Summer 2015 “Waltzing out of it, in oyster silk” / Langdon House Katie Hogan My sleeves are an open tin. I mean it like it is — like it sounds. You wouldn’t even recognize me: opera-length, quellazaire held like a spear held like a periscope. Poetry sound of chromosomes Jennifer MacBain-Stephens No matter how hard one tries to expel nomenclature, the minor keys linger in all-night gas stations. Poetry In sleep, an event must make our forgetting Jane Lewty Elsewhere I was a daughter, I was a mother, I was either/or. Poetry The Way Your Husband Walks Beside You Sophia Galifianakis The doctor asks, were you blue as death or infancy? Metal on flame and bearing it or mad, embracing it, I say. Without praise. Poetry Ink-stone Loretta Oleck you are a brush of calligraphy sweeping designs across my belly ink splattering circles and symbols like a string of black lipped oyster pearls strewn between my thighs Poetry I Don’t Understand a Thing About Family Heirlooms Meg Eden Kuyatt She holds it out for me to touch, and as if I’m unsure that the death is fully removed from that chain, I touch it briefly, ready to wash my hands. The metal is cold like a body. Poetry My Sister’s Hands / My Son Confesses Madelyn Garner Thickened calluses. One finger crippled to quarter moon, and the index, childhood impaled, bearing jagged scars. Poetry 10 Ways to Get Her Denise Duhamel + Julie Marie Wade You should ask yourself: do you really want to get a woman like this? Do you really want to get/win her? Do you really want to get/understand her? If you are the type of person who likes the status quo, she will soon frustrate you. If you like dainty and domestic, you’d best look elsewhere. Hers is a wild spirit—any attempts to help/control/change her will end in a mess. If you are a fan of Pygmalion, do not mistake her for Eliza Doolittle. Nonfiction Death of the Little Self Molly Sutton Kiefer There are no I’s in these poems / there are only eyes in these poems. My gaze is exact, though my reliance is on another layer, another fold—I take these stories from the evening news, from the digital newspaper reports. My images come through a glass lens, the distance of mechanics complete: camera’s wandering eye, the flattened landscape of a monitor. I think, over and over: This isn’t my story to tell. Nonfiction Boob Party Jenny A. Burkholder Immediately, I knew I had made the wrong choice. My own need for transparency and truthfulness had not taken into consideration their potential for horror, shock, disgust, and confusion. My younger daughter cried and wanted to snuggle her head in my lap. My older daughter looked absently around the room. There was a long silence, punctuated only by my younger daughter’s whimpers. This was beyond their comprehension, beyond their level of understanding. I had crossed the line, shown them a monster. Nonfiction Forgiveness / Hurry, Love Melanie Figg Did you think your hand could rearrange the world with no consequence? That I’m just some damn doll, some pupa, sold on not eating? Poetry The Writer’s Wife carly gates How must she have felt, their second child thrashing inside of her—did she already agree with him that her happiness lay in sleep? In dreaming of lying in some other room, of a less fickle moon? Poetry Requiem / Take Your Daughter to Work Michelle Brown Later that Crayola morning, Wonder Woman coloring book and a stack of DC Comics spread across the black soapstone counter in her lab, her fascination with cells never quite translated when I preferred story, a woman who deflected bullets with her wrists, an Amazon island forbidden to men, a goddess religion. Poetry Emily and the Red Snow / Emily and the Threshers Stephanie Dickinson The men know the truth of twine, cut and tie, chaff and straw, the bundles shat and separated. In the yellow air visions mingle. Animal and plant. Who does the workhorse see with his broad eyes? What stops the sky from slipping off earth’s yolk? Poetry The revolution in my blood. / Foreign Aurora Masum-Javed I only asked my mother about the war once. Poetry Instructions for the Twenty-Seventh Year Caitlin Scarano Matchbox triptych: a parrot with human teeth, a man with a mouthful of blue rubies, and a faceless child drinking from a river running backwards. Poetry Via Lido and the Sky Woman Karen An-hwei Lei I look at the names of boats -- a misplaced list. Only remember the word, naught. Poetry Artist Feature: Stephen Skowron Stephen Skowron Selections of digital photography from the installation “Transmutation"—Stephen Skowron (with Stephanie Booth). Visual Art Metallic / Unicorn Motherfucker Brynne Rebele-Henry Every day is a Friday we say before the aftermath and chocolate kisses on her thighs, The rotting lemons pimped out suns that don’t orbit. Poetry to my my first boyfriend / boyfriend, Melanie Batchelor your mouth was the town i grew up in, my adolescent experiences wedged between your teeth. Poetry Endlessly Repeating Rachel Martin Slowly and deliberately, her lips began to move. Soft words fell from her mouth and were cast out to sea by the deafening sound of the ocean’s lullaby. Her eyes steadfastly held their gaze. Her strong, tanned shoulders squared off in defiance with the immensity before her. Fiction Blood Flows Upstream Lise Lacasse, J.T. Townley (translator) Don’t just stand there in the doorway. Come in! I told Suzanne you could visit because I’d like to talk to you about something. Please, Fiction The Derailment of the Mikado Dawn Newton Ten minutes before the program was scheduled to begin, the Mikado rested on its side—black, sleek, and quiet. The technician stood on a stool, leaning Fiction
