2018      $10.00      80 pages      "Water" theme issue   Home Page     New Releases     Poetry Chapbook Contest     Back Issues     Video   Featured in this Issue: Poetry by: Lew Forester, Christine Pacyk, M.P. Powers, Kelly Talbot, Robbie Gamble, Jane Craven, Heikki Huotari, Jonathan Greenhause, Kevin Ridgeway, Matthew J. Spireng, Lynn Otto, Jacob Budenz, Rochelle Jewel Shapiro, Deborah L. Davitt, Andrew Hemmert, Robert Carr, Jeff Bagato, Richard Murray, Deborah Allbritain, Kelly Fordon, Anna DiMartino, Clyde Kessler, Guy R. Beining, William Palmer, KG Newman, Ed Taylor, Lori Anne Gravley, Alex Andrew Hughes, Alan Catlin, AR Dugan, Donna M. Davis, Robin Boyd, Michael Mark, Kenneth Feltges, Jason Irwin, Elaine Mintzer, Natalie Homer, Ace Boggess, Jim Daniels, J Mari, William Doreski, Max Stephan, Sara Ries, Kristin Camitta Zimet, Ella Flores, J.H. Hall, Liz Ahl, Lyn Lifshin, Katharyn Howd Machan, Bernadette Geyer, Pat Phillips West, Deborah H. Doolittle, David Chorlton, Richard K. Olson, Frank J. Dunbar, Vanessa Zimmerman, and Simon Perchik. Front Cover: Hermin Abramovitch Back Cover: Iumi Richard-Crow Featured Photography: Jayne Marek   Sample Poems from Issue 38 We Used to Drive with Open Windows  by Jane Craven Every Window Leads to Edward Hopper  by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro Codgers  by Jason Irwin Winter River Scenes  by Frank Dunbar   We Used to Drive with Open Windows by Jane Craven I love the darkness in your breath, how you inhale light, hold it within your ribs and release it as something changed and dangerous. Headlights on, and night settles like sediment drifting to the bottom of a creek bed in watery footfalls, suspended in an upturned bottle of wine. It is the lowering, a plunge. On either side of an old concrete bridge on US 1, the Haw River breaks around boulders and I think night echoes its roar, letting wildness climb its muddy banks and come to us like a wet dog at sunrise. © 2018 Jane Craven Back to top Every Window Leads to Edward Hopper by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro In my overheated apartment, I have on a red t-shirt that says One Word at a Time. I sit on a beige brocade couch, bare feet on woolen vines of my Chinese carpet. In my night picture window, I’m that woman wearing a floppy-brimmed yellow cloche, alone at a table in The Automat. The corner radiator gives off so little steam I keep my green coat on. I look into my cup of joe. I’ve been waiting here since 1927, and still the man I love hasn’t shown up. Posterity will find him at the cherry-wood counter of the brightly lit diner next to his wife. © 2018 Rochelle Jewel Shapiro Back to top Codgers by Jason Irwin At countertops, crumb strewn and greasy, on broken down swivel stools in roadside diners, where the waitress is always named Pearl or Doll, they perch, coffee growing cold in their almost clean mugs, runny eggs and burnt sausages lying on their plates. Pencils stand at attention in their breast pockets, tape measures or knives cling to their belts. Always together, always alone. They sit and watch the day run its course, grumbling, cursing, commiserating, bellowing their eternal complaint on the life that could’ve been, how time is killing them. Do they know their faces are still growing? That the crows in the tree are mindful of their comings and goings, the hats they wear? That only dirt endures? The one at the far right has a boxer’s nose, and hair like steel wire. The one in the middle sits limp as a scarecrow, while the old man on the left, sporting a cap that reads Hawaii, has a dreamy left eye. In moments of silence they gaze out the window, at the ruins of this company town, where the sun-baked blacktop goes on forever, where buildings of brick and glass stand like tombstones, while the river and hills beyond, hint at a promise they’ve long ago stopped believing in. Forgive us our anger they say, that swells and rises like the sea. Forgive us our fear, it is only weariness in disguise. © 2018 Jason Irwin Back to top Winter River Scenes by Frank Dunbar Who was father? The muggers who lumped him up many a Christmas ago, turned out to be too much Seagram’s Seven and an icy sidewalk. I write this question in the dust on his bureau. All that was kept of his clothes don’t fit me anymore. But he knew the river when every grain elevator was operational and hungry kids in tattered clothes gently rolled their sloshed New Year’s Eve dads on their empty coal stove shivering mother’s order. My dad worked in terrible snowstorms and with fever, but we never made a snowman. Just before it freezes the water turns a foggy silver and ashen clouds puff out of nearby Canada settling above the length in a bunch. This is where it’s my river snaking through a steel plant, chemical company, and had he stood with me on any crisp bank I’d’ve surely given him half. Darkness is a long time these months. It absorbs most jet engine noise and all the racket of trains. It increased his potation and left us this Cimmerian no matter how many lamps and grandchildren. And now it calls me out of my kaleidoscope to wonder if he had a favorite color. © 2018 Frank Dunbar Back to top