beatrice will watch the moon in its full
fury shaking off
its blue-black burka of clouds.

How the night air
will smell like smoldering oak
leaves just before
they burst into smoke.

How fever’s rank
heat will gather under Sister
Beatrice’s veil, and Veronica
will break the convent
rule by lifting it
tenderly off her head – a kind
of triumphant uncrowning.

How death will hold
Sister Beatrice in layers of breathless
bliss, folding and unfolding
around her soul
like the floral origami
of a contracting uterus.

How Veronica will catch
the last spill of breath
in her cupped hands. No wash
cloth, just a slab of weeping soap
sluicing down Sister’s limbs,
the serpent curve of her spine.

How Beatrice will taste
Eden’s blueness between her teeth –
that cool forbidden juice
just beneath
the apple’s sunburned scalp.

© 2012 Ellen LaFleche