In this issue, work by
Jendi Reiter, and
Edward M. Supranowicz
Singing in the Choir
Copyright © 2019 by Edward M. Supranowicz.
About the Author
Edward Michael Supranowicz has a graduate background in painting and printmaking; he is also a published poet. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia.
Richard Atwood
The Model
Look at him.
Male-perfect body to the bone.
Well-stanced, handsome
. . . but a point in the eyes
the downward curve of the mouth.
How often
has he undressed,
to watch himself:
how often
stared back into those eyes
like blue china
combed the gold-heavy hair
worked long hours at the
gymnasium, the photographers
. . . alone,
caressed the knit-plate muscles
of his chest
the ridges of his loins,
the fullness of his manhood
the incredible thickness,
the cords—of
the arms, the shoulders
—the richness . . . .
And not said silently
at 50/60, when youth was gone
and there were no more pictures
for all the fun—the numbers,
the play
no one, no one.
I’m still young. Still strong.
The heart a long time making ready.
And my body, my tears
still useful.
Copyright © 2020 by Richard Atwood.
BECAUSE then
my face will be against
the plain door when you go,
my hands flat as smashed eagles
dead against the wood and
pressing my nose and cheeks to the worn
texture, my breath full of alcohol and wine
and the smell of you, the grain of your face
the hard rockets of your chest
like murder as I remember
and taste again that sweet forever . . .
my lips buried into the side of your neck
your throat, and our fingers entwined
thrusting into each other to never let go
and I shake I breathe I grasp I die
the tears free and salty as I quake . . . and
you
are gone.
(grasp is not a typo)
Copyright © 2020 by Richard Atwood.
About the Author
Richard Atwood has published three books of poetry: descriptions/reviews/awards are available on Amazon. He has also been published in several literary journals: Poetpourri, Karamu, Educe, Oberon, Avalon Literary Review, Mochila Review, River Poets Journal, Ashvamegh Journal, Angry Old Man, borrowed solace, Better Than Starbucks, O:JA&L, and Penumbra. Atwood has also authored three screenplays, and two large stage plays; plus an m/m erotic-romantic fantasy with a GOT ambiance (Chronicles of the Mighty and the Fallen, under the name of Richard McHenry).
Mary Foulk
Abomination in Sunlight
We wander slowly
down a sunlit Village street,
lingering in tree shadows cast
across aging brownstones.
I hold my wife’s hand,
fingers gently intertwine
with the graze of silver bands
and last night’s touch.
A young man
walks towards us,
his strange approach
near neighborly.
As he ignores our nod,
we tense quickly,
his path now clear.
Against his eyes
black and empty,
against his jarring break,
this tenuous hold,
we steel, our
stolen.
His fleeting “abomination,”
his laughing
into an urban crowd.
Tremble from my mother’s
warning, this wound;
you will be less.
And tulips
on doorsteps, in narrow
sidewalk gardens,
yellow and alert to this
cloudless afternoon.
Copyright © 2020 by Mary Foulk.
About the Author
Mary Foulk, an educator, writer, artist, and activist, lives in western Massachusetts with her wife and two children. Her work has appeared in: VoiceCatcher, Four and Twenty, Hip Mama, and the Soft Skull Press anthology Who’s Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers. She studied for several years at The Writers Studio in New York. Currently, she is completing an MFA in Writing (Poetry) at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Raymond Luczak
My Corpse Self
alone in the woods
across the street from moms house
trails worn down became boundaries
of a country with no name
it would take me many years to walk
this meandering path across
peat concrete grill escalator elevator airplane aisle
in between waited for clarifications
the only thing found in morass of trees & grasses
was my shadow barely alive
panting for my kiss
sleeping forlorn prince
he looked familiar but nothing like a reflection
my watery self not even close
tall & lanky with a mask made with wood
stained & polished with veneer
perfected from years pretending to be happy
while people took him down behind his back
threw tiny paper balls at him
always feigning innocence who me
surely you jest their faces all said
i looked down at
his lax skeleton in a faux shroud of turin
his body spotted with grays like leopard gone starved
i didnt want to hold him
i didnt want the weight of his troubles
when in my shoes a sea
pebbles a relentless reminder
puncturing each step walked for miles
couldnt a shadow be light easily blown away
like how people dismissed me with a glance
just like my hearing family & classmates
constantly cleaved
mortar slabbed onto bricks
until my face turned unreadable
now his
there in my arms
the darkness of him
transparent
bright shining eyes
begging me to save him
alone in the woods
Copyright © 2020 by Raymond Luczak.
