21 May, 2018
Four in the morning.
Little bud across the hall
is shouting
DA-DA
from his crib,
static on the Vivaldi
in my nearly snuffed dream where
a hall of doors
open and shut in unison.
The subtitles are Arabic,
the connection hot-wired
from my neighbor’s apartment.
Behind my couch the line grows
through the wall to watch
the training video, a collection
of scruffy-necked slims
who believe fatherhood,
with its weed & binkies,
is something
that can be taught.
21 May, 2018
KG Newman is a Colorado native who works by day as a sports writer for The Denver Post. His first two poetry collections, While Dreaming of Diamonds in Wintertime and Selfish Never Get Their Own, are available on Amazon. The Arizona State University graduate is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP.
21 May, 2018
Randal O’Wain holds an MFA from Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. Currently, he teaches creative writing at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in the MFA program at W. V. Wesleyan. He serves as a National Endowment of the Arts Writing Fellow at the Beckley Federal Correctional Institution. O’Wain is the author of Superman Dam[n] Fool: family, loss, and coming of age in the working class south (American Lives Series, Bison Books, 2019) and Hallelujah Station and other stories (Autumn House Press, 2020) His essays and short stories have appeared in Oxford American, Guernica, The Pinch, Booth, Hotel Amerika, storySouth, among others.
21 May, 2018
i push play on another scene
from that movie where your skin
dissolves like a tablet of powder
in the rain there is something about
distance & the heart growing fonder
always being the one left behind
& never the one leaving i want to
spend a day not thinking about flowers
still waiting to be born around bones
that used to hold other bodies
inside them… my body is a carnival
on fire a mouth stuffed with lilacs
it is hard to breathe in a world full of cars
that get into accidents run your hand
through my hair & tell the birds
to go south forever
do you ever get lonely have you ever
been afraid to hold on does the smoke
stay in your clothes like it stays in mine
name this sometimes-unwanted-part of
me— how a grave & i share the same
unclean throat like water with a smell
of the north in my memory tying knots
as part of a ritual for a lover who had
lost everything but the taste
of bitterness & dry bread
21 May, 2018
Ojo Taiye was born and grew up in Kaduna. He currently lives in Agbor, Delta State. He is a poet, essayist and teaches Tourism in Calvary Group of Schools, Agbor. His recent poems and works have appeared in journals like Glass Journal, Lit Mag, Crannog Magazine, Geometry Magazine, Southword Journal, and elsewhere.
9 January, 2018
Photographer Shannon Radigan is a based out of Asheville, NC. She is interested in the documentation of the existential crisis of the millennial generation through moody landscapes, quirky cityscapes, and uncouth portraits. The generation that has experienced the growth of technology and the fall of our economy with little control. The struggle many face while trying to forge and identity, a life with meaning, and a place to call home.
9 January, 2018
after Oliver de la Paz
1. Do you feel reluctant to talk about the subject of abortion?
In the center of the ceiling a marigold weeps
or perhaps it’s an old chandelier.
Inside, there’s an interior glow,
shards illuminated in violet-pink
and layers of peeling gold leaf.
Such minds at night unfold.
2. Do you feel guilt or sorrow when discussing your own abortion?
The cabbage is a blue rose,
an alchemical strip show. They scream
when dragged from the earth
only to find themselves plunged into boiling water.
The narrative unscrolls from cells
of what-ifs and hourglass hopes.
3. Have you found yourself either avoiding relationships or becoming
overly dependent in them since the abortion?
If I could unhinge myself from myself,
attach to bookshelves, sever
my tongue, I would watch
as it grew back, rejuvenated
and ready to speak.
4. Do you have lingering feelings of resentment toward people involved
in your abortion (Perhaps the baby’s father or your parents)?
One must be careful what one takes
when one turns away forever:
a Tuareg scarf, two photographs,
untamed thoughts that curse, then lift—
occasionally yes, though mostly not.
5. Do you tend to think of your life in terms of “before” and “after” the
abortion?
Too scared to speak my name—
not etherized upon the table—
I wore silver stirrups, blue wrap-around globe.
The young nurse and I held hands—
you’re doing great, she cooed.
I remained awake, awakened.
6. Have you felt a vague sort of emptiness, a deep sense of loss, or had
prolonged periods of depression?
The sky no longer speaks to me directly—
and the beautiful man?
He has dropped through the floorboards
though sometimes he answers emails:
•Yes, our family has survived the Paris bombings.
•Sincere condolences on your new president.
7. Do you sometimes have nightmares, flashbacks, or hallucinations
relating to the abortion?
Never mind, I tell myself, it is only a nightmare.
But then I remember I’ve barely gone to bed at all.
Then thirty years had passed, then thirty-one.
8. Have you begun or increased use of drugs or alcohol since the
abortion, or do you have an eating disorder?
The fog tastes sweet, then sour;
identity translates to forged glamour—
strong doses of celibacy taken regularly.
9. Did your relationship to, or concept of ‘God’, or ‘Karma’, or ‘Fate’
change after your abortion?
If my own voice falters, tell them
I tried not to live inside the clock
or under the skin of pomegranates.
Does anyone escape her own story—
head-on collision, nor’easter, earthquake,
the racist seeding of our country?
10. Has your self-concept or self-esteem changed since your abortion?
Once I abandoned my car in a forest of red cedar,
let it tumble down the mountain
precipice by itself. In the next diorama there’s a friend
at the wheel and she urges, let’s go on;
believe in yourself like a paint color, an infant’s song.
11. Are you bothered by certain sounds like machinery that makes
loud noises?
Coffee grinders, vacuum cleaners,
sewing machines.
Also: truck backfires, sparklers,
the sharp scrape of chair legs—
gunfire overhead, handsaws, the evening
news. Aren’t you?
12. Is there anything you would like to ask?
Why does Google Maps have blind spots;
for example, the city of Zinder, Niger?
Is it possible for one person to photograph the world—
to understand this bewilderment of light?
9 January, 2018
Your brain had already started unmaking the rest
of you: nothing but gray meat, memories unspooling
so rapidly they became entangled, became knotted.
And the medication had stopped working, but still, I fed you
the little blue pills, the ones that reminded me of the little blue
butterflies you said Satan sent us—gifts of unforgivable evil—controllers
of both the weather and the television—arrival predicated by sudden
downpour and static flickering. In defense of the azalea bush still clinging
to the first-floor bricks, we’d press cherries to the roofs of our mouths
while standing in the kitchen, waiting to bite the skin until we had pushed
past the screen door, when precipitation, mixed with juice, ran down
our chins like a mighty river of blood, and we spat the pits into the air
like throwing stars we hoped would tear through their tissue
paper wings. One day, I fumbled the dislodge, tripped and swallowed
the stone, and you told me it was only a matter of time—seed sown
in the stomach, nerves replaced by roots—a tree would surely
sprout through the top of my head, so tall, we’d have to call
the fire department, call anyone, to chop it down. But there were no
extra hairs, there was no germination, no fruit. There was no
extra anything, and when they told me you didn’t have much time left,
and there were no other options, I snuck two crimson
globes into your room, carried them in my back pocket,
and said, No, don’t spit that out. Yes, swallow it, swallow all
of it. Here, I’ll do it with you. Open your lips, stick out
your tongue, there you go—but now you’re buried, long gone,
and I’m still here waiting for leaves to climb out of the dirt.