Summer 2009
Abha Iyengar
Alison Eastley
Barton Smock
Bridget Gage-Dixon
Charles Reis
Cheryl Snell
Daniel Crocker
David Jordan
David Lawrence
Dennis Mahagin
Doug Ramspeck
Henry Louis Shifrin
John Sweet
Kathryn Jacobs
Lois P. Jones
Margaret Babbott
Mather Schneider
Richard Lighthouse
Roger Pfingston
Roy Lewis
Simon Perchik
Tim Kahl
Tony Leuzzi
Julie Steiner
Don Shaeffer
Steiner Interview
by Alex Nodopaka
Jennifer VanBuren
Jai Britton
Alex Nodopaka
Patrick Carrington
Mannequin Envy in memory of poet and artist Douglas Gamrath
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Russ Brickey
Winter Melt Issue 2009
COLD WAR EVENING NEWS: 1975
My mother stands over the stove.
The tang of onions, red meat frying—
The windows lit, the table is set,
Every meal hot & balanced:
Something red, something green,
Something baked from the fields & something
Zooming over the red plum trees,
At night, not the wind.
At night my father watches the news
Across the kitchen table, elbows
Propped. The groomed anchormen speak
To keep the house aflame.
What is the news?
The current zips along the evening air,
Walls lurid with fire, a horizon of Soviet embers—
The man in the newsroom raises his hand…
The Neighborhood In Summer
What simple pleasures wear us down.
I am a polished stone. I am a weed
in the heat. I am what I am
and that’s good enough.
The little bird has arrived
to sharpen his beak: he finds
nothing here but good soft meat,
the heart at the center
of the universe.
Hog happy, my neighbor,
the retiree, waters his lawn
with a length of garden hose. Shirt off,
he radiates sun
like a mound of salt; he has the tumbling flesh
& billowy plump beauty of an emperor.
His face is an unsmiling Howdy.
A Navy chart of the world covers his chest.
No one ever asks him who he votes for.
Follow the pride of the Pacific fleet
as the old sailor swings his flow,
sprinkling sunny archipelagoes in a continent
of shade upon his glittering lawn.
I wave.
There is a hammering on my skull
like Athena wanting to get out.
Howdy yawns, uncaring; an ocean moves inside him.
An ocean moves inside all of us.
Look around you:
the lawns are emerald fire, the houses castles,
the clouds climb to the galaxy
like a city of angels; the tyger is tamed,
God walks his dog on our sidewalks;
you are welcome: you
are in the midst of greatness.
Russ Brickey holds an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from Purdue University and is a PhD candidate in literature there. Currently he works as the Coordinator of the Writing Center at University of Wisconsin-Platteville.
It's Not The Cough That Carries You Off by Dean Franz Pasch
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We accept submissions all year long, however, we read them only during the month before publication, so please do not get upset if you do not hear from us right away.
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