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Robert L. Giron

Issue 80 — D. Dina Friedman, Monique Kluczykowski, Luke Normsy, Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb, Amy Wrigh

D. Dina Friedman


Eggs


They are cold in my hand

hard boiled. Stretch

marks darken the shell


nothing oozes out. My son


feels the breeze under his belly

as he lifts up off the floor

When he was in my womb

I could not look at eggs. Was it then


everything reduced itself

to a liquid state, a place where white is translucent,

yellow is sunny, and I have overcooked,

no longer the baby coddled in my mother’s eggy arms


This is the paradox of eggs.

No one dares squeeze until it’s too late

The baby is walking now. He rolls out of my arms

like an egg on the run



Copyright © 2015 by D. Dina Friedman.




View From the Other Side


Facades of buildings sizzle in the sun, distraction blinking neon

in all four corners of the roving eye: Chrysler, Woolworth, Citi—

we pick them out of the skyline, as if they’re important.

When did I realize they were named after corporations?

As a child, these were just their names, normal as my own.


Now I recognize their eerie power—precursor

to some futuristic nightmare, worthy of any science fiction

if it hasn’t already been done to death. In the park,

humans are sleeping


out of necessity, or as an act of protest,

but this might also be a tale waiting to be told, a horror novel

or hero story—the ending remains to be seen.

Or perhaps some other weird Grade B

where the buildings come to life

stepping on the small humans beneath them

the neon flashing a big yellow YES!

GO CHRYSLER! GO CITI! This poem has gotten out of hand


but then, you could argue, so have the buildings

and the people that run them. How many kisses

will it take to awaken the people sleeping in the park, and call them beautiful

and powerful enough to destroy the handsome neon prince.



Copyright © 2015 by D. Dina Friedman.




Biography:

D. Dina Friedman has published widely in literary journals including Lilith, Calyx, Xanadu, Common Ground Review, Bloodroot, Inkwell, The Sun, Anderbo, San Pedro River Review, Mount Hope, and Rhino. She has received two Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry and fiction and is also the author of two young adult novels: Escaping Into the Night, and Playing Dad’s Song.


Visit this author's homepage at http://www.ddinafriedman.com




Monique Kluczykowski


Wintering in Iowa


The river runs dark

deep in darkness, matte

save where bridges,

arched cats

cross and re-cross,

their lights

puddles of redblueyellow

shimmering

against the flat surface. There,

where iridescence

meets the cold

matte/flat/black,

where we turn

back into ourselves, say

good-bye, return

each to our own side,

divided by depths

we cannot fathom.


Copyright © 2015 by Monique Kluczykowski.



Biography:

Monique Kluczykowski was born in Germany, educated in Texas and Kentucky, and currently teaches at the University of North Georgia. Her most recent poems have appeared in The Stonepile Writers‘ Anthology, Vol. III., Third Wednesday, StepAway Magazine, Cactus Heart Press, and The Magnolia Review.




Luke Normsy


Knee-Slapper


February Monday


frozen rain pinging grimy

windows

fire trucks wailing to someplace


out of Xanax


stockyard stinky

breath meeting

on the

Quality of our Values.


Clandestine phone reading:

your poems are not for us.


No waterboarding, no

jumper-cabled nipples, God

and His angels tire


of Suffering & Sorrow

and require


Levity.



Copyright © 2015 by Luke Normsy.



Biography:

Luke Normsy is a mid-level bureaucrat by day and a very-minor poet and photographer by night. He lives in the same meaningless void as everyone else, but tries to be cheery about it. Masochists and other interested parties can dig his work on Google+.





Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb


Little Girls and Tea Parties


What does she know—he’s only five.

“I want to go to the tea party,” she insists,

resisting my efforts to cross the street,

to leave the town square where

they continue to rally, to evoke loudly

names of their heroes of past—

Bush, Cheney, Palin, McCain—it’s Arizona.


“Who’s Sarah?” my young comrade asks.

I do not want to address her question,

as she is, after all, a little girl, my friend’s

kid, so I try to avoid politics with

“She is a lady who lives in The Bible—

a person in one of those stories

your parents sometimes read to you.”


“Does she know Alice?” the child

is seriously curious. “Alice who?” I ask,

not realizing she means in Wonderland.

Her face implies I am the most ignorant

grownup in the world; then, as if all books

connect, she sighs, “You know, Alice—

who got to go to the Mad Hatter’s tea party?”


Copyright © 2015 by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb




Noise


She said that she could hear

the shovel hitting the dirt too hard

and the engine of the rototiller.


I had heard her yelling

over the fence at the gardener,

thinking it was friendly


conversation, until the pitch

changed, and the man’s face

reddened in frustration.


I would go talk to her, I assured

him, and would let her know

we were getting ready to plant,


that the noise would be temporary.

Though neighbors for ten years,

I had never been in their house


before then. After my visit, I knew

any decibel level was too loud,

as was a bee buzzing, rain falling,


and that our carpet cleaning

would be on hold, house painting

delayed. Walking out with two


hospice workers I had not known

were tending to her husband, I knew

our garden would be postponed.


Copyright © 2015 by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb.



Biography:

Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in Aji Magazine, Sierra Nevada Review, Caesura, Red River Review, Dark Matter: A Journal of Speculative Writing, The Broken Plate, Wilderness House Literary Review, Concho River Review, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, The Blueline Anthology (Syracuse University Press), Pedestal Magazine, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Conium Review, and other journals and online forums, with poetry forthcoming in the anthology Talking Back and Looking Forward: Poetry and Prose for Social Justice in Education (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Fall 2015) and others. A past Pushcart Prize nominee, she holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and is co-founder of Native West Press, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press.




Amy Wright


“To Hell With Recreation, Let’s Just Survive,”

Willow Scratches onto Ziploc Baggies


Desire will hang you out to dry, Willow

tells her sorority, ”over a canyon,

with no one to cut you down or hear you

howl. I’-m not one of the ones who will lie

to you. The weapons you need

are inside. Polish until they shine.

Your reflection may stop you. It is only

your reflection. Be interested in it,

as you would a small toothy mammal

chewing grass. Be disinterested in it,

as you would a long-standing tie.

Wear your pin. Share the experience

with your sisters. A needle

is a tiny determinant knife.&drquo;



Copyright © 2015 by Amy Wright.




If We Love Not Each Other, How Can We Love

Gigi Who We Have Not Seen?


“Not money,” say forgotten flea market journals—

“but that split fish multiplied to feed thousands

proliferates like transplanted grass carp

in the Chocatawhatchee River.”

Loose stuck pages and you will have not one

but a consort of experts parked in the road

talking sideways through driver side windows,

saying you know,

only you know where to go next.


Copyright © 2015 by Amy Wright.




John John’s Nailing a Styx Riff on his Stratocaster


Sometimes John John’s not available

to bring ginger ale when Avery’s feverish

on the sofa. Tough break, but she hardscrabbles over it,

knuckle-dusts yellow pillowcases into the headboard

grunting. The tendony roughneck trims trees shirtless,

tan as outlaws, tough as jerky. She kicks rocks,

pushes pins, but he mewls from the back bedroom

so longingly he seems to have been there always.



Copyright © 2015 by Amy Wright.



Biography:

Amy Wright is the Nonfiction Editor of Zone 3 Press, and the author of five chapbooks. Her first full-length collection, Mudlick, is forthcoming from Brick Road in early 2016. Online excerpts of published work is available at awrightawright.com.


Visit this author's homepage at http://awrightawright.com

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