Previous Issue: Fall/Winter 2012

POEMS

Hala Alyan – Saliferous

Hala Alyan – Fortune Cookie

Chloe Benjamin – The Witching Hour

Alex Chertok – Day’s theater  

Alex Chertok – My unborn child   

John D. Fry – as Judas fleeing from the storm in his marrow  

Kathleen Hellen – Something Like a Face Turned Up in Water  

Claudia McQuistion – Nighttime on the 49

Joshua Gottlieb-Miller – Lines of Sight, Lines of Transmission

Muriel Nelson – On a Still, Sunny Morning, the Invisible  

Steven D. Schroeder – No Owners, Only Spenders  

R L Swihart – Surface Tension  

Helen Vitoria – Stimuli

Helen Vitoria – Baby

Theodore Worozbyt – Everest

Theodore Worozbyt – Bones and Unseen Glockenspiels

FICTION

Will Donnelly – Here’s to You, Mrs. Robinson

REVIEWS

Megan Bell on…
Skinny, Carolyn Hembree

Melanie Jordan on…
Night Radio, Kim Young

Emily Schulten on…
I Live in a Hut, S.E. Smith

Saliferous  
Hala Alyan

For K

Aren’t we lucky as sharks
slicing the cold water and finding,
at last, the trembling rainbow of fish,
the skin that is paper in our mouth?

To the east is Beirut.

You were the dew that fell like stone,
              some trio of cherry pits
scattering the asphalt puddle. Stone buildings that smelt vaguely
of dust before it rained.

And it did rain, gentle and urgent
on the musky grass, cutting abrupt as a flute note mid-breath.
Wind tossed with fever that music,
riven.                Between us a single decayed city
and water dripped from my curls into
your hands. The lightning came after.

To the east is our cusp.

Pilfered house, whittled. Suddenly twined with roses,
I sat in bathtubs while you
fasted. Corseted in your arms,
our limbs sprawled to inspect the disheveled galaxy:

comets the shade of narcissus, a greasy moon.
Even the clouds thrilled—
morphing beards, tombs, horses.

Everywhere the air screamed.
Forkfuls of gale whirlwinded the trees,
jadeblack globe. The clatter was the darling.

Hala Alyan is a Palestinian-American poet and doctoral student whose work has appeared in journals such as Eclectica, The Dirty Napkin, and The Journal. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was a winner of the 2012 Nazim Hikmet Poetry Festival Competition. Her full-length collection of poetry, entitled Atrium, was published by Three Rooms Press in New York City earlier this year.