Dan Coxon For the first week the wallet sat next to the phone. David would eye it cautiously as he left for work each morning, as if he expected it to burst into flames, or come to life and flap clumsily across the room. All it did was slowly gather a thin film of … Read more
Jordan Hartt (grass buckles in the newborn wind) (the cattle on a thousand hills are mine) (gravel settles behind wheels) (grain the color of nickel waves in dull sunlight) (worn overalls hang off the whitewashed porch railing) (with a farmhand he brands sullen calves) (weathered fences stagger … Read more
Sarah Long My body is an ever-changing clock— spastic springs and gears never settling, never keeping proper time. Bodies carry bodies in pockets, on chains like skin-scented heirlooms. When my grandmother died, she left me her first kiss, the ticking sound of summer asphalt and peach fuzzed legs. I see my mother’s handwriting on … Read more
Donnelle McGee for Seven i come from them smoggy nights in LA i come from the meeting of john and prostitute i come from the ohio players shouting fire i come from being told here take these food stamps to the market and get some milk for you and your brother i come from under the sound … Read more
Vivian Faith Prescott The muddy tide rising to shore should carry you downriver by now. But, I imagine your scow wedged between cottonwoods on the riverbank branches shoved through your chest motor revving. Maybe your skiff is jammed on the sandbar, and you’ve stumbled over the side, whirlpools sucking your rubber-booted feet. But here, … Read more
Nancy Long i. Harmony A fine Chinese meal my mother said is made of five flavors, a blending of elemental portions. What is sour, she said, if not the flesh of plum? To know sour is to taste green watering across your tongue, to feel the force of wood striking your open … Read more
Mathieu Cailler Penn continued to drive through the night. Snow and gales of wind assailed his SUV as he barreled towards home, his foot steady on the gas, his mitts positioned firmly at ten and two. Heat billowed from the vents on the dashboard and moved loose strands of hair … Read more
Jane Cassady Is there anything we can go in and get for you before we board it up? Before the window plywood gets its eventual graffiti, before you wash the clothes in Pine Sol to get out the smell of smoke, before a loving friend helps fold those clothes, so specifically and kindly, … Read more
Jane Cassady But here it is. As we walk the summer camp kindergarten through third grade down the street to Pleasant Playground for their weekly swim, the kids are in their two quiet lines, listening for traffic and blue jays. The shutters are open, even though it's only been a week. "Poor Mr. Kim," … Read more
Shannon George Inside a small, oval-shaped wooden box festively adorned with yellow, green, and red paint lay six little dolls made of wire, paper, resin and tiny bits of cloth. Worry Dolls is how the store described them, and once I read the instructions for their use, they had to be mine. Before you go to … Read more
At nineteen years old, I become confused in my body and have to leave college. I walk in padded slippers and ratty bathrobe down the front hall of my childhood home. I avoid my mother and father, and my younger brother visiting from college who seems to be avoiding me, too. I work hard to … Read more
Robert Fox Mother’s Day 2011. I have finished my laundry, vacuumed the apartment and am mopping the floors. To keep up my cleaning mood, to do these domestic things I have learned over the years, I’ve got to have the radio blasting. Tom Schnabel has just started his Sunday show with The Intruders, “I’ll Always … Read more
I judge myself deeply, harshly – don’t allow courtesy given others, thoughtless tortured by tumultuous thoughts, ticking driving negativity nails through, aching begging, the merciless obsession eradicated, relentless screaming behind frozen stare, scared floods back like recoiling toes from cold water, endless forgiveness, permission – breathe and be, redemption when … Read more
“Do you have a boyfriend?” It was one of the first questions my students asked me when I stood in front of their class on the opening day of the school year. Thirty-some heads of dark hair, thirty-some dark eyes, thirty-some blue-and-white uniforms, thirty-some giggling girls. “It's okay,” I said, calming down their laughter. “No, no … Read more
How to still the gills until they need to go how to go from the … Read more
She watched the end of her toes shuffle and appear alternately from under her long hijab. Everything looked blue from behind her veil. She held the blue in her mind and gathered it, pouring it down to her heart, beating hard, a bird caught in a trap. The dry heat of the desert, heavy, penetrating, … Read more
Our love is the night sky – the way it looks like cotton stretched over a bruise. L stands for the lithium stars you pointed to as we sat on sand in Kawai. We used to laugh like all of Spain’s church bells going off at once. Two lowercase l’s standing side by side, I … Read more
Born in 1939 in Maryland, John Fahey pioneered the use of traditional country and blues finger picking to showcase the acoustic steel string guitar as a solo instrument that could play a mix of traditional and non-traditional musical genres. He collaged ideas associated with Bartok, Charles Ives, Indian and Gamelan music, Tibetan chanting and western … Read more
The iron treadles rock and doven in the flatiron shadows, pressed air and piece work. Hungry hands move like birds. Every week the girl who makes the least gets fired. You march arm and arm with women from the factory, a banner draped across your chest and you sing. Farbende I used to call you—the … Read more
And then, hooked up to tubes and oxygen, She was screaming, catch me Joey, I’m falling! I picked her up, the heft and weight Of rabbit bones wrapped in silk, I’ve got you Rose I’ve got you. There were things I wanted to ask her, But she was calling me by her brother’s name. It … Read more
Samantha set her alarm clock for 5 a.m. every day of the week—including weekends. She had the volume set on two and kept it on her side of the bed not to wake her husband Gene. The soft sound of her alarm lifted her up with out a moment of lag time. She reached over … Read more
Two Hawks Quarterly Issue 2 – Number 2 – Fall 2008 __________________________________________________ 5230 Joan Sutton Chalk It Up To Love Ed Frankel Deconstruction John S. Pirres Drive-by Beauty Wendy Hudson Farbende Ed Frankel Generation Lost Marykate Linehan Ketchikan Allan Wasserman LIGHT Denise Emanuel Clemen Nice and Fat Telaina Morse Eriksen Out of … Read more
Verity.She appeared before us in the City Weekly newspaper, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a bathtub, a child and yet a mummy—swaddled in soggy printers ink one wet September day like the day when the world came to know the name of heroin.The coffee was brewing.Brigham and I agreed wordlessly, Verity was just … Read more
The basket weave butter cream frosting was exactly what Amanda had asked for, as were the piles of roses and butterflies that made the cake look more like a floral arrangement than something edible. But the color was all wrong. “Excuse me, are you sure this my cake? This cake is pink. Mine is supposed … Read more
A glorious, buttery-warm light lit the summer of 1966. This was the summer that surpassed all remembered summers. They started to call themselves The Quartet as school let out. Mary, Colleen, Helen, and Anne were secretly teasing their brothers, who patterned their vacant lot tournaments after the escapades of Zorro and The Three Musketeers. But … Read more