“Waltzing out of it, in oyster silk” / Langdon House Katie Hogan My sleeves are an open tin. I mean it like it is — like it sounds. You wouldn’t even recognize me: opera-length, quellazaire held like a spear held like a periscope. Poetry
sound of chromosomes Jennifer MacBain-Stephens No matter how hard one tries to expel nomenclature, the minor keys linger in all-night gas stations. Poetry
In sleep, an event must make our forgetting Jane Lewty Elsewhere I was a daughter, I was a mother, I was either/or. Poetry
The Way Your Husband Walks Beside You Sophia Galifianakis The doctor asks, were you blue as death or infancy? Metal on flame and bearing it or mad, embracing it, I say. Without praise. Poetry
Ink-stone Loretta Oleck you are a brush of calligraphy sweeping designs across my belly ink splattering circles and symbols like a string of black lipped oyster pearls strewn between my thighs Poetry
I Don’t Understand a Thing About Family Heirlooms Meg Eden Kuyatt She holds it out for me to touch, and as if I’m unsure that the death is fully removed from that chain, I touch it briefly, ready to wash my hands. The metal is cold like a body. Poetry
My Sister’s Hands / My Son Confesses Madelyn Garner Thickened calluses. One finger crippled to quarter moon, and the index, childhood impaled, bearing jagged scars. Poetry
10 Ways to Get Her Denise Duhamel + Julie Marie Wade You should ask yourself: do you really want to get a woman like this? Do you really want to get/win her? Do you really want to get/understand her? If you are the type of person who likes the status quo, she will soon frustrate you. If you like dainty and domestic, you’d best look elsewhere. Hers is a wild spirit—any attempts to help/control/change her will end in a mess. If you are a fan of Pygmalion, do not mistake her for Eliza Doolittle. Nonfiction
Death of the Little Self Molly Sutton Kiefer There are no I’s in these poems / there are only eyes in these poems. My gaze is exact, though my reliance is on another layer, another fold—I take these stories from the evening news, from the digital newspaper reports. My images come through a glass lens, the distance of mechanics complete: camera’s wandering eye, the flattened landscape of a monitor. I think, over and over: This isn’t my story to tell. Nonfiction
Boob Party Jenny A. Burkholder Immediately, I knew I had made the wrong choice. My own need for transparency and truthfulness had not taken into consideration their potential for horror, shock, disgust, and confusion. My younger daughter cried and wanted to snuggle her head in my lap. My older daughter looked absently around the room. There was a long silence, punctuated only by my younger daughter’s whimpers. This was beyond their comprehension, beyond their level of understanding. I had crossed the line, shown them a monster. Nonfiction
Forgiveness / Hurry, Love Melanie Figg Did you think your hand could rearrange the world with no consequence? That I’m just some damn doll, some pupa, sold on not eating? Poetry
The Writer’s Wife carly gates How must she have felt, their second child thrashing inside of her—did she already agree with him that her happiness lay in sleep? In dreaming of lying in some other room, of a less fickle moon? Poetry
Requiem / Take Your Daughter to Work Michelle Brown Later that Crayola morning, Wonder Woman coloring book and a stack of DC Comics spread across the black soapstone counter in her lab, her fascination with cells never quite translated when I preferred story, a woman who deflected bullets with her wrists, an Amazon island forbidden to men, a goddess religion. Poetry
Emily and the Red Snow / Emily and the Threshers Stephanie Dickinson The men know the truth of twine, cut and tie, chaff and straw, the bundles shat and separated. In the yellow air visions mingle. Animal and plant. Who does the workhorse see with his broad eyes? What stops the sky from slipping off earth’s yolk? Poetry
The revolution in my blood. / Foreign Aurora Masum-Javed I only asked my mother about the war once. Poetry
Instructions for the Twenty-Seventh Year Caitlin Scarano Matchbox triptych: a parrot with human teeth, a man with a mouthful of blue rubies, and a faceless child drinking from a river running backwards. Poetry
Via Lido and the Sky Woman Karen An-hwei Lei I look at the names of boats -- a misplaced list. Only remember the word, naught. Poetry
Artist Feature: Stephen Skowron Stephen Skowron Selections of digital photography from the installation “Transmutation"—Stephen Skowron (with Stephanie Booth). Visual Art
Metallic / Unicorn Motherfucker Brynne Rebele-Henry Every day is a Friday we say before the aftermath and chocolate kisses on her thighs, The rotting lemons pimped out suns that don’t orbit. Poetry
to my my first boyfriend / boyfriend, Melanie Batchelor your mouth was the town i grew up in, my adolescent experiences wedged between your teeth. Poetry
Endlessly Repeating Rachel Martin Slowly and deliberately, her lips began to move. Soft words fell from her mouth and were cast out to sea by the deafening sound of the ocean’s lullaby. Her eyes steadfastly held their gaze. Her strong, tanned shoulders squared off in defiance with the immensity before her. Fiction
Blood Flows Upstream Lise Lacasse, J.T. Townley (translator) Don’t just stand there in the doorway. Come in! I told Suzanne you could visit because I’d like to talk to you about something. Please, Fiction
The Derailment of the Mikado Dawn Newton Ten minutes before the program was scheduled to begin, the Mikado rested on its side—black, sleek, and quiet. The technician stood on a stool, leaning Fiction
