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Poetry


SYDNEY B. SACKETT

“THE MYTHOLOGIC”


​As a classical hermit, I have wanted nothing so much


as a plunging velvet cape.

It is all the glamor I need. You will follow this contouring thing, a deep sapphire, burgundy, indigo,

clung so heavy you will think I ache like Atlas.

It is all the lift I need. Watch it envelope me,

carrying my lines on titanic wings to make

a little girl monarch, a little girl monster.

It will stream behind my feet and Lethe-like swallow

my cue line. You will brace, if only to know

what could deserve this Nemean beast.

It bunches, and I have a hunch. It billows and I am a captain.

I cast it to Jupiter’s couch and rain Juno’s wrath

on a hundred half-god whelps.

It smooths where I crook. It flows where I flatten,

and glories the Gorgon till even

dizzied Paris would toss his golden apple.

Persephone embraces the rich dark, exits stage left.

I am Orpheus talespinner but I do not look back.

NORI DAWSON

“BEACH”

​
​The salt air and smell of rain

family memories

washing away with the waves



Seagulls fly overhead

to return home

as the first drops begin to fall

​
on the heads of wanderers

CHARNESE BISHOP
​
“RISKS”

We fail to keep in mind that


The trees when they exhale

don’t care how cold you are.


The leaves when they fall

don’t care where they land.


So be like the trees.

And be like the leaves.

​

Realize.

It is okay to breathe.

And it is okay to fail.

Do not wait too long.

Because the same raindrop does not fall twice.

SYDNI S. SMITH

“ODE TO BRIDGET LEARY”


​The day you returned from out in the storm

fevered and ill, soon he’d be damned

to the fever burning in his own mind.



“Imposter!” he cried. “Where is my wife?”

Strong-willed woman, stubborn at heart.

You’d pay with your life, while he’d play fool.



Madness had claimed him,

he no longer trusted his eyes.

Why couldn’t he see? You were his bride!


He locked the doors, forced them to watch and bare witness

soon they would see, but after the fire

only your black stockings remained


What’s done is done,

and the mad man had won.

Forever he’d wait, for his Bridget to come.


Your memory lives at a melancholy price

outside the churchyard, etched into stone

now all that’s left, is an innocent rhyme.


“Are you a witch, or

Are you a fairie? Or


​Are you the wife of Michael Cleary?”

GABRIELLA STRAIT

“SAGE”


AC/DC was always

blasting from that pool hall jukebox

‘cause you knew I liked

dad rock as much as I loved

emo pop punk and

fat blunts in the parking lot--remember when those

gulls attacked the roof of my car? We were so

high we laughed until we had six packs.

I didn’t know I could feel so good

just before I had to go home. I

killed every spare second with you

like home didn’t exist. Like

my husband wasn’t pacing the floor, taking

note of every second I was gone. And,

oh, he knew I was with you in that

pool hall parking lot by the beach, shooting the shit,

questioning my decision to marry his fits of

rage and watching the

shoreline. I still have the coat I

took from you the last time I saw you. I wear a grey hoodie

under it because winter sucks in West

Virginia. Not a day has passed that I haven’t

wondered what would’ve happened if I’d done what my

x thought I was doing with you but the truth is

you were the only safe corner I had in that Twilight
​
Zone city.


GABRIELLA STRAIT

“TO: ZELDA FROM: LINK”


Dear Princess,


I never get tired

of waking for you, even though

you’re doing just fine without me, even though

you’re assembling armies, even though



you’re fighting wars I slept through, even though

the asshole on the other end

of the controller can’t remember

which button is jump and which



is attack and I had to fight the

same monster seventeen, eighteen,

nineteen times because the

guy on the other end threw the Master Sword

off the ledge when he meant to swing–




But don’t worry, I’ll still

come running, even though

I know you don’t need me, I’ll

run across miles of fields for you--

the truth is

​
you’re my closest friend, the only thing

that gets me out of bed.

You’ve been saving the world since 1986

while I’ve been sleeping

and I’m so damn tired and


this time I overslept by a hundred

years and I grinded my teeth to

powder because I knew

you can do it without me, I knew you

keep me around because


I’m loyal, I play your songs

I’m good at fighting monsters, making dyes

and spicy meat and seafood fries.

I pulled the sword from the stone but


only because you asked me to.

All I wanted to do was rest.

I’m a hundred and sixteen-year-old man trapped in an adolescent body.

​

Let me sleep.


NORI DAWSON

“BOOKS AND FLOWERS”

The books in Mississippi always read wrong to me.

