Poem
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Two Poems by Eric Fisher Stone
Beautiful Red CreaturesWater mites ride a mosquitolike clusters of hot cherriesthe color of Mars or Arcturus,Earthworms, foxes, male cardinalsplumed with flame, tomato frogsoozing poisonous glue,scarlet ibises and their bills’ sickles,red pandas, red squirrels, lobsters,vermilion flycatchers with wingsas small as rose petals, red-on-yellowto kill a fellow–coral snakes,summer tanagers molting the blazeof their feathers, ladybugs,humboldt squid, firetail Continue reading
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Coluber Constrictor
by James Evans On the day you died a snake fellfrom the sky as I opened the overhead doorto my garage. It thumped long and black against my chest, slid downmy legs and raced awayinto the green, tall grass. It could be an omen,I thought, but I don’t really believe in things like that and Continue reading
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Unemployment Doldrums (Kind of Blue)
by Samuel A. Bellin I am released into my nothingness. I turn it into airdisturbed by the pitiful clacking of black squares. Above my gabled roof the yellow moon hangs like a pearripened and full of summer’s sweet juice. I lustand flick the dial on the record player back to “phono”,watch its red light burn Continue reading
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Restlessness Cento
by Linda Laderman I am three thoughts away from the grave. Alone, I sometimes see coffins under sail. Endlessness enfleshed in emerald & frost & shades I couldn’t name without further study. The gray air molds. Geraniums heat the alleys. Jasmine and gasoline undress the night. I don’t know what to think of first in Continue reading
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Boyfriends
by Jenny Chu My aunt was always terrified I would die before I could get married. She would tell meto date whichever boys could speak Mandarin,the clumsy ones who fidgeted with their keyboardsand made little electricities every night. I picturedthem, future engineers, kissing, elbows flush againstyellowing wood glue. Some would end up in New York Continue reading
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inadvertently, I disturb the sanctuary of a nest hidden in a clump of shrubbery
by Julie Allyn Johnson but for this zealous, late-summer breeze, today’s warmth and humidity would likely unravel my otherwise optimistic, carefree nature. finished with yardwork, I sit quietly for a well-earned time out under the shaded eaves on the north side of our three-bedroom ranch. I watch as a groundskeeper traverses the fairway, apparently mindful Continue reading
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Chips
by Sarah Seybold for Mamaw who worked at the Chesty Foods potato chips plant in Terre Haute, Indiana Conveyor belts roll by, and she remembers a road— Indiana to California, 1938. Her long, smooth legs and slender waist, her wavy hair ungrayed. Far away from that flat town, her mother’s ghost, her father’s fist. In Continue reading
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Kissed Stain
by Jennifer Mills Kerr Here, take these berries on your tongue, taste their tang as a sentinel of grief,and with the sun’s red glare, come intomy meadow to sip the morning air. See my mother, the crushed, crimson flower I handled, relenting to her hot temper,her weeping. It was never enough. And though she is Continue reading
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Becoming Swans
by Stefanie Leigh After Rachel Rabbit WhiteWe found each other’s eyes in the mirror—tendus, jetes, fouettés—for years. Our conversations, leaning over the piano, heldlike hands. Until my ring finger was freeto trace your throat, my whole palmon your jaw. Your gaze erasing our outlines, our limbsinhaling, gliding, like twilight on a lake. Stefanie Leigh is Continue reading
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What they don’t say about recovery
by Kathy Pon beyond a bunch of discomfort and the slogtowards some sort of body restoration is the delicious act of napping. For ushigh-strung overachievers better suited as boundless Springer Spaniels that flushfulfillment from fields or boardrooms, the notion of turning into a daytime zombieis terrifying. Who allows the brain to surrender its powered thought, Continue reading
January House Literary Journal 