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