Cover image: "To Follow Your Moral Compass" by Rich Spang
Gallery 3
A wet earth shaped between our palms
Frank Carellini
masters of light
there is a plate i cannot clean
despite the amount of times
i submerge it in the sink and scrub—
we submerged into the pacific
and bobbed with the iambic beat of
the sea while kelp wrapped our cold feet
each trail of fork with my nail crumbs
of your bite are fixed
to the ceramic like catacomb skulls—
we sunk nails into rotating clay
a wet earth shaped between
our palms, rotating how the lines did not intersect
in a bowl i artificially ripen
fruit with other fruit
master the exchange of gas exhume from foil—
in a singing bowl, we collect
the dying leaves of our bonsai trees
and listen to how death modifies the sound
tombs of ethylenes
break from morning sheets
this dark masterpiece: how we were not masters of light
and sent strobes
searching for rescue boats
into the night
Previously published in Hobart Lit, Apricity Magazine, and other gracious journals, Frank Carellini focuses on writing poetry.
Christine E. Hamm
Landscape with Burning Bridges
The passengers will not stop singing Clapton’s “Cocaine.”
Outside, desert surges: the brightness deafening, a constant
noise boiling over. I close my eyes. It’s still there. The trees
disappear into it. The tour guide loudspeakers about graves,
about rituals and haircare. I raise my hand and he asks us
to save all our questions for the end. He has a voice made
for radio. I open the cooler and take out the heart, invite it
to watch the scenery with me. The heart is cold and lopsided,
soggy in my hands. Reflective coating on the window makes
it hard to see. I try to point out features the heart will like —
cacti in the shape of seated pigs, for example. The driver asks
if we can stop at a bar, because he feels a tequila coming on.
Christine E. Hamm, queer & disabled English Professor, social worker and student of ecopoetics, has a PhD in English and lives in New Jersey. She recently won the Tenth Gate prize from Word Works for her manuscript Gorilla. She has had work featured in North American Review, Nat Brut, Painted Bride Quarterly and many others. She has published six chapbooks and several books – hybrid texts as well as poetry.
Michael J. Galko
Manchester, 1978, before the rope
Hard to be an epileptic rock star—
the strokes and pulse of the beat-
down on the stage kicking around—
show or seizure?
Dividing one’s joy,
if that is what it is,
between yourself
and the throb
of the hoi-polloi.
Michael J. Galko is a scientist and poet who lives and works in Houston, TX. He is the artist and curator of “Haiku House,” a residential art installation featuring his small First Ward cottage covered with original painted haiku. He was a finalist in the 2020 Naugatuck River Review narrative poetry contest. In the past year he has had poems published or accepted at Burningword Literary Journal, Gargoyle, Lullwater Review, Noon: journal of the short poem, Equinox, Louisville Review, Sierra Nevada Review, and The Paterson Literary Review, and a variety of haiku-themed journals.
Ari Cubangbang
Ari Cubangbang is a visual artist based in Calgary, Alberta. She draws with ink-based mediums and brushes. As an artist living with complex and rare diseases, she feels as though she fades away into the background of life. However, Ari is resilient, living life within the safety bubble of her home and drawing strength from creating art that evokes emotion in the viewer.
C.M. Clark
The Doula
This is a limited jurisdiction.
These are the paths that will host no guide. Will map
no hot turn around a crooked corner or
the narrow clearance on some blind mountain curve. Not meant
to prepare the waiting ground nor ease
the birth ridges that crease cartilage of ear folds or
calm ragged breath in a last crescendo
of gasp and cry, here at the first taste
of impossibly thin oxygen.
No, the doula’s hands won’t be turning
the face-up being being born, or
diagram the frontiers of transition, engines closing in
on overdrive.
No tensed hands here to measure, soothe reluctant tissue,
opening wide the jawbone folds, the plush ladies
in waiting. No, it will be the doula’s ready tongue
that translates the huffed breath, whispers sweet nothings
into blood-fevered ears, reactivating the bits
of strength that blow wild
and go lost. No,
her hands will only appear
when words won’t work, mobilizing instead just one
finger or two
to point the way.
The doula might be squeamish. She is reluctant
with skin. She is more about a look in the eye,
smoothing mangled pillow-hair, and she is loath
to handle the bloody flux, the startling show,
probably hesitates even
to wipe a sweating face.
