One pin-ball machine in the arcade, just the one nod to the ancestors of all these new-fangled machines. I don’t want to drive at Indy, wipe out aliens, gangstas, monsters, ski down precipices, pilot rocket ships through meteor showers. These thumbs, these fingers, are designed for flippers, and these ears are trained to the thump … Continue reading
Category Archives: Poetry 2014
Stop Hitting Yourself — Anton Jones
Tour the world through the inside of my old shoes, unworn since the crutch of youth but dusted off to take a dismal glimpse of a past repressed by my unwillingness to please my frumpy self. Take a step into the mirror, as the cold glass fondles my memory I laugh because it is inappropriate. … Continue reading
Night School — Larry Narron
Most of us in Intro to Egyptology are grateful for a smoke break in the rain. The ex-paramedic with the teardrop tattoo blows half-broken rings at the moon as he preaches Osiris. It’s clear by the sand in his voice he’s lamenting the tops of the pyramids dissolving slowly in the wind: “Tonight after class, … Continue reading
Last Doctors in Aleppo, June 2014 — Ann Struthers
-for Angelique and V. Before coral, pearl, mother of pearl, before the chambers of the nautilus, millions of ancient trilobites crinoids, all the little limestone shells compressed for centuries by the weight of water. Then lifted up, cut, carved into the city of Aleppo, Halep, milk of Abraham’s cow, now blasted into flight by mortars, … Continue reading
Decisions — Brad Garber
If a man drinks to excess, he dies early. Drinking in moderation will protect his heart. If he does not drink, he dies of loneliness and, so, I struggle with decisions, a cigarette blowing thin party ribbons across the room. People sometimes explode their hearts white lines blurred from zero to boom. Others know how … Continue reading
Riverstones — Allison Grayhurst
Announcing flesh in the sleepy-loosened day. A childhood of bridges, masterpiece aromas that overlook the playing fields– one year, two grades and people once beautiful, now ordinary, bike turns, riverstones, skipping on driveways, melting ice over grates long pleated hair, dark, looking into competitive eyes. It was the last year I was there, spending evenings … Continue reading
True Love — Joyce Janca-Aji
if I know how to throw the hatchet so that the blade strikes precisely center and lodges impeccably in the mass of salvaged boards nailed together with bent and broken bits to the singular rotting beam of what once was the south wall of the barn, then I should know how to throw enough of … Continue reading
Sniff — Gale Acuff
I love Miss Hooker and if it kills me I’m going to marry her one day and have some babies, as many as we can however you make them, I’m only 10 and haven’t gotten that far in school yet, regular school that is–Miss Hooker’s my Sunday School teacher, maybe 25 and pretty old but … Continue reading
Portrait of the young man… — Joyce Janca-Aji
Has it not occurred to anyone that Monet might have done just as well if he counted fence posts or lined up all his shoes instead of painting haystacks? That his art was no so much perspective as lack of something to do with his hands? Or that for Van Gogh, certain hues of cobalt … Continue reading
Subway Gospel — Matthew Ulland
Traveling under ground, always one woman reads Good News, crinkling words— onion-skinned verses; where her Savior speaks, little bloody marks. Man in wool and beard deciphers minuscule squares— scripture buttressed in thick walls of comment. Hard-luck men croon, “Little light of mine, gonna let it…” Three-part harmony. Smirk for a dollar. Once, a monk— burgundy … Continue reading
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