About the Author
Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of 22 books, including Flannelwood (Red Hen Press) and Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman (Squares & Rebels). A ten-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Laura Mayron
Dyke March, 2050
We weren’t supposed to still be here.
Somehow, at the end of days,
the queers are still dancing on the edges of it all.
We know what it is to be in the core of night,
warm with our bodies tucked away from stars
among the glow of neon walls, press of bodies.
I wonder if there will be another butch celebrating her 70th birthday,
dancing old school with her partner to songs the new kids have picked
as the world burns and drowns and weeps.
It was always ablaze:
call us riot, call us time immemorial;
our bodies beg inscription.
Somehow we manage to dance futurity
as the floor gives out beneath us,
what they call our “climate grief” refracting off
of some stunner’s lucite lightning earrings
as they slip into pulse and song of crowd.
We have lived through so many other apocalypses
that this can’t be the last,
can’t be the end of the glorious mythology
of leaping onto the bar, flashing tits among floral laughter.
I am aware of us as poem,
the divine flood of relief that men don’t look at me to consume:
I dance whole.
Copyright © 2020 by Laura Mayron.
About the Author
Laura Mayron is a graduate of Wellesley College and was born and raised in Maui, Hawaii. A queer poet, she is pursuing a PhD in queer surrealist Spanish literature at Boston University. She has won Honorable Mention in the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award and has been nominated for Best of the Net 2018. She has been previously published in 3Elements Review, Noble/Gas Qtrly, Arlington Literary Journal, Rising Phoenix Review, among others. If she could go back in time, she’d have a drink with Spanish surrealists.
Jendi Reiter
Dreaming of Top Surgery at the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop
Let us now praise the great men of New Jersey
Turnpike bathrooms—Walt Whitman unbuckles
his big-’n‘-tall Levis at his eponymous urinal,
no stalls for Uncle Walt, his gray-haired belly springing
free as the rain that pounds the fake-shingled roof;
Joyce Kilmer shall never see a poem lovely
as pulling off at this oasis
in the bumper-to-bumper wasteland,
sweet relief only a locked door away;
and Alexander Hamilton clutches his seeping
breast wound, the intimate duel gone wrong,
laced limbs darkening with the floor’s stains.
But I am not Thomas Edison, nor was meant to be
seen in the fluorescent glare of an Auntie Anne’s Pretzels
trying to sneak into the Men’s Room
behind my hopping little boy and patient husband
to whom I whisper, “Who was Vince Lombardi anyhow?
Did he have something to do with football?”
I am not the last
of James Fenimore Cooper’s Mohicans—though I resist
the world’s blandishments in the form of a rhinestone
and floral print Yankees cap at the gift shop,
no one will honor
my Provincetown tank top, shaved scalp and untrimmed chin hair
as more than the forgivable marks
of a 12-hour roadtrip mom who’s quit trying.
O, Vince Lombardi, champion of the Packers—
I believe you would agree
with Kierkegaard, who was not from New Jersey,
that purity of heart is to will one thing.
Not like Nurse Clara Barton, the only real woman
with a bathroom named for her—
two hands to bind up wounds and powder cheeks,
a breast for the husband, a breast for the child.
Vince Lombardi, according to the Internet a symbol
of single-minded determination to win,
how do you know where the end zone is
without a trophy, a team
of mighty men drenching you in Gatorade
that shocks you breathless like love?
Copyright © 2020 by Jendi Reiter.
About the Author
Jendi Reiter is the author of the novel Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, 2016), the short story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press, 2018), and four poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree, 2015).
Stephanie Sabourin
Pigeon Point Lighthouse in Spring
Copyright © 2019 by Stephanie Sabourin.
About the Photogapher
Stephanie Sabourin is a photographer, teacher, and nature lover. She draws inspiration from the beauty found all around her. As the owner of Stephanie Sabourin Photography, she is frequently found photographing dogs and other animals, along with their people, in natural settings. Stephanie is a member of Professional Photographers of America, and she has been published in Wonderful West Virginia Magazine and on a number of web pages. She lives with her husband and standard poodle in Columbia, Maryland.