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Fall 2015

Fall 2015 The literary work featured in this journal is under copyright protection by the individual authors and artists and may not be duplicated or reprinted without their permission. Copyright © 2015 Two Hawks Quarterly

Spring 2015

The Fall 2014 issue features Creative Nonfiction from Marcia Bradley, Stanzi, Frei, and Sara Walters. Fiction from Lynne M. Hinkey. Poetry from Jim Bartruff, Scott Chalupa, Carol V. Davis, Nadya Rousseau, Jeremy Voigt, Barry Yeoman and many more.

Misty by Kathryn Brown

I balanced a cup of strong coffee on the dashboard of my patrol car and watched the transgender woman I knew as “Misty” leave the free medical clinic in the Tenderloin. She walked with a dignified, stiff posture that I admired considering she was 6’2” and wearing a flower print dress with little puffy sleeves … Read more

Cassandra at Bingo by Allison Thorpe

Though the hall is packed, no one will sit near her in this noisy temple of tables and folding chairs. Surrounded by their clovers and animal feet, their river of cards, they are wary of prophesy. Seduced now by games of chance, Cassandra mutters her madness of letters and numbers, a whispered voice one step … Read more

Barhopping with Scarlett O’Hara by Allison Thorpe

Sipping the drink named after her, she tells me how each bartender makes it slightly different. All night I listened to her complaints: Not enough Southern Comfort. Inferior brand of cranberry juice. Too much lime. The years have found their tomorrow in her. Her 17″ waist gone to Doritos and Little Debbies, pale skin lost … Read more

Death is an Airport by Jordan Larue

I died once. Have you? I can tell you this because I didn’t stay dead for very long; as it were, someone clumsily revived me, and interrupted me from a pleasant stroll down a mist-filled hallway towards the light at the end. As I recall, I was approaching what looked to be a big man … Read more

Senior Care by Cathy McArthur

He said he prepared the space shuttle. Because of him, men walked on the moon. If we were young, we could have worn parachutes or held on to pillows, floating through air, or I’d fly an airplane straight to the Amazon, spanning across countries. I was leaving Regal Heights Nursing Home, waving goodbye to my … Read more

November by Cathy McArthur

Sometimes at night, we lie awake, windows wide open, shoes by our beds, dreaming about the day before when we could return love so easily. We whisper, “I’m sorry,” our words fall like dust to the floor and rise to the roof into the air we breathe. (My mother said it was from the streets; … Read more

Welcome to Brazil, Indiana by Brian Beatty

An undertaker in his twenties moved to town with his wife and their brand new baby and silver dog. They made their family home in the upstairs of the funeral chapel where no one had lived in years. They drove the hearse everywhere with that dog’s shimmering head stuck out the front passenger side window. … Read more

Pax Cervorum by Kevin Casey

Rust-stained but clear in the morning light, the brook fell into the lake, a string of deer bones paying from its mouth; jaw bones algaed, vertebrae sowed among the cobbles, they lay beyond the shadows of our fishing poles and false hellebore that lined the bank. We named the stream “Deer’s Peace” in our awkward … Read more

The History of Your Mouth by Nathan Alling Long

Every time I kiss you I think about the history of your mouth, your first kiss, the way your lips must have felt, and what other lips felt like to you. Then I think of all the people you have kissed, the lovers, romances, mistakes. I imagine them all kissing you while I am kissing … Read more

When My Mother Died by Nathan Alling Long

When my mother died, Easter was just a few squares away. The day felt like a porcelain basket of fruit dropped to the ground. A thousand bottles of red wine flowed across the living room floor and I felt the miscarriage begin of the child I had carried my entire life. I became someone without … Read more

A Vacant Lot by Ron Ballard

On an early Friday morning in June of 1946, I started walking down to Mount Pleasant Cemetery with Sonny and Jimmy. My parents were still asleep and I knew my mother wouldn’t like to know her nine year old son was walking all the way down to the end of Seattle’s bus line. We walked … Read more

A Light At the End of Something by Paula Danovsky

I tried to focus on the pink lamp, the one my grandmother gave me on my tenth birthday, before she had the stroke. The thing made me think of her, and when I thought of her, I could make it through what my mind said was impossible, like a 30-mile drive on icy roads in … Read more

HIV+ by Caroline Barr

You told me you were dying only slowly, one cell at a time so we couldn’t see it. You told me four years ago that only slowly, one cell at a time you’ll smear into dust on my palms. You told me four years ago and I almost forgot you’ll smear into dust on my … Read more

Our Communion by Caroline Barr

She tells me: if you open it, you finish it. The first time wine touched my tongue I was too young to know, in communion you shouldn’t smack your lips and say ahhh when the priest tips the chalice back. Now, 18, I felt the bitter warmth that tasted like Sunday. So similar in memory, … Read more

Sunday Night Power Outage by Caroline Barr

There is something spectral about sitting cross-legged on the carpet staring into the center of a flame. Washed with darkness of a blown transformer, candlelight licks at unblinking routers, cable boxes. In thick silence, I whisper to St. Cyprian as my fingers slip through heat the way my mother showed me at the dinner table. … Read more

The Roommate by Anne Hosansky

My reading habits are changing, for lately I open the newspaper to the obituary page first. I’ve always been a rather morbid man, but there’s a kind of pride in seeing familiar names and knowing that after seventy-some years I’m still here. This morning, though, was a shocker. Ed’s name was on that page. There … Read more

Clandestine by Cynthia Rausch Allar

In our long, accelerating years, adolescence a dot in the rearview mirror, we could not anticipate this return—clandestine bed in a parent’s house, the startled gasp of senses wakened, the breathless stifle of a not-so-secret tryst that even nearing voices cannot uncouple. We are pulled back to youth, this incarnation made sweeter by the swallowing … Read more

Kiss by Cynthia Rausch Allar

In your mouth, I am trying to find it. I want to suck it from you, take it into my mouth and swallow, I want to hold it inside me in the long weeks we are apart. I want to suck it out, hold it in, warm core around which I can huddle, catch the … Read more

With Arms of Blue by Lisa Zaran

To go along dying and singing ~Cesar Vallejo To go along living and breathing into a world that is dying, cloves knocking into lungs, the bloody raincoat of love, that poor shrub of a spouse spilling always, a multitude of whiny details. Misery, complaints, traffic, the cost of things, etcetera etcetera. Forty years, you’d think … Read more

Tripped by Lisa Zaran

From your pocket so obliquely you pulled me out and readily, I found a comfortable position in your palm. If your voice is heaven, I’ve been acquainted with it for years. Does this mean I’ve died ten thousand times? I just assumed I was dreaming. That it was my midnight which created your mouth and … Read more

The Holding by Elizabeth Gibson

The vigil is over; Martina is gone. Her children have returned to their homes which seem now so strange — the red and yellow marigolds that once brightened the yard look diminished, and a grey film lingers over the sofas and chairs. It is as if the struggle between moments and worlds that held Martina … Read more

Jasper by Linda Wojtowick

In 1964 the campus library burned. The guard dog custodian was engulfed like a skiff in hungry sea. She had tried clumsily to douse the hall, the great oak doors with water. It was a Sunday. Trucks came with red lights ripping the grass. After this event she would be seen, most often in the … Read more

From Chicago Facades by Inara Cedrins

CXXVI. Red cabbage and bronze lilies. In my dream a woman says, I am a radio violinist. I imagine that continents communicate by music, the way dolphins do. Is it thunder or is it coal in the cars on the tracks below, sliding over the gravel beds stubborn as black pearl, baroque? Precious as pepper … Read more