Issue 3

The Common Statement
A family friend, one of AP’s first female photojournalists, used to cover news in Florida. One day there was a kidnapping. She had a hunch that she could catch a crucial part of the action at the girl’s parents’ house, so she staked it out, waiting in the car, until the parents emerged. She captured them on film, then chased…
Dear Future Self
By SETH PERLOW Dear future self, when you read this will they have abolished the yellow light, or merely changed its function? Where I come from, we have a color for Sort-of-stop, but no way to express Sort-of-go. If you spend big on anything, spend big on shoes. This is the extent of my advice to you. Where I come…
Boxwood
By KATHERINE HILL The voice came from a white utility van parked alongside the campus tennis courts. “Hey baby,” it said, in the sort of voice that comes from vans. Right away, I knew it was the skirt. I tugged at it and looked all around—across the empty student parking lot where I sometimes rollerbladed; at the drab, squashed little dorm…
Pierre
By ISHION HUTCHINSON It was a boy named Pierre Powell that was in charge of the atlas in the cabinet. He also ended days by shaking the iron bell from principal William’s window, a work we grudged him for very little; what cut our cores twice a week and we had to endure, was him being summoned to fetch the…
A Farther Shore
By ISHION HUTCHINSON i By the shadowless, lion-bluff of Pigeon Island, you have gone swimming, a clear afternoon, children’s faint play noise ring in the yard, a hyphened church school near century old cafés, their serial zinc titles in comic icons: ICE CREAM AND OTHER SUPPLIES, scythed your sides with laughter, but they vanish near the beach stretch the piratical hoteliers’…
Dear Johnny, In Your Last Letter
By ANGELA VERONICA WONG Dear Johnny, In your last letter, you requested . Take my photograph down, you wrote. Disremember. Yesterday M started talking. All at once, as if inside, she had alphabets that ached to break out. We were and relieved. We it would never happen. Johnny, the tomato plant takes water as if in love, and a map…
It Can Feel Amazing to Be Targeted by a Narcissist
By ANGELA VERONICA WONG, AMY LAWLESS Let’s just see if it fits, and your voice blurred, your hand brushing away mine, me laughing because seriously who says that? I flashed out of my body picturing you saying this to other girls, and laughed again. Those are words that can only be said late at night in an outer borough, while…
The Window
By MIGUEL-ANGEL ZAPATA I’m going to build a window in the middle of the street in order to not feel lonely. I will plant a tree in the middle of the street, and it will grow to the astonishment of the passersby. I’ll raise birds that will never flit to other trees, and they will remain perched and chirping to…
Borges
By MIGUEL-ANGEL ZAPATA Which of the two writes the poem? He who sleeps waking with the cypresses of India or you who live enamored of the streets of Buenos Aires  Which of the two writes the poem? He who teaches classes and loves his students or he who rides a bicycle through Long Island parks without thinking of coming back…
My Parrot Has Died
By MIGUEL-ANGEL ZAPATA My parrot has died in a clinic in Huntington. His life was a miracle He was the envy of all the birds in the neighborhood. For five years he sang a piece by Boccherini and knew a couple Mexican pop songs by heart. When he got excited he whistled at the girls who passed by my house.…
New Hampshire Spring
By CYNTHIA HOGUE I. A whooshing passed over us— and perched on a branch—something see-sawed in the bright dark air, sailed the clearing sharp- eyed through pole pine sapling, beech, maple and hemlock   Blake says are threatened beyond saving: “Once we were too far north to worry about infestations but now we must, I guess. Earth’s breath is fast as…
Altars and Flags
By KAREN CHASE My windowsill, that skinny altar above the kitchen sink, helps me combine death with wind, and air with birth— fire, water, time, dirt.  Holy marble tag sale mule that looks Greek, Holy fishing lure from Race Point, Holy viburnum leaf. 3 holy photos of my father and me, Holy wishbone, Masada rock, Menemsha stone, Holy tin of pimenton,…
Cleveland
By AVRAM KLINE thday tadashi was driving thcorolla, four menonites showed up with signs that said contemporary opinion re our use of color is mixed, come try thmeatloaf & in this anabab booth ye may unto all preach thgospel & eat this meatloaf among among among, & tadashi sat in thbooth & admired thbonneted waitress who said to him huldrych…
Alphabet of Scratches
By NORMAN LOCK from Alphabets of Desire & Sorrow: A Book of Imaginary Colophons At St. Mary Bethlehem (which the world calls Bedlam), Jeremy Watt, shut up for insanity, discovered in a maze of scratches scribed by others’ lunatic hands an alphabet with which he might invoke things not apparent to the eye. So it was that on a…
