Issue 42
-
Monkeys, Lioness of Judah, and Hometown Photo
photo curtesy of the author
by Alex Farber
Monkeys
John Swartt wanted to be a monkey. He checked out every book in the library—every species, every jungle, every fruit they ate. His obsession grew intense. At school, he’d leap onto desks, grab his armpits, screech like a monkey, and spit bile backwash on anyone nearby. At recess, he climbed to the top of the swings and hung upside down for nearly an hour, like it was nothing. Everyone was scared of him.
One day during reading class, -
Ode to the Overpriced Burrito
photo by Alex Farber
by Luis Lopez-Maldonado
On a chilly spring morning,
chile still clinging to my lips,
I bit into you—warm, heavy, half-hearted—
a freckled tortilla wrapped in betrayal
and $8.79 worth of disappointment.
Where is your abuela, your sazón,
your carne that falls apart like old love letters?
Even your papas taste tired today,
like they miss the days when gas
was under three dollars
and classrooms were still full:
Another Friday… Another row of empty desks. -
Art Therapy
art by Mary Petrokubi
by Marilyn Petrokubi
Mary still rested in her bed near death. Her snow-white hair lay limp on the pillow. The year was 1950, and she was thirty-eight years old. Mary was dying from pernicious anemia, and to make matters worse, she was pregnant.
In the kitchen of their modest home, her husband Stephen, a science teacher, was preparing shank bone meat with vegetables in the pressure cooker. In those days it wasn’t called osso buco, it was just meat and marrow. But it was exactly what the doctor ordered for Mary in conjunction with an experimental vitamin B12 therapy,
-
Three Poems
art by Cristina Iorga
by Leonard Tuchilatu
Translated from the Romanian by Romana Iorga
[Back then I came with the shadows]
Back then I came with the shadows, wandering. I conjured up
my ailing firebird
in the glimmers of morning dew and chose to build her nest
in the tallest of trees.
For a long time, I poured my arms into
the blanched air of mornings, attempting to capture
once more her infinite eyes.
I waited for the descent of an immense fire
on our icy land, -
Old 37
art by Alex Farber
by Jon Vickers
Awakened by the phone
at 4 a.m.,
that hour when darkness
is deepest and most honest.
This can’t be good…“Dad, I need help.”
A million thoughts ignite,
lightning bolts,
cold needles,
dragging you from sleep
into full and fearful life.
“Are you okay?”
“Where are you?”Clothes on, shoes tied,
a quick kiss on Jenn’s forehead,
a note left behind:
It’s Frank. I’ll be back. -
A Review of Michael e. Casteels “Furthermore, the Lake”
by LIT Social Media Editor, Grace Dignazio
Michael e. Casteels’s Furthermore, the Lake is a stunning traversal of a haunted cityscape, narrated by a deeply disoriented, unnamed speaker. Straddling prose-poetry and surreal narrative, the text conjures a setting at once recognizable as New York City and then not—rippling like memory itself: unstable, refracted. The narrator wades through subway cars and foggy streets in a dreamlike state of liminality, his identity a muddled reflection.
The early vignettes usher us into his psyche as he moves through the banal rhythms of daily life—commuting,
