Yana Rial

Madrugada

Another cough syrup night,
eve of an exam.
dark palms swaying through the open window,
a distant dog barks.

Hurtling in a rickety taxi
through sleeping streets
under dusty lamps,
to heavy farewells and another country.

Denny's, eggs and wilted toast
weary faces,
languid cops behind newspapers,
slow stirrings in the kitchen.

Madrugada - a word you taught me,
along with foreign places on a map,
for a time of day,
the darkest hours
when fantasies awaken,
and possiblities abound,
before the first cold light of reality arrives.

CP

Yana Rial writes about people and places and things in between. Her most recent poems have been published in the Mastodon Dentist.

Ivan Jenson

American Dreamer

years later
he would see her again
on the Broadway stage
and he would remember
that they once kissed
on the fire escape of
a loft party
so that is what became of her

after the show he walked
through Times Square
and he felt the false
hope of the bright lights
headed home
to his dump in the
East Village
pulled out his couch bed
and had himself
an American dream
and that is what became of him

CP

Born in LA, Ivan Jenson was a prodigy in poetry and art. He moved to New York City where he received recognition and praise for his bold Pop Art. His Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and he has sold several works at Christie's New York. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Word Riot, Hidden City Quarterly, Thoughtsmith, Viral Cat, Poetic Desperation, and Bread & Circuses, among others.

Elisha Webster Emerson

Walking the Ocean

She fled between shout and scream, slamming the screen door, my words shredding like paper in the small crisscrosses after her. She said she'd be at the beach thinking things out, but what I see as "thinking things out" is meeting him, the cause of this, that 21-year-old predator, who isn't satisfied with other 21-year-olds, and finds it necessary to woo my 16-year-old daughter. I am her father. I am obliged to loathe the kind that he is—the kind that I was.

The door rattles and where she stood becomes substantial with emptiness, gaping and recalcitrant. I imagine what her mother would say. You get her for one summer, and you can't even handle that.

I imagine her, my daughter, kissing him just to spite me, getting pregnant, blaming me and the childhood trauma I inflicted.

The lack of a father figure, she'd say, tossing her head and clucking her tongue. They'd all cluck their tongues: her mother, her mother's husband, her psychologist, my psychologist, the goddamn pizza boy my daughter just plowed on her way out the door—cheese, crust, and pepperoni all over the sidewalk.

"For dry cleaning," I say and slip him a fifty.

Maybe it's my duty as her father, my penance for not being there the first time she fell off her bike, the first time she fell off her good judgment in love, but I'm here now, and by god, I'll be damned if I get a phone call tomorrow from her mother. Brittney called me last night. Maybe it'd be better if she came home.

I grab a sweater on my way out.

I find her several yards from the rocks, her footprints scattered like teardrops in the white sand.

Distance makes her bird-like, small, and perched, arms clutching her knees. The wind lifts the dusk and tosses it over our heads. It snarls in her hair. The sky twinkles, a cautious medium between pink and blue. It electrifies her silhouette and I am suddenly very shy.

She is my daughter, I say to myself with assertive shoulders and chin, but she is so small and so big all at once. She fills the space between air and salt and semen and love, regret and grief.

I walk the vanishing water line and stare towards the horizon, contemplating what I hope looks like authoritative discipline. I'm sorry, Orion whispers.

I catch her looking, and I smile in a vague sort of way—at her, at myself, at the beach as a whole. She's shivering. I'm glad I grabbed a sweater. I wring it until my knuckles blanch moon white.

She marks quiet spirals in the sand, reminding me of the day she was born and the down that spiraled in wispy swirls on her head, the spirals of skin that swallowed her pinky finger and thumb, the spirals her shriveled fists made in the air.

The sound of the ocean flipping over itself startles me closer and I look up to see her just under my nose. "Hey," I say, "can I sit down?"

She nods, sweeping the spirals away into the palm of her hand. I thank her and I sit.

CP

Elisha Webster Emerson's work can be found in On the Premises, All Things Girl, and Clever Magazine. She lives on the North Carolina Outer Banks with her small family where she eats too much sugar and flies trick kites. Visit her at her website: My Inconvenient Body.

