When I reinvented cryptography you scorned my mastery of acute and oblique symbols. When I discovered that supposedly inert gases panted like dogs you disdained my litter of lab reports. When I chaired the Bank of America you closed your account. When I posed for a statue of Richard Nixon you laughed so loudly the … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: February 2018
Like a Clyfford Still Painting–William Doreski
Tattered like a Clyfford Still painting, my birthday unfolds on a snowdrift and settles there. I could use a glass of wine the color of starlight, but the murmur of competing voices keeps me sober. Maybe later in front of the TV I’ll cough up the stone in my throat. Maybe when I’m old and … Continue reading
Goodnight, Irene–Joyce Janca-Aji
We hear ourselves speak as though it is we who are driving this mad bus pell-mell down the mountain. Outside, under the juniper tree, the wasps are swarming, the bullfrogs relentless and brackish in their chant. Pain or pleasure, medicine or poison, each blade of grass can be a gate, each footfall a moment of wakefulness. … Continue reading
Matching Hats–Betsy Martin
Coming toward you on the sidewalk, a young woman herds two little girls— pink coats, matching hats with pom-poms that twirl on long tethers and you smile. They’re out of a portrait you’ve seen somewhere—hanging in a museum, or glossy in a magazine or living in a book, where their hair is the richest … Continue reading
The Metro to Varketli–Timothy B. Dodd
Here is the end of the line where our buildings all rise, cornered in mad and gray pragmatism. With Soviet cloud cover and concrete coats, cucumber crowds creep in little markets picked on by auto fumes. Hidden, high windows frame frail bones — Mother’s old eyes rubbing cats and rugs in cataract. Through black … Continue reading
Lunch with the Poet Laureate–Ace Boggess
Hardly poetry. I like mine bland, burned, & free from eccentricities. Just a slab of charred meat on toughened bun. What I’m used to: protest verse for my intestines, thin mat on a steel slab. He goes burger also, prefers juicy, adding leafy accoutrements on top. I like the thought of a world … Continue reading
Freiheit! Freiheit!–Michael Estabrook
Long lines at Copenhagen Airport a stocky, older gentleman with a graying crew-cut and sandals suddenly begins screaming in German, “Freiheit! Freiheit!” waving his passport around over his head. It takes a minute or two until he is surrounded by airport security guys in their tall boots and yellow flak jackets. They’re confused, talking … Continue reading
Scanning the Black Sky–Virginia Chase Sutton
terrifying in its beauty—details obscured— the thick odor of rain lifts its fat and full face. Tornado’s coming my father says this afternoon. The fire department about a mile away sounds its haunting groan at the all-volunteer depot. Who pressed the button, who is there to get the weather report? I’m eleven, my … Continue reading
The Demise and the Resurrection of the Diving Lady–Virginia Chase Sutton
At sundown, atop a 78-foot platform, the neon Diving Lady jackknifes, blinks, stretches to her full ten feet, blinks, then slides into baby blue ripples. It is a dive she completes every six-and-a-half minutes, amassing a total of sixty-four million leaps until a violent storm rips her from the Starlite Motel’s flashing sign. It sends … Continue reading
Balefire—Denton Loving
The crimson king maple blows in high winds, burns with October’s beautiful death. Before my confused eyes, leaves piled at the tree’s base form wings, take flight and fall upwards. A reversal of everything I know. These small, light birds flash grayish white undersides before disappearing into the crimson king’s flames. Maybe they are … Continue reading
Coe Review 