2013      $10.00      96 pages   Home Page     New Releases     Poetry Chapbook Contest     Back Issues     Video   Poets featured in this Issue: M. Brett Gaffney, Marc Harshman, Jeff Walt, Joan E. Bauer, Barrett Warner, Lisa Bellamy, Christopher Ankney, Mather Schneider, Daniel Donaghy, Susan Nisenbaum Becker, Brandon D. Christopher, Josh Smith, Anthony Isaac Bradley, Cecil Sayre, Paul David Adkins, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Livio Farallo, Terry Godbey, V.P. Loggins, Eric Odegaard, Ed Taylor, Andy Roberts, Jason Irwin, Michael Joseph Schmidt, Katie Knoll, Michael Lee Phillips, Carl Mayfield, Robert Cooperman, Brandi M. Spaethe, Mary Stone Dockery, Adam Berlin, Marcy Campbell, Leslie Anne Mcilroy, Alan Catlin, Mary Carroll-Hackett, Mira Martin-PArker, AJ Roberts, Ace Boggess, John Lampe, Rachel Katz, Katharyn Howd Machan, C. Dylan Bassett, Peter M. Gordon, Jeanne DeLarm-Neri, Tony Magistrale, Gene McCormick, Jessie Janeshek, Sjohnna McCray, Alison Stone, John Hazard, Steven Bernal, Aidan Ryan, Robert L. Penick, John Marvin, Karen Eileen Sisk, Liz N. Clift, Jose Angel Araguz, Heather Rick, Rita Moe, Annmarie O'Connell, Natalie Byers, Terry S. Johnson, Kevin Brown, David Chorlton, Sarah Fawn Montgomery, Dan Sicoli, Beverly Boyd, and Gerald Locklin. Photography: Nilserik Larson. Artwork: Liza LaBarge. Cover photographs: Andrea Fasani (front) and Able Trent (back). Photography by Nilserik Larson:     Sample Poems from Issue 33 The Magician  by Jeff Walt Addressed to Someone Long Without an Address  by Sean Thomas Dougherty If I Dare  by Terry Godbey Trajectory  by Jason Irwin   The Magician by Jeff Walt Sundays in the living room, before Disney and our baths, he made our mother vanish right before our eyes. His long, black cape shiny as water pouring through the hands of summer. I swaddled my sister and brother tight in my eight-year-old arms that trembled with frightened joy. We held our breaths and bit our nails as he sawed her in half, pulled nickels from her ears, instructed her to bark with a quick snap of his fingers. Then they left us for the Windmill Tavern. Alone together, we sang and danced in her pink pumps. Draped in his silky cape, we saved lives and killed off all the villains using the gadgets that possessed the glittery magic until the dark, late hours—our games behind us— when the shadows became spirits our magic sprouted: falling ice the footsteps of men surrounding the house; winter’s spiraling whine moaned up from the gut of the furnace. When he asked if he could be my father, I said, yes, wanting whatever that meant. We fled to closets when they fought, afraid a clap of his hands might reduce us to dust. The day he packed his bag of magic, she begged him to stay. I hid his wand in my sock—because, in the dark, on his lap, he had pulled me tight, whispered that he had the power to turn rocks into chocolate, little boys into goats. The black stick held all his tricks. © 2013 Jeff Walt Back to top Addressed to Someone Long Without an Address by Sean Thomas Dougherty Since you ask me, what they took Left such a bruise, like being hit with a bat Outside of that bar. The night you left I woke up by the side of the road. Light never resolves problems, nor clarifies. It simply says, now you can see the wreckage. To say goodbye, however difficult it is We can never say it enough. To recognize what drugs In the wee hours. You need not be dead. Through the summer of Camaros, Boardwalks before the boarded shops, the sky Dark with hurricane, That stretches across decades. Constellations, cities unzoned and unmapped The last full moon Of Indian summer bathes the barbed wire In the small hours, O, sweet clover I rise to sleep in the backseat Of your absent arms, To accept whatever small gesture you may have left— © 2013 Sean Thomas Dougherty Back to top If I Dare by Terry Godbey If I dare say your name out loud after all these years it’s like dropping a wineglass from a cliff. It falls and falls but never hits bottom, never shatters. Memory makes its own glue, repairs the days you shrank from my brash faith in us, the nights I wished you had more to say. The past won’t pass. We still kiss in cars, unzip evening’s tight dress, let it fall. And fall. And fall. © 2013 Terry Godbey Back to top Trajectory by Jason Irwin The first time I set eyes on him was first grade. He was the new kid in Miss Clemens’ class. I watched one day as he pulled an Iron Man superhero action figure from his book bag and stuffed it into his desk, sheepishly looking around to make sure no one noticed; that’s when our eyes locked. He put a finger to his lips and smiled. I marveled how his hair—unmovable as my grandmother’s— reminded me of Planet of the Apes. Weeks later we met at my neighbors’ first communion party. From that day forward we were inseparable. People often mistook us for brothers: two runts gamboling around in Catholic-school blue—smiles crammed full of crooked teeth and bubble gum. He was my first hero, after Reggie Jackson and Rocky Balboa; always made sure I was included in sports and threatened to kill any kid who made fun of my leg or those brown orthopedic shoes I was made to wear. By thirteen or fourteen we were enamored with beer and girls, though I was always at a loss when it came to the opposite sex; in love with his older sister all throughout Cub Scouts and freshman year, when we moved to public school and our lives would lead us in far-flung directions. We were two bottle rockets then, screaming to be noticed, to make our mark; spinning out of sight in an endless summer sky. All those years from first grade to high school and beyond: the train wrecks, suicides and cancer that took many of our friends; those nights we sat up drinking, planning futures that would never turn out how we hoped; the party he threw for his twenty-third birthday— the night Kurt Cobain died—the first birthday in years, he was home from prison. I often wonder, if it wasn’t for my leg, for always being sick, if I wouldn’t have been right there with him burglarizing all those houses; out west when he held a gun to his head, or those times he put a crack pipe to his lips, trying to erase all the pain. Years later as middle age took us by surprise, we’d sit under cobwebs and fluttering neon, drinking what must have been our first beer together in a bar, toasting to better days, new beginnings, and to friendship; always to friendship. © 2013 Jason Irwin Back to top