Barbara Dalton

Tadpole

I wrote a poem and was asked
to read it to the class.
I stood proud and nervous:

Tadpole

I put some water in a bowl

In this I put a tadpole

He squirmed and squiggled

But couldn’t get out

So all he did was swim about

He dropped his tail behind a log

And turned himself

Into a frog.

I glanced up to stifled giggles.
Okay, I thought, they like it,
but it isn’t supposed to be that funny.
A kid from the back row
pointed toward my knees.

Hot blood scorched my cheeks.
The belt I'd tied so tightly around my waist
was way too big and my hand-me-down skirt
had hiked up, exposing
underwear and bare thighs.

I’ve feared public speaking ever since.

CP

Barbara Dalton is a professional artist who loves to write. Born in Boston, she works in her studio above a barn and lives on a farm with her cat, Rufus, in Southern Michigan. She is currently working on her first novel, Lost in Place. Her media is 'found object' art and she displays her work in various galleries across the country.

Elizabeth Westmark

A Bed for Drunken Robins

Wheat, rye and oats grow tall in this warm, wet spring. Seed heads are ripe. Turkey hens troll, parting the pale green stalks.

I stand at the window, squinting into birder’s binoculars, and suck in my breath as dozens of indigo buntings light on the stalks, riding them slowly to the ground.

We have been together so long you are taking on my arthritic fingers and I am flirting with your gastrointestinal quirks.

I stand at the window and think about the day we met. When did you pull me through the keyhole of my self-locked room? When did my walls fall?

There were those heady, love-at-first-sight nights and days in a secret room at the beach; but we were grown-ups. Either of us could have walked away.

I stand at the window as morning sun brings a flock of red-breasted robins to feast on the seeds.

Was it when we talked through nights and days in that serious space between lives, the collision of worlds where estranged spouses and grown children orbited us like lost planets; while houses, furniture, picture albums of family trips, linens, china, brass mirrors, town friends and all the hip, cool loneliness of my femme fatale days thrashed and crashed around us in the hermetically sealed bubble we drew around ourselves?

Or was it when you drew letters with your finger on my hand, speaking your fear that our age difference would widen, in time?

I stand at the window, knowing that the grass field will wither and the birds will fly on until at last they rest.

One day, shortly after we met, you told me about the robins in your mother’s chinaberry tree, the robins drunk from eating fermented berries, falling like Friday night workmen from branch to ground, sanguine cats lurking nearby with bibs on, washing their paws. You, fierce lone boy, fetched shoeboxes from your mother’s closet and tenderly laid the drunken robins side by side, head to head, put them on the screened porch to sleep it off, and then returned them outdoors to fly.

That was the day my walls, my infinite walls, surrendered.

I turn from the window, retracing my steps to our bedroom’s cool, dark cave. Your steady breath never changes, but your wise foot inchworms sidewise under the covers.

We dream, we feast, and together we will ride the tall seed heads down into the knowing ground.

—An earlier version appeared in The Elder Storytelling Place, 2008

CP

Elizabeth Westmark's essays and stories have appeared in Brevity, The Emerald Coast Review XIV, Dead Mule, Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal, The Elder Storytelling Place, among others. She lives in Pensacola, Florida, in a Longleaf pine preserve with her husband and chocolate Lab, where she blogs regularly at Switched At Birth.

Nancy Calhoun

Autopsy Song

When I die
and they cut the “Y”
to determine why
they will clearly see
in the deep cavity
that used to be me
nothing but music.

Where organs belong
there is only song.
The notes will spill out,
bounce and roll about
the sterile floor.

arias
melodies
harmonies
symphonies

The music pumped
my rhythmic blood
and filled my tuneful veins
melody washing like a flood
sang to me in the night.
the songs will survive me
and remain in flight
in lyrical convergence
with all I ever loved

my death will have loosed
my opus for all time
and I will be known

at last.

CP

Nancy Calhoun recently retired from corporate America. She has also sung opera part-time (quite well known in places no one has ever heard of). She lives in a small ranch town in southeast Arizona, in a home nestled in grasslands on a hill surrounded by mountains. Its beauty inspires her every day as she writes by the window, with opera playing on her Ipod.

Angela Carlton

In This Light

Before Jack broke the news to me, I was almost relaxed. He was massaging my foot in his warm hands. We'd been coworkers, dear friends for years. His divorce was now final.