It would become my task to lull the static of dying. In waiting
to see prone feet in socks that seemed like my father’s, thin
and down at the heel. Or perhaps remembered
from sifting through a bureau drawer like his, finding
the knit patterns favored by old men for old feet. This
was the time to invoke his household gods. That
is what the doula must do.
Somehow I was cast as the doula of dying
for him. Smoothed his manic brows,
crooned in a voice made for lullabies that sleep
would cure it all.
The doula is a woman servant, called as handmaiden to beginnings
and ends. A coach
on the sidelines somewhere at midfield, sometime
near midnight, to rant along the measured yards and call plays
without ever handling
the still round heart of the matter.
Remember how we swore to be midwives to each other?
Laying on the knowing hands to navigate
these perilous and ecstatic waters, narrow
channels between there and here?
But we ended up the doulas. Manhandling a tangle
of cables in roadside emergencies, reluctant,
resigned to kick-start
this now new and noise-cancelling normal
some call life.
C.M. Clark’s work has appeared throughout the U.S., in Canada, and internationally. Publication credits include Painted Bride Quarterly, West Trade Review, Wild Roof Journal, Bookends Review, Prime Number Magazine, Vallum Magazine (Montreal), Punt Volat (Barcelona), The Paddock Review, Ovenbird, and the South Florida Poetry Journal. Clark was a finalist for the Anhinga Press 2021 Chapbook Prize and a runner-up for the Slate Roof Press Elyse Wolf Prize. In past projects, Clark has collaborated with artists in other disciplines, including contemporary composer Andres Carrizo, printmakers Kim Yantis and Dorothy Simpson Krause, and painter Georges LeBar. She is the author of full-length works Exoskeletal (Solution Hole Press, 2019), Dragonfly (Solution Hole Press, 2016), Charles Deering Forecasts the Weather & Other Poems (Solution Hole Press, 2012), and The Blue Hour (Three Stars Press, 2007), as well as the chapbook The Five Snouts (Finishing Line Press, 2017).
Kira Santana
The Waiting Room
Unintentionally, I’m overthinking again. Someone is talking somewhere in the room about some light at the end of the tunnel. And all I can think of is what happens after. What started as a slow spill of the tourniquet has taken over me. Hot. Slippery. Unforgiving. In the hospital, most of us are somehow always thinking about suddenly disappearing. We spend so much time dreaming about leaving these spaces we inhabit; these sterile rooms and weary bodies. We wonder what it will be like when our lives can finally begin. After the illness, and the pain, and the need for an IV needle in the crook of your elbow ceases. Some of us can’t even imagine such an after exists. After we pass through the tunnel, and meet that light at the end of it, won’t there be another tunnel waiting? I have been told life is a moving, ceremonious thing. A reverent rite. An obscure concept I can barely grasp, becoming harder and harder to make out, like a tissue dissolving into smaller pieces under water, as I float away from holiness, away from a sense of being alive.
I am alone in the waiting room, stripped to goosebump skin in a hospital gown that never fits the way it’s supposed to. Since the surgery, my face has been constantly changing, a bloated, bruised moon, spinning on its own axis. It’s hard to meet people this way. To face the world with no idea of self anymore. What do I look like to them? Why does it matter? My eyes settle on the neon orange biohazard container hanging on the wall. A painting of a little village hangs next to it, an idyll I could escape into if I tried. But today, I am thinking of what it means to not run away, to not long for the after, to exist in this body, which may be sick; but a sick body can still be a good body. When I’m finally lifted into the MRI machine, I pay attention to the way my body fits into the tunnel, my hipbones on the hard table, my arms strapped to my sides, the tightness of the headphones forced unto my ears. I don’t look for the light. In this moment all I can do is exist, while the knocking, twisting, and smashing begins. I shrink myself down into a nail, hammered into an existence where I am small enough, where I don’t have to take up more space to be healthy. I close my eyes to imagine scenarios which will not make me want to leave my own body. But I am the cork of a bottle, twisted around and around, nails caught on all my ridges. I am an ocean, smashing, flowing, drowning. I am an EKG, crashing, a fuse with its pressure building, a breath held in for far too long. The contrast glides up and down my body like I am a field of lava, and it was always meant to come and destroy everything. I let myself think of what comes after.
