23 May, 2016
John Paul Davies is a member of the Poised Pen writers (thepoisedpen.co.uk). Originally from Liverpool, UK, he now lives in Navan, Ireland. His work has been published in The Fog Horn, Rosebud, The Pedestal, Grasslimb, Pseudopod, Ares Magazine, Killing The Angel, and is forthcoming from Sci-Fest LA and Footnote. A poem of his is displayed in the finest pub in Liverpool, The Ship & Mitre.
23 May, 2016
Holding her eye-level after the bath,
the towel damp under her arms,
she cranes back and looks at me
almost cross-eyed, as if until now
she’s seen my face in pieces: eyes,
nose, in the same orbit, uncontained
by any outer limit. Now she sees
the whole. She steadies herself,
her palms on each side of my neck,
and out pours the fountain of her
breath, uncolored by milk and those
first two teeth beneath the pink
glaze of her gums. She leans forward,
her mouth moves over my nose,
mouth, chin— her warm face asking
for mine, all of it, and now.
23 May, 2016
Lane Falcon’s poem’s can be found in publications including Rhino, december, The Cortland Review, and more. She won an award for poetry too long ago to mention by name. A single mother of two, one with special needs, she lives in Alexandria, Virginia.
23 May, 2016
Who came down first, I’ll never
know, but I suspect a
fledgling fell, down the cabin
chimney flue, and couldn’t, didn’t
fly, so new, the wings, the body
ready but not ready,
so fell. And does a house wren
calculate the cost of not
one, but two, fledglings lost? I
wasn’t there. I didn’t see.
No one consulted me
about the nest. Wise enough
in summer, yes, without a
fire, I think I see, and yet
the fledglings fell down my cabin
flue, and landed hard inside
the firebox. I’m trying now
to understand the weeks of
open beaks that drew her down.
Trusting what humans make, down
she went into what might have been
an empty grate, a simple room,
a window open on
another day, but wasn’t.
Once trapped the three spent themselves
against the glass stove door. I
wasn’t here. I didn’t hear
whatever language wrens might
sing to me. I have not learned
it. So light for flight but
didn’t fly. I found them later,
first one fledgling, buffeting
a small regret. But then
another, and the mother.
They cried, the three. They beat the glass.
I didn’t hear. I didn’t see.
23 May, 2016
Raised in the nomadic subculture of the U.S. military, Kathryn Kirkpatrick grew up in the Philippines, Germany, Texas, and the Carolinas. For over 20 years she has lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina where she is a professor of English at Appalachian State University. She is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently, Her Small Hands Were Not Beautiful(Clemson UP, 2014). Her poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including Shenandoah, Southern Review, storySouth ,Terrain.org and other magazines. She is the editor of Cold Mountain Review.
23 May, 2016
Hillsborough, County Down, September 15, 2012
He must have thought it another bloody
rough and tumble scrum,
a bone crushing brawl
heads bashing, the thud of bodies,
skin burning, eyes mud-blinded
arms and legs slipping through his fingers.
Sin-binned.
But he was on his farm.
Sweet-scented breezes slipped
down from Slievenamon.
The Holsteins lowed in the upper pasture
as twilight flooded his fields, a buzz saw snap
from where he first played in Ballynahinch.
And from my mother’s grassy-knolled farm
where on summer nights
a hundred couples quickstepped under a canopy
like one wild whirlwind
and I, spun by powerful men like him
who radiated such heat,
I thought they had sprung whole
from loamy peat. Bejesus
he must have said to himself. Holy shit.
At the last, memories looked back at him
with greedy eyes: pricking his tiny fingers
picking blueberries, running the leather
with his brother and his Da.
He must have extended his hand
to them. Up the field, boys, his sister swore
she heard him say when she went out
to call them to supper.
And then the full press,
the kick, the thrill
of rushing them all home.
23 May, 2016
Liz Dolan’s poetry manuscript, A Secret of Long Life, nominated for a Pushcart, has been published by Cave Moon Press. Her first poetry collection, They Abide, nominated for The McGovern Prize, Ashland University, was published by March Street. An eight-time Pushcart nominee and winner of Best of the Web, she was a finalist for Best of the Net 2014. She won The Nassau Prize for Nonfiction, 2011 and the same prize for fiction, 2015. She has received fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, The Atlantic Center for the Arts and Martha’s Vineyard.
23 May, 2016
for J.
A cardinal flies straight into my window, stuns himself,
the sound of his body ripples against glass even after
he falls confounded and quiet in the bushes below.
By the time I rush out on the porch, his body is aloft,
dazed the way you stumbled out of that bar the night
before your wedding, all flurry of white
from your chiffon dress and that ridiculous veil
we made you wear. You were at four martinis
too many, so you bent and whispered against my temple
I don’t really want to marry him, I just want to marry someone
on my temple: we were thirty with college debt,
corporate jobs, and bank accounts that made us want
to croon the blues, so naturally, this was next.
I wanted then to say you don’t have to marry him,
or anybody else. That you could take that trip to Majorca,
watch cicadas swarm the air and land in glasses of champagne
the pavement later strewn with their husks. I wish
I had whispered leave him and that we’d taken off
giggling, two swans, trailing our milky dresses
through puddles, our heels sticking in the cracks
of cobblestone streets. We would have driven all night
away from the fuss of chair covers and seven-tiered
cakes, to the days of rooftop merengue in Seville,
our awkward shuffling as if we’d just discovered
our bodies, back to Luis and Juan Carlos who kissed us
under the wisteria though neither of us could tell
which was which–a phantom life, streaking past us
in phosphorescent plumage and brown limbs.
Instead, we walked back to the hotel arm in arm,
words hanging ripe and heavy between us. Within minutes
you fell asleep, and all I could do was pull off your peacock
blue shoes, weary with vodka stains, and with a washcloth
try to wipe your waterproof lipstick from my temple,
that glittering red streak, a buoy, its silhouette still bobbing
whenever I shut my eyes.
23 May, 2016
Simona Chitescu Weik is a poet, originally from Romania, now living in Atlanta, Georgia, and working towards a PhD in Creative Writing at Georgia State University, where she is also a teaching fellow. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several print and online publications including The Adirondack Review, Smartish Pace,Terminus, Deer Bear Wolf, The Cimarron Review, and Negative Capabilities: An Anthology of Georgia Poets among others.
23 May, 2016
I hold onto the blue edge of the couch
a boat to its shore our knees the waves
chess game on the table floating from the day
we said we’d finish the moon full on close up
turning to look like a mirror can it still
swallow us whole my head on the arm rest
I flick the switch with tongue and wrist
the pawns roll off their heads little moons
each drop of his breath light and stone
and light and back to my mouth