Issue #17
Willam R. Soldan
We Were in the Sun
It’s like the time he discovered his mouth: his sounding out, his bi-labial blurbs, tongue across cut gums and clicking the ridge, his hinging jaw and yaw yaws endowing vowels with new yet primal music, twisting syllables, articulations caught in the throat, sorting and tugging and putting together, with deep-chest pressure, a voice. One that would and still will undo silence, break down walls, carry on the echo of our blood. And now the words are his own, and the memories he speaks, wrestled from the air, pinned with a gesture, transformed. So much would escape us if not for the moorings of the senses, and of our children, who come to us with our histories held in their hands like artifacts unearthed from the garden—a rock, an empty shell, a shard of broken glass. He reminds me of the time we were in the sun, as if he already knows we are just dust settled and pressed into these forms after eons adrift in the wake of a snuffed out star. He tells me, as he weaves through the grass and climbs among the dappling branches, I’m trying to run away from my shadow, as if he already knows it’s how we spend so much of our lives, resisting teeth—gravity, the darkness nipping at our heels. And I wonder what else he knows. He laughs and says, Do you wanna see into a mirror? I say yes. He says, Then look inside my eyes.
William R. Soldan is a graduate of the NEOMFA program and has had work published in such places as Anomaly Literary Journal, Kentucky Review, Gordon Square Review, Jelly Bucket (ed. note – Issue #8), Jump: International Journal of Modern Poetry (ed. note – website defunct), and others. You can find him at williamrsoldan.com if you’d like to connect.
Sorayya Moss
Tame
I’m swaying in the motion of time,
sea-sick on this earth,
afraid of nothing, and nothingness.
In a pool of memory, I’m wading.
And a sin, I’m fading.
If man is not transcendental to nature,
he is inside nature, among the leaves,
the fawn, the ants.
And everybody knows, if I’m inside nature,
I’m an innocent thing.
And tame is nature.
Sorayya Moss studied literature and philosophy in France. She currently resides in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Jake Bailey
Sign of the Cross
In adolescence, I carved memory
into the backs of my hands
with a pair of fingernail clippers,
hooked scythe slowly burying itself
in untilled land, scarred figures rising
to the surface. But nothing ever took root,
nothing seemed to take hold
no matter how deeply it was planted in virgin soil.
I remember telling others it was a game, a withstanding
of pain demonstrated on playgrounds,
courage to be born for the remainder of days.
My parents thought it a phase like reckless games of chicken
carried out on country roads dusted in youth.
Much to their surprise, the waxing crescent grew in fullness,
flesh becoming a canvas of feeling.
At night, the static came over the airwaves,
a crackling orchestra without a conductor.
I would turn the knobs with dulled instruments
until I could make out voices, until I made out whispers
dancing into the room across the backs of my wrists.
When light reached the windowsill, the noise
would rescind into the space between hearing and thought,
between being and seeming.
But memories would remind me, deep chasms
where speech echoes into crimson limestone.
Leaving these caverns, I walked another life,
walked along trails devoid of twoness,
trying to find signposts for where the paths meet
at a fork in the road.
I’ve spent my entire life trying to discern the depths
of these memories, but I haven’t quite figured it out,
no solace in peeling an onion raw,
juices flowing over cracked wooden boards,
layers loosening at the tip of the edge.
Will you let me know if it is you
who comes in the night?
Jake Bailey is a schizotypal confessionalist in Antioch University Los Angeles’ MFA program and an associate editor of Lunch Ticket. His most recent publications or forthcoming work can be found in Door is a Jar (ed. note – forthcoming January 2019), Mohave He[art] Review (ed. note – Issue #7), The Hellebore, and elsewhere. Jake lives in Chicago with his girlfriend and three dogs.
Arlene Antoinette
Anchor
I say to my lover, I’m as careless with my poetry writing
as you are when you’re having sex. He chuckles as he
blows two perfect O-rings with his cigarette smoke. He doesn’t
inquire about my meaning; he’s learned to allow me my
peculiar comments without questioning.
I sense a slight shift in his body. Something emanating
from the pit of his gut, a suspicious fruit is ripening.
I can sense it before he knows a seed of discontent
has begun to grow. I place my legs across his thighs,
anchoring him to the bed. 98.6º flesh comforts him,
suppressing his unconscious urge to flee.
He’s too handsome, young, smart and gentle for me.
I lie to myself in advance, so when he leaves I won’t
debate why. I won’t blame myself, go on a hunger strike,
lay in bed and refuse to bathe for days.
His body goes limp and I know he’s relaxed and settled
in for the night. In the morning he’ll find an excuse, a half-truth,
to free himself from captivity and pretending not to care, I’ll let him go.
Arlene writes poetry, flash fiction and song lyrics. More of her work may be found @ I am not a silent Poet, Tuck Magazine, Little Rose Magazine, London Grip, The Open Mouse and Literary Heist.
Nels Hanson
Reunion
Last week all the horses rose
together from the white-ash
soil, their bones turned years ago
to paste and gelatin found one another,
and the remuda came walking
up the road toward the small dairy
and went past before the lead horse
stopped short and led them back.
The house and milking barn were gone
and the corral of the pasture and for
a while they wandered the orchard
the newest buyer planted to the plums
rich people buy. Then again the white
horse stepped back, to the ghost of
the farmhouse and the 30 horses
stood in deep earth where the fenced
yard had been, all staring at the missing
screen porch and red rocking chair
falling and lifting, counting the years and
hours. They waited a long time
without lowering their heads or shifting
their hooves, until the old house, the first
house built on Road 384 — just a mile
from the river — slowly built itself, now
the studs, then the roof and windows,
the redwood planks painted white,
and at the steps my grandfather
appeared in his coat and soiled hat
to give them cracked oats and from
the clean pail sweet pump water.
Flight
The sky half blue with white
scattered clouds, some gray
tending easterly, above green
bare mountain, two arroyos
lined with oaks, a red-tail hawk
circles below five white gulls
turning in wide arcs and one
silver jet nearly higher than
the moon, a largest airliner
aiming west to the sea with
passengers, cabin pressurized,
over sea-borne clouds. All
have wings, feathered, steel,
to escape Earth a little while
before they tire, returning like
Daedalus whose exalted boy
rose to reach the sun until wax
melted, his loose plumes trailed
down in casual rings to drift
on waves before they sank
deep past porpoises and fish
where the giant clam’s fluted
shells open and wait blindly
for any prey, no eyes for sun,
stars, sky or clouds, or birds
and men who soar cautiously
between Earth and altitudes
flightless men called heaven.
Nels Hanson’s fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
C.S. Fuqua
Security
Security didn’t exist
in your arms,
only fear of danger
you’d place me in—
for my own good—
to become a man.
Like you.
Remember your buddy’s pool?
Would you have let me drown
had I not surprised us both
by dog-paddling away
before you could throw me
into the deep end?
And when a horse
bucked me off,
you shouted,
Get your ass up, boy;
you ain’t hurt,
determined I act
as indestructible
as you’d have me be.
But I wasn’t,
and neither were you.
Do you ever question the past
as the nurse slides in the needle?
Do shouts simmer
in the silence of memory?
C.S. Fuqua’s books include White Trash & Southern ~ Collected Poems, Walking after Midnight ~ Collected Stories, and Big Daddy’s Fast-Past Gadget, among others. His work has appeared in publications such as Year’s Best Horror Stories (XIX, XX, and XXI), Pudding, Pearl (ed. note – 1997), Chiron Review, Christian Science Monitor, Slipstream (ed. note – 1989), and The Writer (1986, “Organizing a Writers Club that Works”).