When my life begins, I want to lose myself in ceremony and celebration. I want to dance, and swim, and look in the mirror and think, “that looks like me.” I want to carry my body with love the way it has carried me. When it is all over I imagine it will feel like I am touching the grass with my bare feet for the first time. I want to start living now. Even though I am unhealed. Even though I exist within the liminal space of a sick body. I want to take up all the space. I want to pay attention to the late summer rain as it trickles down my windows. The hummingbird’s fluttering wings that stir in the garden. Twirl and dance and smile when I feel like crying. Notice the sunshine so bright it can only be compared to magic. Treat my medications like an altar. Wash my hands so carefully, it’s as if I am cradling a child.
Kira Santana currently lives on the island of O‘ahu, where she is a graduate student, poet, and hula dancer. Her work is deeply influenced by Hawaiian culture and its natural beauty, as well as her experiences with chronic illness and her childhood growing up in Norway. Her poetry and essays have been published in magazines and journals, such as Collision Literary Magazine, Mangrove Journal, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing, Allegory Ridge, and Ānuenue Review, where she has served as poetry editor. Kira received the 2019 Myrle Clark Award for Creative Writing and in 2022 received the Hemingway Award; in 2020, she was honored for her work in Creative Writing at the University of Hawai‘i’s undergraduate showcase “English Represents!”
Note: This piece was first published in Blood Tree Literature.
Kimberly Phinney
Kimberly Phinney is a national award-winning AP English instructor and professional photographer. She’s been published with Ekstasis Magazine, The Dewdrop, Ruminate, Amethyst Review, Calla Press, and The Write Launch, among many others. She has her M.Ed. in English and studied at Goddard’s MFA program in Creative Writing. She is a poetry editor with Agape Review. After almost dying from severe illness in 2021, she’s earning her doctorate in counseling to help the marginalized and suffering. Visit her literary community at www.TheWayBack2Ourselves.com and on Instagram @thewayback2ourselves.
Rich Spang
Rich Spang is a retired electronics technician and Scuba Instructor who enjoys exploring the wild spaces as he finds them. Rich began photography with a Brownie camera, then an Instamatic, several 35mm cameras and now shoots digital as well as from his collection of film cameras. When not at home editing, Rich can be found shooting on the street, in the fog or in the wetlands. Rich’s work may be found in 1889 Magazine, Reservoir Road Literary Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Light Space & Time Gallery, and Beaver Magazine. Instagram: @spangrich
Kimberly Horg
Roeding Park: Peach Pits and Apricot Shells
I have a love/hate relationship with Fresno. I was born in Fresno and raised here. When I was young it was the raisin capital of the world. Dancing raisins had their debuts on television nationwide. On a movie poster from 1986 for the television series FRESNO it reads:
“FRESNO. It’s the grape-stained story of two warring raisin dynasties locked in a life and death struggle. FRESNO. It’s the powerful tale of murder, madness, near-sex and shriveled fruit. FRESNO. You’ll eat it up.”
People didn’t eat it up. It was a flop and got cancelled. Everyone from the area and beyond knew the area was known for its raisins but I never knew that it was also the birthplace to the Smyrna fig. I really don’t even know what variety of fig that is but I am very familiar with the name of the man who invented the fig, George C. Roeding because Roeding Park is a well-known park in Fresno. The park is located in a not-so-good area of town. The park, like the downtown area, used to be a focal point in the city. People would gather there for recreation and civic events. The park is special in the way it encompasses a zoo and a children’s attraction. The Central Valley does not have that many recreational activities so these are the only of its kind for hundreds of miles.
***
Frederick Roeding was a German immigrant who made his wealth in banking in San Francisco. He invested in 80,000 acres in Fresno. The property was relatively worthless until the train went through town in 1870 and an irrigation system made farming possible in the area. Frederick partnered with Gustav Eisen who was a fig expert that started the Fancher Creek Nursery. Fancher Creek Nursery was incorporated in 1884 and became the Roeding Home Place. The advertisements at the time said it was “the largest nursery west of the Rockies.”
“We are the largest nursery west of the Rockies.”
“Are you sure the nursery is the largest?”
“There is no way of telling for sure but it is the largest around here.”
According to Roeding’s biographer, Henry W. Kruckeberg: “The Roeding Home Place soon assumed horticultural importance that
attracted visitors from all parts of the world and was destined to become historical as the place where Smyrna fig culture was first introduced.”
