Mr. Elser’s fourth grade class in the little town school included the four of us, a band of orphanage misfits. In addition to me, the three other eleven-year-olds were boys: Emil, Roman, and, Albert. When the sun touched Emil’s hair it looked like he had shiny golden reddish stripes in his thick curls. Emil—a sweet … Read more
I play music that I think the dead would like to hear, something to spark their listening from the other side. Mozart is a perennial favorite, as one immortal to another so to speak. “A Day In The Life” by the Beatles too, that last long seemingly endless chord like a taut serene musical illustration … Read more
Struggling back to life at this age— but for all the bleary-eyed hours and bone-jarring bus rides for all those cheap-shoe blisters and fending off the smiling fiends the telltale eye bags you can’t mask with The World’s Best Cover Stick the legs that won’t shape up and that fifth metatarsal that aches where it … Read more
The first time he opened the wad of tinfoil he wondered what it was all about, but he took one with the cross- hatching on it and half an hour later felt like God, Jesus and The Holy Ghost. He believed Bob Norton when he said he had played with Spirit last time they were … Read more
1. Who put “Lola” on the jukebox I will never know, midnight, Dove Creek, Utah, first snow on the ground, counter seats and Indians, square in their black hats. In the pickup’s bed, three mule deer bound in tarps, the road home from the canyon yet a thousand miles, a thousand miles across flat scrub … Read more
I’m not at home Nobody here to hold me I’m driving to LA It’s violent A disintegration of my core Valparaiso is burning A geographical wound The port of the Pacific The nights The boats This is my territory Now A fragment sparkles … Read more
I can’t write today. Your pain is my pain. My neck feels soft. You wash the dishes—you get hard easily. Leaves everywhere. Andrea moves through the house. I let her. The Salvadorian Revolution was extreme, a laboratory of the Cold War. I bite my lips. I wash the dishes. Impatient you—you sleep in the back … Read more
Don’t unpack too quickly and feel as hollow as your suitcases empty under your new bed.
Don’t accept a bottle of Dr. Pepper, banana chips, a Ziploc of almonds, and a pillow from a boy who looks little to nothing like his Facebook photos, even when he sings you Justin Bieber songs.
Debbie pushed herself up to a sitting position and shimmied to the edge of the bed. She raised her eyes to the window, where the sun hit the frost-tinted glass and exploded in delight. In the kitchen, her mother sang out bits and pieces of the overplayed perky pop song of the week. The bangs, … Read more
The young couple is discordant—two blue shirts making out among the shuffle of art-grazers (an ocean of eyes). At the exhibit’s entrance, a dome of aluminum cups and plates throws circles of light on the floor. A stone Buddha sits in meditation against the south wall. His ears (stretched to his hips) forgive … Read more
I’m sitting across from Jane in the outdoor area of my favorite Indian restaurant in Los Angeles. She’s dressed casually. Her hair, longer than the last time I saw her, is falling out of her hood that she has pulled up, perhaps because she is cold. The courtyard of the restaurant is shaded and peaceful … Read more
Fall 2014 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 © 2014 Two Hawks Quarterly
Misfortune had smiled upon Nikki and left a thousand injuries. By the mid-90s she’d resigned herself to the dismal future that lay before her: living alone in a one bedroom apartment that smelled of cat urine—a remnant from the previous tenant—selling women’s shoes for a living, driving a car Ralph Nader condemned as a death … Read more
Retelling the story, I’m too embarrassed to name the bunny hill where I lay splayed like a rag doll, a trail of gear marking the tumble of my undoing. Endless equations of people dangled on the lift above, suspended and swaying, their skis forming X’s V’s and 11’s over my face. My third day on … Read more
Bring the moon closer, darling, I like to press my face to you, your sky, and on my toes, stretched to the limits of the veins in my neck, I feel nothing but the cooling air picking apart my hair, searching for something sweet. There was a great temptation to lick the dark … Read more
I ran a very long way for a very long time & as I slowed to arbitrarily finish, I was handed a medal for the goal of which I knew was sacrifice, but what was being called achievement. I ran a very long way for a very long time & I as I did … Read more
Drop that napkin, let’s let the melting cheese be a call to arms, the tomato bread bowls brimming with promise of more bread under- neath the soup, and your arms Emily, tender with speed as you desperately try not to spill your favorite meal on the baby’s developing bald spot. I will ignore the older … Read more
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
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
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
