Archive for May, 2009

Fiction by Wythe Marschall

The order went: Rico said he saw it, then Jamie, then Jameel, Malika’s cousin who lived in Maspeth. Over the next month, they talked to each other about it—at Minny’s or the Hacienda or Jamie’s house—and confirmed the details, so they figured it must be true. For one, Rico never lied, not to them, not about paint, and for another, the yard was close to Queens, so it figured Jameel would’ve seen it—he was obsessed with geography, with the good walls and the spots no cops would drive by. They had all just found about this new yard, and Josie hadn’t gone yet. They all wanted to tell Josie about the problem right away, but it was just too hard, because Josie’s whole life revolved around paint. He was like the little ball-bearing inside the can that shakes up the paint, that lives forever in paint. He didn’t just write ZEUS—he was. »

Poetry by Kate Dougherty

Was Katie’s skirt black or blue, and did it fit her
properly?
Bananas make Katie gag
when they’re mushy. I should eat every brown
banana. Every brown banana spooning
its partners soft and. »

by Maria DeLorenzo

The dream was scandalous. She is amazed at her own synapses, sprawling on that surface. It makes her blush. She deletes the dream. Empties the dumpster so no trace can be found of it. But of course there is a record kept somewhere in the master hard drive. Somebody is reading it. She imagines the mechanizations of the brain receiving; maybe her dream has an immediate effect on him. She imagines him, in some dark corner office, the daily toil, and then a flicker, his left eye glitches, he pauses the rapid filing and lingers a moment, imagining the exquisite brain responsible for the transmission. He shifts in his seat, his pants suddenly too tight. She. »

by JeFF Stumpo

You ask me to speak at an anti-war rally.
I ask you for the efficiency of ants
come lately across a dead lizard in my driveway.

Day one: the long brown body, belly-up in the sun,
mouth agape and claws still hanging on to the invisible
orb of its life. I must have crushed. »

by Judie Gonsalves

It’s another endless silence
in the vacuousness between
front and back seat.
Despite the music on the radio
we hear nothing
(sounds have masks as. »

by Daisy Eagan

All the windows are open. Someone nearby is blasting ranchera and I’m grateful that at least it’s not the out-of-tune Mariachi band that comes around sometimes. The man with the ice cream cart goes by ringing his tinny bell. The Ice Cream man replaces the Tamale man who came earlier in the day. The Tamale man stands by the open back door of his station wagon calling out, “Tamales comprados! Tamales!” He used to come by everyday at the same time until one morning I yelled out, “It’s 8:00 in the morning on a Saturday, for Christ’s sakes! SHUT! UP!” Since then he comes by less. Or maybe I just like to think it’s because of. »

by Maria Romasco-Moore
That night the moon was so bright we didn’t need a flashlight. It fell in bars across the path, cut by the trees into thin ghosts. By these we saw our way. We saw the path in stages, segments, brief flashes amid the darkness.
The beach fizzled softly and the leaves fell with a. »

by Tim Sisk

I.
I wanted to be a girl,
To be treated like a delicate thing,
And rough like bones, china.
A cup of spilled honey.

I always imagined myself entered,
bottomed out,
top heavy and tilt-a-whirled
for a blue-jeaned boy with a dozen pink. »

by Anirban Acharya

The central city poems, slightly
curved at their edges, imagine
how the cattle keep moaning
sculpted in the habitual. »

by Ashaki M. Jackson

E is for Edifice:

this structure of bones. Pelvic curves and vertebrae, requisite arches of its entrance.
Imagine lovers dripping off warm beds.. »

By Ted Cox
It must have been two-for-one vasectomy night. During the day, the clinic is usually brimming with apprehensive-looking teenage girls and young women. But that late in the evening, it was all men with their wives or girlfriends. OK, not all men had their wives with them. I was there with my best friend,. »

by Jason Cook
That Don Henley song is playing and all the guys at the bar in their navy pea coats with collars popped high up are cheering and ordering beer in bottles not on tap and the girls at their shoulders look like vampires showing their white teeth behind candy red lips. They chant over. »