The Smyrna fig was one of Roeding’s obsessions. Although it did not have commercial success, he kept trying and after eighteen years of trying, he established the industry. Part of the reason was because he imported a wasp (Blastophaga grossorum) from Asia Minor for fertilization. He describes it in his 1903 monograph “The Smyrna Fig at Home and Abroad.” He earned the title “Father of Smyrna Fig Culture.” Roeding also experimented with around 25 varieties of olives at the Roeding Home Place which led to the Roeding Fig & Olive Company in 1904.
“Aren’t these great?”
“I like the green olives.”
“I think the green have a salty good taste to them.”
“Have you tried mixing the two?”
“Now that’s an idea.”
***
Frederick Roeding’s eldest son George was born in San Francisco. He began his career when his dad was ready to retire from the business. George talked his father into allowing him to run the nursery for a year after his graduation from high school. Frederick left him in charge of overseeing the 640-acre Fancher Creek Nursery.
“My boy, I want you to go to college.”
“Dad, just give me a year.”
“A year, huh?”
“You’ll see what I can do by the time it is next year.”
“One year.”
His father wanted him to attend a university, but George followed his passion. Frederick and Marianne Roeding donated the land and their son George became a nursery-owner and agriculturist. George directed the 148-acre park’s design into a type of arboretum. In 1903, it was designed by Johannes Reimers. A couple years prior to landing the job, Reimers was hired to work as a landscape gardener for the San Joaquin Division of the Santa Fe Railway. He pitched the idea to depots to beautify the land with parks. His work and experience with planting in hot, dry climates led to his appointment as the chief gardener for the City of Fresno.
An article, “The Parks of Fresno, Calif.” by Charles Chambers, published in 1909 in The American Florist, talks about Roeding Park: “This park is considered one of the finest in the state considering its age and in a few years it will be considered one of the beauty spots of our famous state.”
Whereas an article published in 1910 in The San Francisco Call reported:
The United States Department of Agriculture has made arrangements with the secretary of the board of park commissioners to use Roeding Park as an experiment station. All of their importations gathered by agricultural explorers visiting foreign countries, rare trees and shrubs, have been sent for trial, and as a consequence the Fresno park has valuable trees from Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, all thriving and doing well.
***
Like the Roeding family, Johannes Reimers emigrated to the U.S. from Europe. He was born in Norway in 1858 and settled in California in 1883. He started out as a painter and focused primarily on landscapes. The paintings led him in the path of his design practice. After designing Roeding Park in 1903, he then designed Hobart Park a couple years later and then was commissioned in 1910 to design Mooney Grove Park. Mooney was not quite as big as Roeding Park but was still a large 100-acre valley woodland in Visalia. Reimers moved to San Francisco and attended the Institute of Art. I read that his work was publicly exhibited at the Golden Gate Park Museum and San Francisco Academy of Art, in 1915 and 1916. Reimers went down in history as an artist more than as a landscape architect. While the landscape architect for the San Joaquin Division of the Santa Fe Railway, he came up with a plan to embellish each depot with small parks. Because of his efforts, parks were constructed at each station from Ashcroft, Arizona, to Richmond, California. Reimers also designed the garden for the headquarters of the California Nursery Company in Niles (when it was owned by George Roeding). Another personal friend of Reimers happened to be Jack London. Reimers helped him and his wife Charmian London with plantings at their Beauty Ranch property in Glen Ellen, California.
“This is my dream home so I want it to look perfect,” Jack probably said.
“I will tell you exactly what to plant and where.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
Sadly, Jack London’s dream house burnt down before he had a chance to enjoy his property and shortly after that, he died. The area is now a park and is open to the public to enjoy a hike around the trees that Reimers hand-selected for his friend. Roeding Park also has a wide variety of top-notch specimen trees and is an example of landscape architect Johannes Reimers’ naturalistic design style which became popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
***
Roeding served as consulting horticulturalist to the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco. He played an important role in the construction of the Valley Building as well as the exhibit for San Joaquin County. In 1915, he was appointed to the Board of Regents for the State University at Berkeley. Roeding was also elected president of the State Agricultural Society in 1917 so he oversaw the state fair.
“We have to exhibit the best,” Roeding must have said.
