Here we are, with Issue nO.4. It was a long time coming due in no small part to the deluge of submissions brought on by our new Submishmash submissions manager system (try it!) and our recent listings in various popular ‘where to submit’ type periodicals. We moved our workdays indoors, away from our favorite reading/watering hole, the Brazen Head, hunkered down to read, and argue the merits of...
Time Isn’t After Us
the remnants of heart muscles may appear as cornfields when baked in the exposure of
successive country noons
our fleshmounds were given
screaming to screaming,
fed red meat early , sent out to dig claws in the scratched dirtback of earth,
our brilliant eyes begging satellite Jesus in the stars to...
Novelita
Edwin propped his head up and wiped the drool from his cheek. His eyes came into focus on the letters scratched into the desk: BKILLAS. A crudely sketched anime thug, all bicep and thigh, held the bubble letters above his head like Atlas. Edwin began tracing his pencil back and forth along the S, extending it towards the edge of the desk’s linoleum face. The pencil lead broke off...
Mindy Nettifee is trouble. She’s the author of “Sleepyhead Assassins” and the brand new “Rise of the Trust Fall” from Write Bloody Publishing (a book I nearly threw off the Brooklyn bound F train after reading the poem, “The Bent Kinetics of Memory”). Mindy’s poems thrive on saying what needs to be said. But, the world in which these poems exist is one we recognize even if we...
THE BONESHEPHERD’S LAMENT
In 2007, I visited Laoag, capital of Ilocos Norte province in the Philippines and the birthplace of my mother. I took various raw footage with no more than a Canon Coolpix, 5 megapixels of resolution. Most phones do better than that these days. And I wasn’t shooting at the camera’s highest resolution. Nonethless, poems came out of that trip and a subsequent, four-month...
HIJAB ON/OFF
Francisco Guerrero
”
This portrait session was shot a few years ago in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia with the help of a few of my local friends. As a teenager, I lived in KL for a couple of years, so it was good to be back to explore the city I grew up in.
At the time, we conceptualized the shoot I was living in Barcelona, Spain where there was a very heated debate about banning...
Be Blk!
For/after Avery R. Young
Be crucifixion Blk!
Be everything remind me of my daddy Blk!
Fried, dyed, and laid to the side, Blk!
Everybody’s goddaughter Blk!
Been an Auntie since I was 6, Blk!
Don’t like my name in your mouth, blk!
Only my Mama say my name right, Blk!
Teeth can’t get no whiter Blk!
Can’t believe my bones is white, Blk!
Dark as the elbow skin Blk!
Elbow grease for...
The man he intended to shoot
You can see he is sick to his stomach and wants to vomit
because he just shot a man he did not intend to shoot.
-Michael L. Rains, defense attorney for Johannes Mehserle
commenting on the video footage of Mehserle shooting Oscar Grant in the back
while Grant is hand cuffed and face down on a train platform.
The man he intended to shoot was not a man.
Did...
Taken for Granted
Hands leave behind more than prints—
the knitting and the ripping, empty
grape stems in a red bowl, a bruise.
When I said engine I meant death.
Grace invites us into itself so consistently,
we can refuse it. Stars uncover their eyes
in the dark. Lightning always seeks
the ground. Morning will find us
still breathing. I never understood
the impulse to carve initials...
Introduction to Greek Mythology
1. Before:
She smells like cigarettes, lots of cigarettes; and William watches her smoke, every morning, one after another, unfiltered Camels. He has been watching her do this for weeks and the only words he could say to her, “Excuse me,” were unintentional and sloppy. He obsesses over this because he said only these words when he bumped into her on the steps to the...
Different Names for Homonyms
He has snowglobes for fists.
He picks his teeth with atlases.
He casts a shadow in the shape of an empty bird’s nest.
He cannot take your calls right now.
He likes blueberries in pancakes and girls in light dresses.
He sometimes squints when he talks to dogs.
He has no children. That he knows of.
He has shoes the size of canoes and eyes...
