Issue 42
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The One I’ve Been Dying To Tell
art by Robert Thurman
by Polly Hansen
Two years ago, I sat on the edge of my mother’s bed and patted her knee, thinking it was my last good-bye. She was ninety-five. I was sixty-seven. We lived over two-thousand miles apart–she in Spokane, Washington, with my older sister, her caretaker, and me in Asheville, North Carolina, with my husband.
“This may be the last time I’ll ever see you,” I said, thinking she might die before I got out there to see her again. She could go any minute.
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At the Wedding of My Transformation
art by Cynthia Yachtman
by Cassandra Whitaker
bride—the moon— moonlit calls for the wolf—-unhinged
swinging on a door made of borrowed light
Do I go through or do I remain closed?
Do I say yes yes or do I know myself?
to sunlight— I turn regrow my power
borrowed joy to change the surface of ache
into a wish catcher a deep pool of want
the bride understands the wolf appears as she
unlearns her old name offers to be filled
the wolf appears it matters little
where she places danger I am returning
to fill emptiness to be full of love
the bride—the moon— bereft of ocean’s ocean—time
the wolf’s teeth—age worn forgotten almost
by the wanting wolf inside the bride’s heart
waiting for the moon recovering from want
I was once nothing echoing night sounds
in an emptiness I understood to be night
I understood it I went into myself
love changes a name into a new sound
once I was the moon now—the wolf’s question
tuned to light’s frequency am I alone? -
These Child Stars Were Supposed to be the Next Big Thing and Now They’re Just Joe Sacksteder
image curtesy of the Public Domain Review
by Joe Sacksteder
Amelia Bones, Backyard Paleontologist
Amelia Bones was not the first young person to imagine that an oddly shaped rock in her backyard was a valuable fossil, but she was the first to have a monstrous Cretaceous-era marine reptile named after her. She began the dig just outside Hurricane, Utah, with her best friend Lisa Leoncavallo during the summer between fifth and sixth grade. But once she realized that this was more than pretend, she feigned waning interest so as to avoid damage to the specimen by her less detail-oriented classmate.
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We Continue Holding, A Girl, Ephemeral Nature of Love
art by JJ Cromer
by Isabel Hoin
We Continue Holding
We bled many years ago and continue to bleed the deepest red,
our hips tender. We prayed to you, in that first moment of
womanhood— oh, that joyous moment— but you stayed still, a
face of marble, never answering the calls we sent for comfort.
Red, our hips tender. We prayed to you, in that first moment
without our mothers. It is absence we search for in language, a
face of marble, never answering the calls we sent for comfort. -
Picture of My Dad in an Aircraft Carrier
photo by Kieth Dodson
by Patricia Aya Williams
December 1970
Dad at a desk turning to face
the camera, left hand on the keys
of a typewriter, right hand resting
on an open drawer, white pencil
lifted lightly, ready to erase
the mistake he’s just made—
one that I can’t see—on the paper
poised in the platen, the clatter
of type his quick fingers command
momentarily stalled.
The carrier’s walls—color of dirty
dishwater, hospital grunge, -
4, 7, 8 (X)
by Jan Clausen
Arrow and bow
You get my drift
No bucket list
I’ll just kick itPurple pansies next to Frick
Bloom in geometric beds
Perky periodontist
Scrapes expensively my teeth
Rather than hamper defeat
People peer at screens, mirrors
Snooze as losses mount, bleed outA rat’s ass, he thinks, chicks don’t give
Regarding the pleasure of men
Dogwoods appear to console us
For magnolias’ departure
Art is not a matter of will
I’m a cunning emergency
Take the Q train,