“Remember that business conference I attended weeks ago?” he asked, in his raspy Texas drawl.

“In San Diego” I said, remaining calm about the fact that his hands were on me.

“Yes, I took pictures of the city for you!”

“Really?”

“Hold on,” he said, stopping my massage to hand me his shiny gift bag. “I framed a black and white shot of the skyline for your desk!”

“Wow, Jack.”

“This colorless image is best,” he said. “It’s serene.”

“This picture’s great!”

“Also I came to tell…guess you should know some things about the trip.”

“What’s the scoop?” I said, playfully, happy to see him here in my apartment instead of our dull office. Secretly, I had baked three-cheese lasagna and bought a bottle of Woodbridge Merlot hoping he'd stay for dinner.

He was stroking my foot again, rubbing it, since I was known to complain about high-heels and the damage done. Jack was kneading my ankles and calves now with tremendous effort.

“Liz, about the trip…”

“Yes,”

“The thing is, something did happen.”

"Okay." I laughed, but inside I felt something tighten.

"I mean...something with Tom."

“What?”

“Something happened between me and Tom.” It was then that I noticed his voice sounded a bit higher.

“I'm not sure I understand...”

“We were physical, Liz. Is that so wrong?” He was staring at me with no expression. I realized something inside was spinning; everything was turning churning turning. I couldn't feel my foot or calf or his hands or hear his sugary voice, nothing, nothing. Everything was a blur.

Later, when he was outside under the glow of the street lamp, I thought about asking him, why-why-why but realized that, regardless of his answer, there would be no comfort, none.

“You look so damn beautiful in this light,” he said, as he rubbed his soft finger over my ear. He stalled for a few moments then headed toward his car. I watched him move under a sheet of mist that was falling, trying to be rain.

“Wait,” he shouted, turning with great enthusiasm. And in that moment, I thought I caught a glimpse of the way he must have looked as a little boy: floppy hair with light freckles on his nose, those root-beer eyes. “I want a picture of you tonight!”

“Jack,” I said with irritation, for a steady rain had begun. “I think you missed your calling as a photographer.” I wanted to scamper off, hide, as he held his camera phone up to the street lamp positioning things exactly right for the best shot.

“Wow,” he said, floating my way, “look,” his finger brushed my arm. He stared at me with his big, clear eyes and dark lashes. I fell into him, my nose pressing against him, smelling the musty-sweet scent that would stay with me until I decided to shower.

The picture his phone revealed was haunting, the image of a stranger with wet hair and smeared make-up, a woman shrinking, with a sad desperate look in her eye.

CP

Angela Carlton's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fiction at Work, Every Day Fiction, Longstoryshort, Pindeldyboz, The Dead Mule, among others.

John Grey

THE GIANTS IN THE FAMILY

So when was the first time I started looking
down on the old man and not up to
him. Maybe it was when I got my driver's
license, and then my own car, and even
though I was still at home, I felt like
I was renting, kept my own hours, even
brought a girl up to my room though
just to admire my heavy metal albums.
Even though he was still an inch or two
taller than me, I made up the difference by
staying out until the early hours of the morning,
grabbing a beer from the refrigerator just like
he did, buying my own clothes, the last of which
ensured my mother was no longer my mother.
I even dared have an opinion on politics
different than his own. And I found a job
with better prospects than... that's the
joke of course. He never had a job
with prospects. I've heard the kids of
immigrants talk about how each generation
paves the way for the next. He didn't
pave the way for me however. He just
was, like the television just was, especially
with him plunked down in front of it. Not that
I didn't love him of course. But then I found
someone else to love, a whole world of passion
beyond my parents' snore-filled sleep and languid
conversation. And now she's pregnant. And he'll be
a grandfather, outsized for the second time. And I'll
likely go the same way when my child grows. But
for now, I'll just get married, buy a house, stay home
nights, pay off a mortgage. Or I could just shrink,
whichever comes the soonest.


CP

John Grey has been published recently in the Georgetown Review, Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal, with work upcoming in Poetry East and The Pinch.

Steve Meador

Sign Language

There was never a conversation with Susie,
no grunted words slung from a passing swing
or breathless banter rolled from the high
end of the teeter-totter.