Alphabet of Torment
By NORMAN LOCK Fluent in the languages of unnatural death, Luis Boscán set down on thick paper the confessions of the Spanish damned while, outside the cruel chamber furnished ingeniously with instruments of torment, the fountains of Seville produced liquid acanthus leaves to the sound of castanets. Had he been otherwise than agony’s faithful…
Love Songs in Winter
By TESS TAYLOR I. At the end of the pier, light on a rocking boat. We walked away from land and our rented cottage. Beneath us the planks groaned. I heard myself speaking love words: Vowels floated over the smack-putt of water: We went on walking. There was nothing to do but approach. II. By the river on the artificial…
Another Woman I Loved
By CURTIS BAUER This was bitter—the rain pouring down on us, the too early risers, waiting in line outside the National Portrait Gallery. Flood- like; movie-like (Why would you want to live there? my brother asked. It’s always raining); and just like the movies, I had an umbrella and she didn’t, she had looks, and I didn’t, wanted to practice…
Salt
By JANE SATTERFIELD Not apocrypha, as in Scipio salting the Carthaginian fields, a curse on re-inhabitation; not the blacklisted feature nor Jagger’s salute to the working man, but that which purifies, preserves, seals a bargain, signifies wisdom, intelligence, and virility—. Or secrets salted away, as in the ambition a friend says she quickly learned to kiss goodbye given that whole…
Family of Strangers
By JANE SATTERFIELD for Deborah Tall (1951—2006) Baltimore, 2006  Not cool for September so we walked slowly, slowly to cross the still-green campus gold-struck in morning’s light. That’s the kind of phrase I’d have used, years ago, an undergrad arriving in town the same year that you’d left. That morning, though, no matter how it looked, the light seemed…
Girl Scouts Visit the FBI, circa 1975
By JANE SATTERFIELD Fox’s series the X-Files starred David Duchovny and Gillian  Anderson as FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully  Lights fade on this snow-erased suburban street as our screen flickers with roadside bombs & body count. News is another stalled front, a season past its prime. The house rattles with gale-force winds & Doppler radar promises more. In…
Persephone
By VICTORIA REDEL Happiness has just walked into the room and I don’t know how he looks to you but to me he’s wearing the t-shirt you wore outside pruning the fruit tree.   When I come close—how can I not?—he smells of dirt you’ve been turning in the yard. How do I know he’s not an imposter?…
In This Island
By MICHAEL JOYCE In this island human corpses are not buried and do not putrify,   but are placed in the open and remain without corruption. Here men see with some wonder and recognize their grandfathers,  great-grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers,   and a long line of ancestors.  —Topographia Hiberniae, Giraldus Cambrensis (1220)   I have seen them in other guises,…
On and Off the Map
By MICHAEL KELLY Maps are one way humans make sense of their environment. In this age of Google Earth, where a few mouse clicks call up a satellite image of almost any inch of the globe, it can be difficult to imagine a time when maps were often based as much on hearsay and guesswork as scientific surveying. Of the…
Double Life
By STEPHEN O'CONNOR 1. I was twelve when my family shared a big gray house on Fire Island with the McKennas. The house was at the end of a series of narrow boardwalks, just over a small dune from the ocean, which was easily visible from our veranda. I believe the house also had a sundeck off of one of…
The Amazing Discovery and Natural History of Carslbad Caverns
By ROBIN MCLEAN That was Mike hanging in the brass chandelier. He was Tarzan with a crew cut and farm boy grin, swinging upside down. Hilarious. Mel could get Mike to do anything. The women were laughing their heads off at Mike, mostly South of the Border girls, in their reds, blues, and pinks. They pointed pretty painted fingers up…
The Stinker
By GABRIEL BROWNSTEIN 1. The bus doors opened and the kids tumbled out. Jesus, they were terrifying. Sunburned, long-legged, mosquito-bitten, and hood-eyed, all of them in camp T-shirts with the signatures of friends and bunkmates, and the older girls with the signatures on their T-shirts bumping over the lines of their bra-straps. The wind came off the Hudson. Play it cool,…
Meeting Julie Christie at the Flower Booth at the Sunday Ojai Farmers' Market, August 3, 2003
