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Winter 2008

Poetry

Dean Brink
Alan Catlin
Jim Doss
Darrell Epp
Taylor Graham
Ken Gurney
Michelle Lerner
Michele Lesko
Lynn Lifshin
M
Corey Mesler
Mitchell Metz
Bryan Mitschell
Maurice Oliver
Patty Paine
Jayne Pupek
Nic Sebastian
Shawn Sorensen
Lynn Strongin
Christy Tomecek

Flash Fiction

David Jordan
Richard Rippon
Jack Swenson

Featured Artist

Don Snell

Congratulations
2007 Pushcart Nominees:

Editors:

Jennifer VanBuren
Jai Britton
Patrick Carrington
Alex Nodopaka

Nic Sebastian

first grade activist
 
if your friend gets
teased because she has
red hair you could write
a poem about her about
she is like bonfires in the evening on
the sand when you are camping in the desert
and the sand cools all the red sun
inside it and comes with your toes into
your sleeping bag and escapes from the tent
like a bonfire early before your parents are
awake and the morning sea roars like bright
red hair and you could read it to the class
here is a poem for my friend
with the red hair you could say a poem for
my friend
 

charcoal man
 
when charcoal man married
ice cream lady he hoped
for smoothness and
melting
she hoped for backlit
clarity and a boldly-drawn world
 
their early confections were
charming: chic charcoal
whorling on thick
vanilla, frost-tinted dollops
on chiseled obsidian
 
charcoal man introduced ice cream lady
to charcoal lore he
whispered for her all the names
of charcoal
 
Lascaux Roufignac
Rembrandt Degas there is
freedom you cannot draw
fine lines with charcoal
 
and there is
adsorption, he said, for which
the use of poison gas in war
created an urgent need
 
he told her in long evenings
of his lives as an adsorber as
an artist’s medium
 
but not of him the first
pile of wood
covered with damp dirt
and set on slow fire
 
and it was a hot it was a
deadly surprise to the sweet lady
when he said
 
stand back
 
I was burnt slowly half-suffocated
I am ready now
for hotter burning
watch me smelt bronze smelt
iron watch me
smelt
 
the temperature rose
and ice cream lady stood back but not
far enough

Nic Sebastian hails from Arlington, Virginia and travels widely. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as 'The Shit Creek Review', 'Loch Raven Review’, ‘Words on the Web’, ‘Lily’, ‘The Adroitly Placed Word', ‘River Walk Journal’, ‘Poems Niederngasse’ and ‘Avatar Review’. She sometimes blogs at 'Very Like A Whale'.