George C. Roeding helped in developing California’s nursery industry during a time when large amounts of new plants were introduced. Roeding helped establish the Central Valley as an agriculture hub as well as the entire state of California as an agricultural giant. He was a contemporary of Luther Burbank; he experimented with propagating, testing and hybridizing fruit varieties. George tested and developed a variety of fruits including many of Burbank’s hybrids (Santa Rosa, Formosa and Gaviota plums and the Plumcot) which became successful in the early 1900s. Additionally, he experimented with packing that would preserve and protect the fruit for long-distance shipping. This was a key to securing California’s position as the leading distributor of fresh fruit to the rest of the United States. His contributions to the industry were recognized by President Herbert Hoover and by appointments to not only local but state and national positions.
George Roeding maintained a professional relationship with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). At their request he accepted, planted, and evaluated the performance of many tree species introduced to California.
Roeding formed the Fresno Nursery Company and the Niles Nursery Company. He combined them along with Fancher Creek Nursery and California Nursery Company in a holding company which he called the George C. Roeding Company. Roeding was appointed Park Commissioner for the City of Fresno from 1905 to 1912. He served as President of the Pacific Coast Association of Nurserymen from 1910 to 1911, when he founded the California Association of Nurserymen along with 14 other charter members. Interestingly enough, George had a long-term relationship with the USDA. This relationship led to the appointment as a member of the Advisory Committee to the USDA. Later on he was appointed to the U.S. Food Administration. He also played a role during World War I. The War Department commissioned him to supply 5,000 tons of peach pits and apricot shells to make charcoal for gas masks and he did just that.
“Do you see this fruit right here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you see this peach pit?”
“Yes, George. What has gotten into you?”
“This right here is going to win World War I!”
“Pardon?”
“You heard me.”
These materials derived from fruit were way more effective than charcoal produced from wood. Roeding offered his service to the government without charge.
“I believe in the war effort, and I am going to do this for free.”
“You are a good man; a patriot.”
“Any decent person would do the same.”
“George, I wish you were right but you’re one of the good ones.”
After Roeding died, President Herbert Hoover sent a note acknowledging Roeding’s contribution during the war:
“It was my good fortune to have the association of Mr. Roeding in public work during and after the Great War. His was an example of willing sacrifice to public service and constant solicitude for the public good.”
Roeding Park is significant under the National Register for its association with events that have made contributions to the development of municipal parks in California. It also qualifies under criteria B for its association with George C. Roeding and landscape architect Johannes Reimers.
***
Roeding was an advocate for “The Garden Beautiful” program in California’s state prison system. He donated plants and encouraged prisoners to become gardeners. He offered some prisoners short-term jobs after they were released. Roeding and his work with San Quentin Prison in Marin County can be described in his thoughts about the benefits of the program:
“I am firmly of the opinion that a reformatory work will be a valuable asset to prisoners.”
“George, do you think they will really come to work for you after prison?”
“Yes, and even if they don’t this is good for society and for its humanity.”
“How so?”
“In the redemption of damaged lives.”
“George, you should stick to damaged trees.”
Some of the prison guards laughed as he walked away. George did not quit on anything he tried. Although the men he offered jobs never followed through with the program and didn’t work for him, he didn’t stop trying to persuade the inmates to become horticulturists.
***
During 1904 to 1907, the original trees were selected and planted for Roeding Park and for over one hundred years those trees have grown and witnessed Roeding Park provide Fresno residents with a space for family gatherings and civic celebrations. Interestingly enough, the original trees still exist even though many of the trees there were planted as experiments. The park’s sprawling lawn consists of informal groupings of mature specimen trees of all sorts. It has flat topography through grading and a curving thoroughfare bisects the park. There are smaller, secondary roads that lead visitors around the park and out the exit. The park has water features including a string of lily ponds and Lake Washington, which is located in the southwestern corner of the park and offers visitors small paddle boat rides through the amusement ride attraction. The initial construction consisted of the excavation of the ponds and construction of a stepped, linear pergola ended in 1912. That is no longer there but instead the Fresno Chaffee Zoo. Not too long after the park opened, unwanted pets were donated and housed in makeshift cages. There is documentation that this took place sometime after the turn of the nineteenth century in a small central valley community. In the early 1920s an amphitheater was built, bringing more people and animals to Fresno’s zoo. Recreational facilities were also added in the 1920s, and a series of memorials including Lake Washington. Playland amusement park was built near the lake in 1955, and Storyland was added in 1962. Bears, local cat species, hoofstock and birds of all type were housed in log cabin exhibits for all to see in the 1920s and from that point, the zoo became a part of the city. Because the early history of Fresno Chaffee Zoo is vague it is hard to say exactly when the zoo became a local attraction, but the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums officially recognizes that the Roeding Park Zoo opened in 1929. Many transformations have taken place over the years, but one important factor remains the same: Fresno Chaffee Zoo continues to be a beloved attraction for residents. The zoo continues to grow to meet the needs of the animals but many of the original retro features in the park remain to its original design.
