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Poetry

Winter 2013

The Winter 2011 issue features Creative Nonfiction from Micaela Seidel, Genre X from Sarah Long, and Poetry from Lek Borja, Michelle “Strawberry” Heymann, Wednesday Hobson, and Jessica Kincade

Spring 2012

The Winter 2011 issue features Creative Nonfiction from Micaela Seidel, Genre X from Sarah Long, and Poetry from Lek Borja, Michelle “Strawberry” Heymann, Wednesday Hobson, and Jessica Kincade

Fall 2011

The Winter 2011 issue features Creative Nonfiction from Micaela Seidel, Genre X from Sarah Long, and Poetry from Lek Borja, Michelle “Strawberry” Heymann, Wednesday Hobson, and Jessica Kincade

Seized Lies My Body

Lek Borja Seized lies my body in the latitude of her sex How her desire shines like luminescence in the sea as if the moon were inside it, as in every hour where we enter together Tenderly sink then float longingly so My eyes follow her journey down to its end With her tears I … Read more

Beaver Valley Homestead – 1966

   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

Saint Elizabeth’s

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

From the Fire

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

Age of Parallax

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

Ranch Poems

Stephen Page     Last Night I Dreamed Rain   The clouds quickened under a wax moon, then settled around plastic palm fronds. My truck stuck in river bed three, and just like the time it slipped into a ditch, I tried to push it out alone, putting it in gear, then straining under the … Read more

A Fine Meal [Ars Poetica]

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

Scenes from a Housefire Two: The Firemen Asked

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

I Didn’t Know You Could Sign a Corner Store Like a Cast

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

Winter 2011

The Winter 2011 issue features Creative Nonfiction from Micaela Seidel, Genre X from Sarah Long, and Poetry from Lek Borja, Michelle “Strawberry” Heymann, Wednesday Hobson, and Jessica Kincade

When by Michelle Strawberry Heymann

  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

Paul by Wednesday Hobson

  I cannot muster effort enough to show what is and unspoken there what little deserves and overly qualifies a human to which I am particular.   There is a body: made of sinews, contrasting with elasticity – his rubberband arms and legs cinnamon facades made for over-ambiguity – preserving a heart perpetual pumped this … Read more

Drive-Through by Jessica Kinkade

A buck ninety-nine. If you pull up to the Window at 32nd and Rose And order something cheap but good With a tad more fat than you know you should Have but secretly crave, Make sure to tell them to make it a value meal, And they’ll wrap her in whole wheat lace And stick … Read more

If by Abigail Templeton-Greene

             in remembrance of Eun Kang What if it were just called Monday, not Night of Remembrance, not Ceremony or Candlelight Vigil? If this night was a night with nothing to take back? If women did not carry tea lights or pray under a canopy of bamboo? What if there … Read more

Experimental by Susan Johnson

  At the observation station observers tried observing themselves making observations and were impressed by the results. A film loop of a loop of film being filmed in a loop. For scientific purposes, some said. For posterity said others, to preserve in our selves the making of ourselves, as seen in the making. Doesn't everyone … Read more

Under the Moon Light by Gary Metras

That scoundrel, man—he gets used to everything.                                                    Fyodor Dostoevsky   Maybe the moon is full and bright and earth reveals bones, shallow graves in a shallow war. Maybe the moon’s light plays with the meek fire of men cramped beneath a bridge in Ohio as they watch gray chunks of ice float down … Read more

Tuesday Afternoon Shopping by Matthew Roberts

Tuesday Afternoon Shopping. This one night stand that I was looking for has now wasted 4 months of my life. She looked beautiful on the dance floor, that’s all different on Tuesday afternoon as she dumps a large box of condoms into the shopping trolley. She says, ‘It costs less when you buy more of … Read more

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror By Lita Sorensen

 For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror                                                 (found phrase) after Rilke   That first flush of daylight against the hills— the rosy fingers of antiquity still with us, now, leavening the sky across black branches curving, hatched and glorious: alive, as we eke human cries through days and centuries, believe our own … Read more

Farbende by Ed Frankel

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

Chalk It Up To Love by Ed Frankel

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