When I was nine, I lived to swim and pretend I was a mermaid—a shining, glamorous siren— who swam and sang for days not realizing the emerald ocean was a billiard table in the downtown bar. The siren’s lullaby is a drunken karaoke rendition of “I’m Only Happy When It Rains” buoyed by red-headed sluts … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: December 2014
Injury — Domenic Scopa
All were moving. Teammates crowding Richie— fetal moaning cradling his fractured foot— Coaches huddled with first aid supplies, combing for a splint wrap. I had accidently slide-tackled Richie… My babysitter scolded me. Mud stained my soccer shorts. Inside my nightmare my babysitter’s there again stripping himself— unconsciously skillful— his skinny body walking window to window … Continue reading
Like that Cat in the Barn — William Jolliff
It arched its scabby back, spit a curse, and tried to look just larger than a man, a mix of malice and something worse, one part terror, two parts contempt. I hadn’t meant to trap her in the barn— she could’ve kept that loft for all I care. I’d never seen that look again until … Continue reading
Lynn Shore — William Doreski
This clapboard tenement complete with druggie roommates, broken locks, and a view of a sewage beach is the worst of your many rentals. Visiting frightens me. Tattoos wink in shadows. Nose and lip rings clatter as the young people fondle whatever bodies they can reach. The reek of poisoned rats in the walls sours my … Continue reading
Refugees — Leslie Philibert
What is left if nothing`s left? The tap loses teeth-blood, Each empty cup smiles with malice. We have fallen over the fence, Our pictures torn, a history in bags, We walk like a cluster of wraiths As dull legs trudge over stones. The old will wither with frost When the night comes sooner. And if … Continue reading
Fifi — Charles Rammelkamp
When I read about the accident, Glen tumbling off his roof like Icarus falling out of the sky, slamming into the pavement three stories down, snapping his neck, dying instantly, I remembered the fey lad in Boston, just out of the closet where he’d shut himself up for the first nineteen years of his Midwestern … Continue reading
Say Uncle — Phillip Sterling
You wake abruptly and the first thing that comes to mind is avuncular, a word you’re not familiar with, or you thought you weren’t familiar with, and you think: What the hell? It’s 3:14 a.m., according to the radio alarm. You’ll look it up tomorrow. But you forget: the word, the dream that might have … Continue reading
Title: Alphabet Soup — Patricia P.
There is a ghost in the kitchen; it’s banging all the pots and turning the oven on at 2 in the morning. I laid out a blanket of bread and butter as a piece offering— the next day, it was all gone. I find omelets on sizzling pans in the mornings and tossed salads when … Continue reading
Buyer’s Remorse by the 405 — Sally Molini
Lunch in the backyard of my new pink stucco home: a bowl of spring minestrone and sliced buccellato— the larger the cake they say, the more good luck. Heat piles up like an oil spill hung out to dry, onramp across the street a monument to trash, graffiti and weeds. I rise, go to bed … Continue reading
pantoum of City Temple, Shanghai — Jeffrey Beck
dandling the tassels of the lantern, he used to blow death through his cheeks at the dragons, feeling the burn, shifting to shift coal to a boiler; he used to blow death through his cheeks, the incense swirling the paifangs, shifting to shift coal to a boiler: your eyes ache at the rising fumes, the … Continue reading
Coe Review 