Kimberly Horg received a Master of Fine Arts from California State University, Fresno in 2019. During her three years in the M.F.A. program, she earned an emphasis in Publishing and Editing by working for earned credits as the online nonfiction editor at the university’s literary magazine, The Normal School. In 2020, she was awarded the Investigative Reporters & Editors Diversity Fellowship. Ten of her essays were published in literary magazines recently, including DoveTales: Writing for Peace Literary Magazine, Abstract Elephant Magazine, Iris Literary Journal, East by Northeast Literary Magazine, Sterling Clack Clack Magazine, Flying Ketchup Press, The Write Launch, and Quibble Literary Magazine. Additionally, one of her essays was just published in a book about war by Free Spirit Press. Website: www.kimberlyhorg.com
Syd Shaw
The Neighbors
are watching him through the moth-eaten curtains
hauling furniture dropping silverware slipping
on narrow stairs he burns the toast litters the house
with decorative vases and smoke they watch him
put out mouse traps paint the porch red and white
he paces he smokes he envisions the peacocks
melting in the summer heat throws them scraps
of molten barbeque reads on the porch to radio static runs
hands under the pristine lawn chairs for bugs he hears
children chatting he dreams of building
great brick guardians closing the blackout
curtains he coughs he listens he plays music but
says nothing because the neighbors are watching
he hears the starving coyotes talk in whispers
wears earplugs to sleep the frogs are echoing
in the creek an accusing jury a chorus of furies
curled up in a filthy nest of bedsheets he tears
apart the computer with methodical rage
dumps dissected circuit boards in the creek creeps
around the walls at night straining at windows
for the latest fucking strangers staring
through third story windows he hurls
a cellphone off the roof and flushes meds down
in spirals tries to fish them out again clogs the toilet
can’t call the plumber won’t call anyone since
the neighbors are watching the neighbors are watching
Syd Shaw writes about love, witchcraft, and body horror. She is Assistant Poetry Editor at Passengers Journal and has a degree in creative writing from Northwestern University. She has previously been published in Cathexis Northwest, Ember Chasm, Waxing & Waning, Eclectica Magazine, Panoply Zine, and The London Reader, among others. Syd’s work can be found on Twitter @sidlantro or at www.sydshaw.carrd.co.
Jeremiah Gilbert
Jeremiah Gilbert is a college professor and award-winning photographer and travel writer based out of Southern California. His travels have taken him to nearly one hundred countries and territories spread across six continents. His photography has been published internationally in both digital and print publications and has been exhibited worldwide, including in Leica’s LFI Gallery. His hope is to inspire those who see his work to look more carefully at the world around them in order to discover beauty in unusual and unexpected places. He is the author of the collections Can’t Get Here from There: Fifty Tales of Travel and From Tibet to Egypt: Early Travels After a Late Start. He can be found on Instagram @jg_travels.
Dana Roark
slink
there we were in ya-ya neon
falling over from 3-for-1’s
skipping beneath gargoyles
in a haze of beads cascading
from telephone wire, the low beat
bass drums & lips buzzing
on trumpets, oozing-in
from all sides, tossing
our empty cups to the gutter
just madly in love
somehow
with moss & mud
and spook & swelter
but mostly just love, love
loving ourselves
dancing on the tracks at 4am
under serpentine branches
of two-century oaks
that we didn’t even notice—
whatever
we were the new
and they were so old
and why shouldn’t they
line the avenue—all leafed-out
and moody—casted like extras,
just for us?
