Issue 37

  • Issue 37,  Poetry

    Hey

    photo by Sarah Brockhaus

    by John A. Nieves

     

     

    Because it started in pepper spilled on a diner

    table, this sad little opus was born grains

    and grey. And I think of the pebbles that dull

    the mower as they sleep in the grasses pushing

    up toward your sun. And your front lawn is

    sloping and your driveway is filling with family

    cars and the stains of routine.

  • Issue 37,  Poetry

    Walking Through Old Lisbon

    photo by Mirto Kon on pexels

    by Lance Larsen

     

    Like water I know enough to follow
    cobblestones and gravity
    to the busking sea half a mile to the west
    cigarette butts underfoot
    broken light drifting in from above
    through laundry hung from windows
    such twisty passages awash in a tongue
    almost Spanish not quite French
    I could be walking a primeval forest
    dense with hanging moss
    each path tagged with graffiti
    a new way to be lost
    motley hieroglyphs of here I am
    touch me nope too late now I’m a ghost
    smells and commotion spilling
    into the street from open doors
    a mother frying onions
    someone vacuuming the world
    a teenager sitting at an open
    window channeling her darker twin
    why are they so much happier than me
    somewhere a couple has locked
    a bedroom door behind them
    maybe he’s shaved his beard
    for the first time in seven years
    maybe she has one sock on make it pink
    make it the left I can intuit
    these sacraments just by looking
    up at a week’s worth of wash
    pinned to the improvised sky
    clothes trembling now in the breeze
    tablecloths furthest from the window
    then the gray workaday work pants
    and bleached house dresses
    finally closer to the sill scrubbed
    boxers and delicate underthings
    what decorum what clean
    rustling bras like sideways angels
    swimming in this bright quickening air


    Lance Larsen has published six poetry collections,
  • Issue 37,  Poetry

    Three Poems by Frank Graziano


    painting by Auguste Renoir, 1881

    Full Moon Over Las Galeras

    Islands surface as the mist
    lifts and if the light is right
    you see bodies phosphorescent
    in moonlight like oversized
    bioluminescent specimens
    with one (me) awkward,
    gawky, a self-conscious caricature
    of inhibition.

    I try to disguise my vulnerability
    with serenity. I knew to move
    through your affection gently.
    I hold you close in a float of elation,
    drifting toward myself drifting
    with you, entangled in your body,
    settling toward something like peace.

  • Issue 37,  Poetry

    Odysseus’s Apology to Anticlea

    by Anastasios Mihalopoulos

    Photo by Öz T. on Pexels

    Here, at ocean’s mouth, I pour and pray.
    Sea-water sloshes its tongue on the shore.
    Scent of barley and burnt honey vex the air.
    Urge the dead to drink from my cup.

    I bleed a sheep. Black night
    pours from its throat—the spirits come.
    Clamor of armor and footsteps fill the beach,
    men I could not save. Worse sounds came

    from those I could have—from you
    standing there, hair turned silver, an opaque gloom
    running through your skin.

  • Hybrid,  Issue 37

    Day at the Zoo

    by Daniel Webre

    On another day at the zoo, not this one, I had the place almost to myself. I even had my own private animal show. On this day, however, things were different. I was hurrying along until I got to the foxes. There was a red fox with a white coat who intrigued me. She was there as before, but on this day I left the fox enclosure to investigate an unfamiliar noise. The caged-in area next door looked similar to the one I’d just left. It took a moment of scanning the interior before I could locate the source of the noise.

  • Issue 37,  Poetry

    Daisy Bell

    by Matt Schroeder

    art by Emmanuel de Witte

    the only thing worth worrying about
            is a palmful of honey on a summer day
                     or the heart         hot as an eggless pan

            if it doesn’t make sense make it over-easy
    make it so sweet men would die for it
                         make it in the image you were made in

    whispers believe said-image is who you loved most
                            in your last life which could have been