There is no voice to recall, only a plaid dress
draped over a white blouse. The same dress worn
day after day, which murmured its own words
beneath the dark tongue of her ponytail.

Near the end of the year, after I had pissed
my pants because someone hadn’t flipped
the red circle hanging on the restroom door
to green, Susie finally had something to say.

I looked across two aisles and she pointed
her finger at me, then touched it to the corner
of her eye. She repeated the motions. Slowly
spreading her legs she lowered the finger
and aimed it between them, at the yellow panties.

I have never read Robert Fulghum’s book,
but I damn-well know that he didn't learn
everything in kindergarten

—From Throwing Percy from the Cherry Tree

CP

Steve Meador’s book, Throwing Percy from the Cherry Tree, was nominated for a National Book Award and a Pulitzer. His poetry is widely published and appears in Prism Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, Quicksilver, among others. He has several Pushcart nominations.

Ruth Douillette

—Photo by Ruth Douillette

Dinnertime Waltz

Strains of music filled the room, wrapping her in sensuous sound. She slipped into his waiting arms, and stepped left to his right, back to his forward, around and around. The melody tied them together—his fingers pressed her to him, his hand warm on her back—they skimmed the floor as one person.

She inhaled the soapy scent of his neck as she relaxed her cheek against his chest. When she lifted her eyes to his soft gaze, he lowered his face until his lips met hers. They danced more slowly, heedless of the music until they simply swayed in place, holding each other close.

She stepped back, and clasping his hand pulled him toward the staircase. She felt his eyes on her, as warm as his hands had been, and warmth spread through her body.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

At the harsh electronic sound she jolted upright.

"Mom! The meatloaf is done. The stove's buzzing."

She pushed herself from the chair and turned down the CD player.

"Susie, tell Daddy and Brian to wash up. Set the table for me, will you?"

Before slicing the meatloaf, she walked back to the living room to get her wine glass. She drained the last swallow and stuck the glass in the dishwasher.

"Dinner's ready. Come and get it."

CP

Ruth Douillette is a freelance writer and photographer. She's an associate editor at the Internet Review of Books and blogs at Upstream and Down.

Rebecca Gaffron

Demons

Embrace your demons,
if they’re the only ones
who bothered to stick it out for the long haul.
But even as their sturdy arms
cradle your broken self,
remember they take another piece each time.

And they will never make you whole.

CP

Rebecca Gaffron is a mother, former teacher and writer who recently traded the lush valleys and rolling hills of her native central Pennsylvania for a wind-swept barn in Britain. Her work has appeared in The Cynic, The Salt River Review, SNReview, Literary Tonic, Sniplits, among others.

Gary Presley

God's Little Cabbages

I hear the tinkle of the miniature wind-chime draped from the front door, and so I do not jump when my wife’s familiar voice echoes into the kitchen.

"I smell God's little cabbages."

It is two o'clock. My wife always walks home for lunch when the days are pleasant.

"I felt like eating something green," I say as she walks into the kitchen.

She will understand. Food is color. Food is fragrance. Food feeds more than the belly. She will understand, but she will reject my offer to share the Brussels sprouts. Wholeheartedly. Unequivocally. And in spite of my intuition they are God's little cabbages and worthy our culinary homage.

She dislikes the musty odor as Brussels sprouts cook. She thinks they fade to the same vile green color common to institutional wall paint. I sometimes offer a sample from my plateful, but she refuses to spear one and savor the texture of a leafy globe, a soft noncrunchy firmness that floods the mouth with earth tones. I cannot tempt her.

I am no longer surprised. She rarely changes her mind about what she likes and doesn't like to eat, but she sees no irony when she refuses to swallow the idea that a man she labels a "rigid control freak" has decided in his sixth decade he will no longer eat meat and announces a preference for spaghetti as breakfast and popcorn as supper.

Today I've chopped a sweet Vidalia onion and added it to the pound of Brussels sprouts in the steamer. When done, I'll mix in a can of butter beans. Add a splash of soy sauce, a dash of Tabasco, and the dish will provide two meals. For me. Not for her.

"I know you don't want any,” I say. “What sounds good?"

"No, that's okay,” she replies. “I'll find something."

She slouches, hip akimbo, peering into the refrigerator. "I think I'll scramble some eggs."

