INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Shutta Crum
Paul B. Roth
Laszlo Slomovits
Duane Locke
Felino Soriano
Chris Lord
Jerry Blanton
Carmen Firan
Amelia Makinano
Connie Stadler
Fred Wolven
Duane Locke
Tolu Ogunlesi
Running Cub
Joanie Freeman
Gerald Clark
Karyn M. Wolven
Holly Day
Dike Okoro
Fred Wolven
oh, the whirr of wheels and wire and endless
scraping of skin on silvery track, my sleep, the scrape of skin on
splintered wood and wondering what they'll say when they fine me,
the rush, the roar, racing toward the light
the fading, floating echo of speed
oh, the imagined eyes of an imaginary crowd as the train
pull into the station, the concrete landing,
the eyes of the crowd opening wide
as the train pulls in and the hands reach out
trying to catch me, stop me,
much, much too late
oh, I love a train.
VITAE
he was already dead as a doorknob when they found him
his head cradled in his arms, phone cradled in his hand
he could have been sleeping, dreaming of Saturday
except for all the blood.
it must have taken unflinching persistence, patience, fear
of the timeclock tick-ticking in the corridor
to complete crunching the day's sales receipts
with a hole as big as a ledger in his chest.
SHEDOWN
In Scotland, off the coast of
a peninsula known as the Black Isle
they still speak of a creature that
stalked infants in their sleep. This
creature is particularly sinister because it appears
as a pale-skinned woman with long
blonde hair, clutching a wizened infant
with small, sharp teeth to her
chest. She wears a long,
green robe and her eyes glow red
in the dark. In houses where
newborn infants live, the creature
waits, hidden in a dark corner
or in the shadows beneath the baby's
crib, until the adults all fall
asleep. Then she comes out
of her hiding place with her own
child, lowering the creature she holds
into the human baby's crib, and lets
it feed until sated. Afterwards,
she picks both infants up and
carries them over to the baby's bathtub
holding the human child upside down over
the porcelain basin until all of its
blood drains out. She then
bathes her own infant in this
blood, and drinks
the few drops left herself.
UNDERSTANDINGNESS
such profound
disfigurements, I wonder
were you pretty as a child? all adults
have bumps and scars
but did friendly hands
chuck you beneath the chin
look into innocent eyes and see
only a happy baby?
struggling to catch breath against
the weight of too much meat
thin bones ache
I wonder
when you were young, with this
limp, these twisted bones
did loving voices coax you along
give you hope
that someday
everything would be all right?
TUESDAY
Once upon a time I never woke up
Covered in blood, hands
Bent into hooks, skin under my nails. Once upon a time
I never had a dead body in my bed, I never knew a dead person before
I never saw eyes frozen open, straight into me. This is the story about
How I woke up this morning and found out
I was a killer, and that there really is nothing
I wouldn't do for love.
Holly Day, Minneapolis, Minnesota