By ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTA
Fortysomething, slight of build,
he lived next door with his parents
in an Art Deco house with garden to match
and tall trees that came up to my third floor flat
from where I could touch their leaves. Squirrels
ran up and down them all day, squeaking.
By DANIEL TOBIN
Despite having no lungs and unable to breathe, the second
head displays signs of independent consciousness….
The first fiction is
I’m talking to you at all,
the more amorphous
of my own Janus head, the god
alive and compassing
what has gone and what
is coming, though
which is which is
hard to say. Did I say
my own? I meant ours, my
sister twin, the comelier
By ILAN STAVANS and TERESA VILLEGAS
Un pájaro puso a su dueño en una jaula. “Nuestros papeles se han invertido”, dijo el pájaro. “¡Quiero que cantes!” El dueño se quejó: “Pero yo no sé cantar”. “No importa”, gritó el pájaro. El dueño silbó pero claramente no tenía ningún ritmo. “Prefiero que bailes ante mí”. El dueño bailó sin ninguna gracia. El pájaro se sintió desilusionado. “De cualquier manera te mantendré en la jaula”. Sin embargo, una hora más tarde el pájaro estaba del todo aburrido. “No me había dado cuenta que tener una mascota es como estar en la cárcel. En la medida que controlamos a los demás ellos también nos controlan a nosotros”.
By STEPHEN HAVEN
Each evening my half-coon hound dog buries her snout
In her foul dish then comes up singing, moans, complains
About her condition, until I hook her up, let her shit
And piss among the graves—who’s watching, anyway?—
The groundskeepers all home by then, their evening shows
Just flickering, the trees along the forested edge
Leaning as always toward distant centuries.
By DANIEL TOBIN
It could be on a card, tucked away somewhere buried
In a drawer under tools, the keys to doors
Left long behind, folded like a phone number
Into the black book of forgotten friends—the name
By HOLLIE HARDY
Come home from a Tupperware party.
Look out across the lake and imagine the feel of your tongue
against the truth.
Prevent the neighbor’s dog from barking.
Try to find the unselfconsciously erotic person hiding within.
By ELIZABETH HAZEN
Mountains rise beyond the Laundromat
like ochre waves about to crash; our father,
armed with tools and pack, tracks the rocks
without a map. Here, the Laundromat is all
in a strip of vacancies; for miles, nothing
but dirt, dust, outcrop, sky. Our mother gives
From Spider In A Tree
By SUSAN STINSON
Elisha Hawley turned nine years old six weeks after his father had laid violent hands on himself and cut his own throat. Rebekah, Elisha’s mother, made apple flummey seasoned with cinnamon and ginger for breakfast and let him have the last of the bacon with pea soup for supper. She made doughnuts, despite the heat, and let him lead the evening prayer, even though his older brother Joseph mouthed a silent gobble gobble gobble as Elisha stammered over the verse. Life was rising as loss burrowed in. Elisha wanted to snicker at Joseph, or weep with relief that his brother was trying to be funny, but he swallowed all that and sounded out the scripture more loudly, evenabomination, which he didn’t know how to say. Rebekah fixed her eyes on Joseph as Elisha mangled the vowels, then gave them each half a doughnut and a sip of cider before bed.
By HOLLIE HARDY
The first thing you need to know is that the tracheotomy
is an act of desperation and/or violence that should only be
committed when there is no other option.
SOME CIRCUMSTANCES WHEN IT MIGHT BE NECESSARY TO PERFORM A TRACHEOTOMY:
By NATHANIEL PERRY
On rainy days the place seems smaller,
acres still ringed and shrouded by trees,
but the sky is closer, like something landing.
I know you’d like to ask me—please
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Celebrating 15 Years