Ah, pre-chicken. I should have known. For the last month, she has eaten eggs or corn-on-the-cob every day, and this afternoon we have no corn.

I reach for the griddle and light the burner for her. She's moved to the sink to rinse out a coffee cup, and I hear the snap-split behind me as she cracks two eggs into it. I search the refrigerator for butter—the griddle must swim in butter or she will insist the eggs are dry and tasteless—and knife a tablespoon's worth onto the cast iron.

The butter begins to lose its shape, sinks and melts into iron black surface, oils and solids separating, energy dissipating as the bubbles flicker about, impatiently awaiting the eggs.

Butter. How like us, I think. My wife and I are a mixture of solids and oils, a cool chemistry of elements, sweet and nourishing.

And iron, like the griddle. Holding inside the heat that might melt us into incompatibility.

CP

Gary Presley is an essayist whose memoir, SEVEN WHEELCHAIRS: A Life beyond Polio, was published October 2008 by the University of Iowa Press. Find links to his other work at: http://www.garypresley.com

Stacey Dye

Immeasurable

The rhythm of life’s
give and take can’t be
measured like a metronome
evenly ticking off beats to
classical music.

Nor can it be measured
like a tug of war, the rope
of human kindness pulled
so taut that neither side
benefits from the other.

Rather it should be measured
like two children sharing a swing,
eager to push the other to new heights
not keeping count.

CP

Stacey Dye has been writing poetry since she was a teenager. She also writes radio and television copy and does voice-overs at a local cable TV station. She is a member of the Internet Writing Workshop and Wild Poetry Forum.

Ivan Jenson

Supermarket Superstar

discovered in a supermarket
shopping for
deodorant
a new brush
and a candy bar
spotted by a scout
for the contours of
your amazing face
and promptly
signed to a contract
to appear
in an ad for
Maybelline
this has happened
but it is much
more likely
that you
will be lovingly
eyed by a stock boy
and never
even know it

CP

Born in LA, Ivan Jenson was a prodigy in poetry and art. He moved to New York City where he received recognition and praise for his bold Pop Art. His Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and he has sold several works at Christie's New York. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Word Riot, Hidden City Quarterly, Thoughtsmith, Viral Cat, Poetic Desperation, and Bread & Circuses, among others.

Jayne Pupek

DINNER PARTY

The beautiful tuna had been cooked to dry dullness, and the bitter baby bok choy was alarmingly dissonant with the sauce.
—Patricia Greathouse, Santa Fe New Mexican, 4 August 2006

Our guests arrive early, catching us mid-quarrel.
You mix drinks, adding lime juice to tomato puree,
your twist on a Bloody Mary. Everyone raves,
ignoring your mismatched socks, forgiving
your five o'clock shadow. Cloistered in the kitchen,
I scorch the bok choy. The smell of it is bitter,
the edges, alarmingly black, match the dress
you refused to zip up my back.
I stare at the tuna steaks, darkening
on the grill. Fixated on this notion
of hatching and crosshatching, I keep
turning the meat. Zebra
stripes change into diamonds,
diamonds into fine obsidian.
Inside, the meat is pink tissue paper
and chalk. Flake, flake, I scrape away,
burnt skin, looking for the rarest parts.
On a square white plate,
the sliced fennel and radishes
make a perfect flower.
I offer these petals between each course
to cleanse our charred palettes.

—This poem first appeared in THE DIRTY NAPKIN, 2008

CP

Jayne Pupek is the author of the novel, Tomato Girl and two books of poems, Forms of Intercession and The Livelihood of Crows.

Ivan Jenson

Two of a Kind

you are standing
within my boundaries
in my comfort zone
and my personal space
you wear my shirt
we talk with shared inflection
share pet names
fave songs and weekends
this is our same ol' scene
and we are going steady
as a Norwegian cruise ship
we might one day become
sun-burnt seniors holding
hands in lazy chairs
with kids and grand kids
running around the
blue pool of time
I get this feeling
we might
just make it
till death do us part

CP

Born in LA, Ivan Jenson was a prodigy in poetry and art. He moved to New York City where he received recognition and praise for his bold Pop Art. His Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and he has sold several works at Christie's New York. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Word Riot, Hidden City Quarterly, Thoughtsmith, Viral Cat, Poetic Desperation, and Bread & Circuses, among others.