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Issue 4

Page 3

1 2 3

G Minor 7

 

Letting the shapes

unravel

dual strand decides

one red one blue

somewhere midline

a vein pierced

bubbles up and whispers.

This is also the voice

sconce

cracked and broken

re-pieced

you let imperfect

phrases

brook no remorse.

 

— Marta T. Coppola 

              Elsewhere

      There must be a story here.

      Why else would the great blue heron

      and the white ibis and the wood stork

      lift all at once into the air,

      as though to make of the evening sky

      a reliquary?

                   Someone wants something

      or doesn’t want something,

             which is another way of saying the birds

      take flight and don’t come back,

      or the birds find themselves plucking

      at their own feathers with their beaks,

      or the birds die and become bats.

                      Look at how the hinged wings

      carry them out of the sweetgum trees.

            Or maybe an alligator snapping turtle

      is diving down again into the darkness:

      the waters loam-black and dense as oil,

      and the blurring of the wings the love

      the turtle feels for the other world,

      or the expanse of wings the magic garment

      cloaking the bruised red and orange

      of the horizon.

                    While gathering night

      throbs like a pulse,

      as though to tell us for the first time

      how far away the earth is from a rising moon,

      even when the moon appears impaled

                        in the limbs of the tupelo.

 

              — Doug Ramspeck

There plays a moth

 

There plays a

moth or a

butterfly

on a downtown subway

in lower west

New York. It

flutters from one angle

to the other

above halos and

ears- hands and

noses. until

suddenly my

moth is gone and I

search obediently for him

until images

of his death wrinkle wildly

in the spot above my eyes below my hair.

we've had a rough day, doesn't

explain it sometimes.

we want to go home, retire

at twenty, smoke

pot in bed or

beds. we want

to quit unhappiness while

we're ahead.

forgive my shortness,

it's merely we've had a rough day

I say but it's not picturesque-

it's black and white,

it's not illustrated

or animated at all.

ah, I've

found him he's begun

to dig holes in the

crevices of the seats and

toes.

 

Chelsea B. Turowsky

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Disneyland

 

At the gift shop

He tried to sell me everything I need

to build my heart back

and I bought it

It pumps blood and comes in plastic wrap

and there are six in the series

but the one you buy will be yours

will dangle from your charm bracelet like

your future

So fragile and small I could crush it

in my hands

these pewter trinkets look like gold

Look like god

The way they shine when I’m not looking at them

 

— Kevin Holmes