September 2021
In this issue
Contents
The Garden Spy: A Diptych
The Garden Spy is from Aamer Hussein’s anthology, Restless. The book is a collage of fugitive fictions, reminiscences of friends, and personal essays which, when read in sequence, offer an unofficial picture of one writer’s private and public lives.
Museum: A Collection of Four Works
A collection of four works of flash fiction presented in the style of four works from a museum.
The Night Jumpers
The moonlight shined on your brown hair, wet and wavy from the sandy river’s flow. My toes clung to the bark underneath my feet, and..
Saving Elmore James
A thin line sometimes is all that separates genius from insanity. A person with a gift for music is called a prodigy, while the person..
A Wonderful World
Sarah giggled as Ian breathed on her neck. “I forgot about how passionate you are. It’s like we’re teenagers all over again.” “We shouldn’t have..
Lines Before an Iron Bedframe, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum: A Collection of Four Poems
1 The bar with the U-shaped clampsto lock the prisoner’s feetstill lies on a bedframe wherea sleeper like me always assumesthe freedom of my legs..
A Cookbook
Friday Night, the stillness, the madnessUnder the purplish sky Wear a pink blouse, come to a deserted gardenFireflies might come but you should not expect itFocus..
Informed by Treasure Hunt for Formal Poetry/Properties?
(Blue Light/Sleeper) Present a fact, simple, hard, felt, like a rock, guttural- E.g. #1: heaving, fat-skinned, swamp (Muck Badger) #2: I drink live fire,..
Learning to Talk
I grew up in a home of whisperswhere talking took place at the table.My family sat in an “L”and eyes only met peripherally Our gaze..
The Deep North
Only now can you walk a roadinto distant country, past a shrinecarved into the face of a mountain,above a forest of alpine green.Abandon this kitchen,..
The Day Marilyn Died
In the basement, I was singing along with Pat Boone’s “Love Letters in the Sand.” I had loose slacks on because, if I wore jeans,..
Jigsaw Afternoons
My neighbors do puzzlesin the common room.They do the fringes firstpiece by piecemulti colored housescastles on mountainsslide into placethose imaginary childhoods,the colors too bright.A little..
Poem #30
A moth landed on my lipsAnd kissed meI turned into a skyscraper, a rose A rose is a fire engineThe street is a cup of..