“Piano Forte” by Lisa Croce
Who’s to say what makes a moment. Is it to be found in the glow or graying plumes reaching out to caress absence or air?[…]
Day: February 25, 2021
“Portrait of the Mundane” by Jake Bailey
The first time I met God, I was draped in a rough, elephant-colored bathrobe, worn soles on my slippers.[…]
“Portrait of a Blackhole” by Jake Bailey
Bears don’t know the difference
between a fish that’s mostly dead
and a fish that jumps into a ready mouth. The waters part for a man of God. The waters part for a man with no God.[…]
“Severance” by Jake Bailey
The words are mostly water and float easily between logs and silt, weaving their way into something understandable. I never agreed
to the terms of the contract, my heart a balloon loosed from fingers reddened to white.[…]
“Yang” by Helen Doremus
It is awake in the chill morning air, dripping cold rainwater off of its snout to the cement below. It sees the stretch of parked cars, the fence ringing The Building which breaks only to force visitors past its stony paws, the sway of trees in the distance — all of this is discernible within its fixed focus, its hundred yard stare of perpetual vigilance. Its mouth is cracked open, a permanent smile full of teeth, tasting the world as it blows by. The ball, the trapped orb, below its foot warns all that they too might find themselves so pressed down if they threaten The Building and what lies within. At the corner — the very furthest pocket — of its gaze, is its partner, its mate, its equal and opposite, the one who stands guard at the other side of the break in the fence. The shape of this mate is suggestion only, transfixed curve and sinew, open lips with soundless roar, equal and opposite forepaw raised. But here a change — beneath …
“Death Ruins It” by Caley O’Dwyer
I face myself, the thing convincing as a face can be, although it breaks where it should mend in laughter. Do you believe in me though you should believe in nothing, where it hurts a little, that time of life that stuns into you, so you see the future, where you stand guard, eager to accept you? Everything I’ve known, little is more uncertain. It is like a glow, difficult to speak of. So did we age, we as we are in the comic paternity left us by our beachcomber friends who found in their time words all around them gleaming. It stuck and I was me, some fraction of the truth, which more than anything was addition. The face is there, for a time present, then it goes into the earth, having seen through the vast prism. Sight is circles and cycles. The face changes what it wears but always the eyes, silent and alone, holding course while everything that ever happened is added up then forgotten. Quiet trench in the sea, years find …
“Night Polo” by Caley O’Dwyer
Does time make us crazy or is it something else? I see myself but back away. I want to know what life is, but only gain the subtle topping, cosmic merengue dissolving on the tongue. Something catches in the sieve. There is a carefulness I can’t shake. As though I could check and turn away from pain. But life puts its hands inside our bodies and leaves us blinking, reforming. Terror enlightens, but so does doubt, the tenderness of it. Strong pain can kill, and I know I’m looking it in the face when I get down on myself. Isn’t there a nicer way to be? It’s hard to take shape all the time. Beyond the sovereign July I came to life in, I’m playing polo in a dark field. The Pleiades shimmer down, ticking off Orion’s shield. On what can I depend? Telescopic laughter sounds far away where gravitation rends. The sky tilts its head to hear whatever signal night can send. The clouds are all ears. Wayward, I listen as they bend, drifting …