And then here they come—
the hey, doll! local boys
in smooth starch shirts
kissing our cheeks
& dousing us
with swank & sweat & sweet,
their fleshy palms pressed
against our backs,
leading us out the door
& into their beds
where they would beat
our soft hearts to death
until the next morning
gotta go, doll!
when we would slink home
on one shoe, dragging
our withered bodies
out to the sun like lizards,
disappearing
into the bark
or the leaves, motionless
except for the swelling
of our pink dewlaps
—all pristine and primordial—
pretending
we owned the place
Dana Roark is an emerging poet and student at The Writer’s Studio, founded by Philip Schultz. She majored in English at Tulane University and holds a Ph.D. in Applied Cognition from The University of Texas at Dallas, where she is currently a psychology lecturer for the School for Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Her work has appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press.
Andy Oram
Like a Wind
The wind has turned belligerent, tumbling through town and forcing a hunch into my shoulders.
Crackling like an ice sheet, it overtakes the roadways,
trowels up skittering leaves, rifles dogs’ fur,
and writhes around each garage and house.
On the pavestones where I have traced my lifeline a thousand times,
I race before the squall to the mouth of the subway station.
Its currents urge me into the tunnel.
Each obstacle on the way to the platform prompts me to race faster.
Students whose chatter, even in my own language, I can’t follow,
making their way to some assignment downtown,
to unfold a new potential of which they are the hope.
The security guard shaking off her fourth confrontation of the day,
eyeing a woman who was spewing curses to the crowd,
but who has now calmed down enough to continue her unplotted excursions through the station.
A man with somber blue tie and sandstone face, leaving his third failed job interview,
his portfolio bag dangling uselessly from a tarnished shoulder.
A woman whose slinky limbs twist like a Giacometti, who paces as if embossing her footprints on the concrete,
recalculating continuously as she jousts on her phone with her ex-husband in El Salvador—
can she make sure this month’s remittance
will go toward continuing her son’s education?
I thrust past these lives, like the wind, heading toward a destination not of our choosing, or no destination at all.
Andy Oram is a writer and editor in the computer field. His editorial projects have ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic novel about teenage hackers. Print publications where his writings have appeared include The Economist, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and Vanguardia Dossier. He started dabbling in poetry after noticing that he had been inserting his creativity in unprecedented ways into the technical documentation he was paid to produce. He has lived in the Boston, Massachusetts area for almost 50 years. His poems have been published in Ají, Conclave, Genre: Urban Arts, Heron Clan, Main Street, Orbis, Poetry Leaves, The RavensPerch, Steam Ticket, Waymark Literary Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, and other journals.
Heidi A. Howell
cats’ eyes
slowly everything at my lids
he eats sorrow like a salad footfalls
down the stairwell locks and latches
of teeth clicking
follow the wire i disturb the beginning
left on the carpet the light of not leaving
on here the fearful violin in it
an open screen door
the autumn strange umber blowing
Working loosely in the experimental/language/Black Mountain/New York School traditions, Heidi A. Howell has published poems in literary magazines, including Concision, SHANTIH, Burningword, this is up, s/word, Psychic Meatloaf, The Eastern Iowa Review, Otoliths, la fovea, What Light, So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, and The Washington Review, which nominated her work for a Pushcart. She holds an MFA from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, and lives and works in Minneapolis, MN.
Anton Mandych
Anton Mandych graduated from college in Yenakiyevo (Ukraine) with a degree in design and worked as a sculptor and artist in a private company. In 2022, he moved to Finland escaping from war in Ukraine. He had 3 exhibitions in Jyvaskyla region (2022) in collaboration with his wife, who is also an artist. Creativity is inspired by yoga and meditation. The paintings are a combination of meditative experience and the surrounding reality. Instagram: @anton.amit_artist
Kay L. Cook
The Worth of Silence
You ask me why I am so quiet,
how I could be so wordless
at a time like this
when the music is so loud.
My answer:
I listen for the rests between the notes
where suspension seeks direction
where breath delivers itself to the tempo
to honor our beating hearts.
Silence is worthless unless quiet means listening.
Kay L. Cook is a gay parent in a racially mixed family. She holds a BA in Secondary Education, an M.Ed in Special Education, and a certification as a school psychologist. Born and raised in the Midwest, she is now a longtime New Yorker, where she lives with her wife and two dogs. Publications include, among others: Poets Reading the News, The Closed Eye Open, Wild Roof Journal, and The Elevation Review.
