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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

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

Getting By

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

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

The Wolf’s Story

Kacee Belcher After the wolf cub slipped from his mother into the den with his brothers and sisters, he hunched down in terror as he lay on the cold ground, his legs not yet working. His eyes, still closed, felt heavy with the placental fluid that had mixed with the dirt that surrounded the … Read more

Hit and Stay

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

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

Involuntary Reflexes, or How I Ruin Art

Andrea Danowski I was going to start off with the story my dad always tells about how he almost knocked over a Giacometti once. I don’t know if it was the one that recently sold for just over a hundred million dollars, but it was one of the Walking Man bronze sculptures. My dad lost … Read more

The Worry Dolls

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

Containment by Jessica Karbowiak

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

Back to Normal

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

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

Android Poems by Lek Borja

1. Phenomenon Outcome spirals Through my circuitry, moving To thought, I am Pale, mouthing I do what I am told I am built for something I raise my eyes To whatever draws near, someone Touches me With my own hands 2. The … 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

Falling, Stairs, Fragments, Fire ~ by Micaela Seidel

1 It was summer. I was sweeping in the kitchen, facing south. There was that milling around feeling, children everywhere, my own and some others — that white-haired child from down the road. Hear the sound of hammering, one, two, three, pause, one, two, three — a husband somewhere, working. There is no … Read more

Two Daughters by Sarah Long

When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them. They would carry on as if changing the locks was a game all parents played with their oldest child, to trick them into resiliency. They let my little sister have my bedroom one day while I was at school, to … Read more