Fallen Star
by Seth Jani
Ancient light, there has been
and will be a second valley.
The water will part,
the fire will burn beneath.
When the ice age comes,
you will glow
like the aquatic eyes
of some sunk behemoth.
Tap, tap on the ice
as the lovers skate over,
unnerve the stares of children,
become a monstrous god
in the shrines of the thaw.
The Blind Hotel
by Robert Beveridge
the windows dark
in the night
no lights flicker
oil lamps have all
gone out to electric
eyes dark even
in the light
no flicker
in the night
of your eyes
it gets dark
hard to see
where the walls
stop, the windows
begin
strange how
cats' eyes glow
in the night
but the black
of your eyes
glows at noon
the blind hotel
looms above you
mirrors your reflection
in its gaze
Law
by Robert Beveridge
Footsteps shuffle against the carpet.
Hunger is a dog that chases its own tail.
The red rubber ball of want,
dropped from a seventh-story window.
Rug merchants have always served ouzo
with red sauce. A touch of decay
against the finest weave. It is not waterproof,
nor was it ever meant to be. All three
bodies were found with saints'
medallions in their hands—
John, Jude, Joan.
Memorial
by James A. Foster
The Beast We Are, the Beast We Forgot How To Be
by Richelle Lee Slota
Australopithecus Africanus, Homo Habilis, Homo
Erectus, Homo Neanderthal, Homo Sapien.
Put down the croissant, the WMD.
Bolt the high-rise, dump the phone, the drone,
the oligarchy, bar the blasted driverless car.
Revert.
Don’t wait for the slaughter, cut to the bone.
Abandon the easy, the salary, the life cowed,
the big lie. Relearn being alone.
Evolve to the rear,
to the horse, bear, land, spear. Work the tailbone.
Hoist the heavy, work the back, legs, arms,
grasp, push, pull, stoop, think, hone.
Go back.
Become a stray, a brute, a beast of burden.
Become a mutt, a bawdy thing, a rascal.
Restore
the beautiful, the beastly,
the way we are named.
Turn back
the years, the losses.
Return to early definitions.
Return free
to the beast we forgot how to be.
The Dead Mother
by Richelle Lee Slota
“I don’t remember her very well said the Dead Father.
What was her name?”—Donald Barthelme
The Dead Father
I feel old outside the Dead Mother.
I am almost relieved to be arrested,
returned to her in chains.
Ancestral police load me on a boat
full of eager prisoners.
Across the water rise familiar walls.
The Dead Mother stands on the far shore,
selling the better cells, takes me
in her arms, reaches in, fingers my heart.
Freedom must be terrifying,
she says, but all shall be as it was,
on the same cold terms.
Could it be I am home?
Could it be I am young again?
Visit Home
by Hunter Hodkinson
Those who know me
think I’ve died.
Their texts don’t travel
Into this other place.
Something in the trees
repels the outside world.
Ohio is resilient loneliness.
I’m only here for
three days, three nights,
& for lack of a better word,
I am loved.
That isn’t enough to stop
the roots from crawling out
of the soles of my feet.
It’s happening again.
The insistent desire
to stay right where I am.
Never leave.
Rot.
I recall a place
they sent bad children.
The Crybaby Field.
A place where the
spirits of corn husks
shackle you to the ground
and leave you to starve.
You bet your ass
I behaved.
Yet secretly
I always feared
becoming food
for the buzzards.
Even now, at this
adult dinner table,
I catch myself being
good.
Passwords
by Peter Mladnic
This isn’t a storm window, it’s a password.
Just as you had storm windows
in your attic, I have passwords in my phone.
There’s music in it, also, music in a certain
young lady’s hair that comes down
to her jeans. Her android is her office.
You got money from a teller, I get money
from a machine. You had a milk-box
at your doorstep, I had a bottle of designer
water in my man-bag in Catalina. You
had a caged parakeet, I have a backyard
with holes. Your cellar flooded
all the way to the ceiling your last year.
That must have been something,
water everywhere.
My storage room is dusty chairs,
framed pictures, vinyl albums in crates.
You had bags for bowling balls, plastic
cases for Kents and Salems, a cross
with Jesus hanging on it at the top of stairs.
Her mink stole in a closet, your onyx ring
on a finger on your left hand.
I have in my hand my phone. No pictures
of you, no password to the lost world.
I found an arrowhead in the high desert
and gave it to a girl. I’d need help
finding the wall in which you are entombed.
I remember maps in glove compartments.
Now the maps are in my phone,
and your pictures are on a shelf.
Her wedding dress’s train
like a mushroom cloud, your striped tie
with a wing-style collar—the only picture
of you two with both parents. Your father
died young, and was laid out at home.
My phone has passwords, I hate them.
A Troubling of Goldfish
by Corey Mesler
“Nature’s first green is gold.”
—Robert Frost
Last day.
First day.
Do not leave me.
Sky above.
So below.
Stay while there
is still light.
I am a
pilgrim by streams.
I want things
I do not need.
Do not leave me.
The water runs.
The light finds
a troubling of goldfish.
Fortune Teller Miracle Fish
by Madeline Phillips
The river needs
this grief
needs
all these calls
collecting concern
after gasping
unnoticed
for so long
Sun heat sewage
hundreds of fish
found so far
from water
All these calls
to the Riverkeeper hotline
asking after
the mystery of silver
bodies turning
red on grass
leaves
but it’s winter
and fish filter
plankton into flesh
but cannot pause
photosynthesis
We found them nowhere
near water
between rocks
in a sandbox there was
even one in the tunnel
beneath the highway
where I told you
you looked
like Orpheus
a silver body
reflecting pecked-out eyes
in broken glass
Did you sing it there?
One expects
empty dime bags
torn Magnum gilt
rusted razor blades
in such a place but not
silver scales
caked in blood
gills redder than your cheeks in the cold
haloed in light
motionless
head turned toward the darkness
You looked
tired indifferent jealous
that day
that’s what the red fortune-telling fish
we won as kids in arcades
would say
but fake fish could not foresee how
one day
real fish would discover how to dance
through air
but forget how to breathe
in water
gaping mouths
bulging eyes
curling spines
I too have forgotten
how to breathe
in strange places
my own pale bloated body
passed
from palm to palm
and watched
for a reaction
passionate fickle in love
Almost a year later
I am still finding
fish
in strange places
one on my roof this summer
one in a text from my boss today
there was that night in bed
last May
when I reached
for your warm willing body
and grasped
a cold dead fish