By JOCK DOUBLEDAY from The Ridiculous American Julie stands alone looking at a cornucopia of flowers. She is quite a bit shorter than one would imagine, and younger looking too, very fit, with dark brown bangs, tastefully blonde-streaked, fringing her sunglasses. She wears old green cotton pants (cargo pants?) and looks nothing like a movie star.  Jock: Are…
A Skimpy Primer on Skateboard Wheels
By BRET ANTHONY JOHNSTON They used to be made of clay and metal; they were often salvaged from roller skates. Now they’re made of urethane. They come in different sizes, densities, and colors. The latter is pretty much just aesthetics, but the first two criteria are important.Taller and wider wheels are typically used for skating transition—ramps, bowls, and parks. Smaller, thinner…
Tourist Snapshots
By ROLF POTTS Thailand, 2001 1. In the fall of 2001, while I was living in the south Thailand border town of Ranong, I had a brief love affair with an Australian woman named Eva. I first met her on the swimming-pool veranda of the aging hotel where I was renting a studio for $150 a month. Travelers would occasionally…
Born Still
By MANOHAR SHETTY You will only be heard When the noise Has died down And the air so clear You can hear The soundless Soundtrack of bats, The cutting edge In a swaying blade of grass, The memoirs of elephants, The beat of a moth’s wing In a distant whirlwind, The snap of a…
Carried Forward
By MANOHAR SHETTY Beyond Furniture & Fixtures, Fixed Assets incl of Plant & Machinery, Goodwill incl Of Green Donation & Tree Trimming Vehicle, Gross Profits, R&D on WMD Incl of Hospitality, Sundries (in million) As Incentives to sundry Inspectors (of Boilers) & Miscellaneous Agents Incl of Undercover, And an unnumbered account In the Caymans, here is an Asterisked footnote In the…
Flying and You Know He's Not Coming Down
By PETER JAY SHIPPY How can the one-man band disband? They say scads of folks cried at his Scattering. Rosa, his wife applied The first kindle to the tinder, but A nervous firefighter intervened And doused his ashes-to-ashes machine With seltzer, unsealing his fate. Now, he slides across their ceiling like A glum child tiptoeing a frozen lake, Wondering what…
Dan McGuire
By PATRICK STINE Dan hands me his list as I get off the elevator, still fifteen minutes from the start of clinic. The paper is polished and worn, having been folded twice and in and out of his wallet for half a century. There is ink from at least four ball-point pens on the page. The edges are frayed, almost…
Western Civilization
By PETER JAY SHIPPY Lucas took one of those trips That Americans of a certain rage Must take—to find themselves. In Utah Lucas found himself marooned In the wilderness, 50 miles From society, covered in flop sweat And Cheetos dust, perched on the roof Of his teenaged Pinto as it neighed A swan song. His cowed cell phone crowed: Out…
Yesterday Will Be Better
By PETER JAY SHIPPY Lucas had to work late, or else. When he left the office The stars were open And the bars were closing.   Couples held tight, like Books and page markers. He ran to the station To catch the last ride home. He was the only passenger— The last lamb in the dell. From his window the…
Occupation
By EMMA GORENBERG I do not mean to lose the coast. But the fragrant wood of the skiff, shore whining with current, as though I could hear the coil of electric lines humming with speech, the slur of ordering—and in overhearing seek to follow, or move away from, bow knifing the water and splaying it from its back, sound retreating fathoms…
May 5—The Dow Closes Down 8410
By SUSAN BRIANTE How did the fall begin? With touch? With naming? You were guidebook,  misstep. You were hiking in Japan. You were thought, memory, dirt. You  were the unmailed text. I found a letter from Charles Darwin in which h e wrote of “pelargonium” (fr. the genus geranium) often blended with rose scent. I read a poem by William Carlos Williams where…
May 17—The Down Closes Up 10625
By SUSAN BRIANTE Farid says he wants to be a family, he adds, by which I mean I don’t want you to die.  Arizona gnaws at the constitution. I want to tell him that since I was a child I have dreamed of feeling like this, by which I mean safe. Instead we talk about the baby. She will cry a…
October 29—The Dow Closes Down 11118
By SUSAN BRIANTE We want to remember our dead, make an altar, bring our daughter to the photograph trace a chin here, for good luck, palm her grandmother’s hair, she doesn’t know who she is yet (trick or treat?) how can she dress up like a lion, doctor, fish, be stitches in the middle of my book sunset reflecting off windows…
Excerpts from the King
By BEN MAZER xv No mystery if the cats gather as this strange encounter should have come to have emblematized the city: for of all those who passed and paid homage to their peer only you remained, after the room was clear. The way is unsteady, past the museum of thoughts that jostle the aftergoers after midnight, but the…