The ink smeared or

the paper ripped.

My classes often had me staring at the ceiling

Daydreaming about freedom or the liberty of freedom




I have always wanted to skip through a beautiful

flower field while the sun hits my skin.

The horses trotting in the beautiful fields

make me long for it, even more.

​I want to feel the flowers brush up against my legs.

Would they feel cold? Would they feel fresh?
​
Or would they feel warm, even wet with the dew?

IKE HIGSON

“THOSE WORDS I COULDN’T FIND”


Rotted apples bob in black water.

Ripples traced by a buzzing bulb suspended

Like a moment

I can’t make pass.



Something snags my eye

By the corner and won’t let go.

My vision turns to a corridor,

twisting and rolling like the sheets I wake to.



From daydreams alone,

I draw myself out

dowsing down into the echoing well

water dotted by those rotted flecks.



I can smell them well

enough now, can’t I? Walk away

from what’s drenched me. Knowing

it’s entrenched in the deepest part,
​
reaching the parks where I used to play.

J. SCOTT WILSON

“WE’LL HAUNT THIS DUPLEX”

​
She sits on the bottom step

beside the vent smoking a cigarette.

Her other hand against where the heat drifts

through the grate, a holy gesture done in

dreamlike languor as if summoning spirits from the wall.



She once told me as a child she communed with ghosts

through chalk drawings on the hardwood

closet floor, the shoes all pushed aside, waiting eagerly



for what might appear. She looks up and I bite my tongue


before I mention klonopin, paroxetine, or lamictal, solutions everyone else has already


given her before. I, my big ass, situated near her,



lean closer as do old companions when cold and the evening

draw in through the crack beneath the door. If we die

we’ll haunt this duplex.



We’ll sit right here when some other, normal people

move in, people without

sourceless hurt, strange

delusions in their heads, able to walk


in the morning. They’ll come down the stairs



and hit a warm spot on the stair, she and I translucent,

​our breath smoking the air.

AL ERIN

“CONDOLENCES FOR THE LIVING”

​
He did not know death until he was 21.

An existence lived,

Taken for granted,

Getting too comfortable,


In never losing anyone.



But the catastrophe still came.

And he learned the hard way

Because he never got to experience that pain

With the childlike acceptance

That comes with learning at a young age that



​The gold never stays.

J. SCOTT WILSON

“NUBIAN, KIKO, SAANEEN”


His great uncle stood Sunday mornings

​like a barefoot god inside the goat pen, toes blackened in



dark soil where he preached Corinthians. Circled with chicken wire, nubians and boer gathered round, heads angled



in sacrificial bow. At his side, the doe saneen for the mother tasting



milk. The old man, forked of beard,

his muslin shirt lifted would show the children a trellis



of ribs where incisors and molars of his sergeant in Korea were imbedded in knuckle shapes beneath the skin, the children reaching and feeling



the bible verse’s soft oscillation


cored within the hard calcium, “Do you not know your bodies are temples,”



dull shudder in breath or word, pieces of a sick man he hated

who in the messhall vouchsafed to him an enemy’s face



sawed free, then shriveled and discolored. “Of the holy spirit who is in you?


You are not your own.” Memory taken the form of a mouth



moving in his gut. The black kikos behind him balanced

uncanny with all hooves slanted inward upon a poplar’s branches,



horns backward thrust spirals, curious dark haired fruit with thier throats open to the sky,


brays that made all things seem unnatural until now.

AL ERIN

"THE BIRD’S DON’T MOURN FOR US”


A crow with eyes the color of night

Perches on a street light

Below him, a car wraps around a tree

And sirens belt out a tune that screams

The crow joins in with careless ease

Unaware of the different melodies

​

As the song is sung

The souls move on

And the bird

​Doesn’t notice the difference

IKE HIGSON

“LOOKING UP FROM THE FLOOR”


An amber droplet

slides down a dimming sky.

Gloom will grow, gnobbled

fingers climbing the copse.



The black blanket

a shroud,

crowded with little

things best left unfound.



Owls, invisible above,

the dark filling their eyes,

whorl and dive,

devour what they find.



Observe how delicate

​it must be, to hide.

Surrounded by hunters,

quiet hunger grown wide.


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  • Home
  • 2022
    • Poetry
    • Short Stories
    • Artwork
  • Meet The Staff
    • 2022 Launch Party
  • Previous Editions
    • 2019 >
      • photos/graphics
    • 2018
    • 2017
  • Interviews
  • Contact