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Excerpt from Adame by Rosalind Palermo Stevenson
What I like about living with Nandi is that she commands so little space, her presence is airy, she resides here lightly, and then of course she is always changing, from one mood to the next, each with its own distinct physical form. When I write, Nandi goes off by herself to swim in the ocean. I form the words on the page. I write myself page after page, while my companion swims with only her head visible, bobbing above the waves. Sometimes, when I am frustrated with my progress, I throw the pages against the wall. I think sky and ocean.
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“The Foghorn” by Rosalind Palermo Stevenson
1. sound of the foghorn and the ocean
_________________loud, persistent, repeating
2. view of the ocean from the cliff
3. closeup, waves over rocks
4. wind, reeds, water
5. ocean, front to side
6. ocean, front to other side
7. ocean
8. waves to shoreThe dream is true. All dreams are true.
_________________________(Antonin Artaud)9. long shot over rocks
___________first appearance of the younger woman
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“Improvised Compost” by Anastasia Stelse
All summer we tended tomatoes: stakedstalks as verdant leaves unfurled, veinsspreading into the fingertips of new growth.We watered, fertilized, filled plots with lovetokens and improvised compost—crushedeggshells, snippets of hair, orange peels.When the first leaf wallpapered itselfyellow, we plucked it. Washed our hands.But leaves kept turning, curling. We snippedbranches. I didn’t think I’d lose the plant.*Anastasia Stelse is a native of southeastern Wisconsin, -
Three Poems by John Findura
“Nineteen Minutes Ago”
This morning I am here
Nineteen minutes ago we might have met
But we missed each other, somehow
It is raining very hard but there is no thunder
Where there is no thunder there are few thoughts of you
Instead in their place is a stop-motion film
Of wooden hands playing the piano
Think of that – those wooden fingers on those ivory keys
Pictures of a famous actor with a bad haircut
An actress playing three roles in the same film
None of them are stop-motion like the wooden hands
I read a book about volcanoes
And the insistence of lava over everything else last night
And as you know if it didn’t happen there it doesn’t happen here
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“The Tracks” by Felicity LuHill
Kim stared at her feet and silently counted her steps. One, two, three… 267 steps between lampposts. One hundred and fifty steps between mailboxes. Forty-two steps since the last time she passed a dog—a small, beige terrier, unafraid to yap at sulky teenage girls. She counted to remind herself that she was another step closer to her bedroom—to cool pillows, beef jerky, and documentaries about ships discovered on the bottom of the ocean.
She wondered what she would say to Stella, her mother, when she got home. “How can you forget to pick up your own daughter?” was an effective sentiment Kim frequently used.
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“Beavis & Butthead Do English Class: Guest Starring the Memory of John Ashbery in a Thought Bubble Floating over Instructor Bodaggit’s Fedora” by Tom Kelly
Beavis, like, bangs his head against the deskbecause the four-eyed fart-knocker by the podiumforgot to button the bottom of his shirt,so when he blabs, his exposed belly does that thingwhere it jiggles like grandma’s gelatin mold& I say his navel looks like the Sarlacc Pitbut Beavis says it looks like the hole in a Krispy Kreme donutbut I say it looks like a nook where Beavis can stick his snoutbut we agree that if we squint real hard,
