Carolyn Oliver

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Hymn in My Sickness
after John Donne

I am a holy room,
for ever
made music; as I come
here
I think

my physicians grow
their map
on this bed may be
this is
to die,

in these straits I
yield
all hurt me
and I am one
resurrection.

I am home
an altar,
and no way to

Paradise
cross,
Look, and find me;
sweat,
blood embrace.

So, in purple receive me
give me
a word,
my text, my own
Lord

Rebecca Kokitus

CHLORINE DREAM

I let the chlorine burn my hands / imagine the red turning white like a trauma victim’s hair / and I am the
world’s most secret trauma / I am a burial ground of rawness and heat

I imagine bleeding out from the core / like my period, but impatient / red swaddling cloth becoming
sunrise cloud reflection / and I’d float on my back, buoyant as a corpse

sitting in my sweat pool cesspool / film on the toilet seat / I watch a spider wrap up an insect like an
infant / I hear fireworks somewhere, a mile or two away / and there’s nothing lonelier than that

Evyan Roberts

BLUE JEANS

Indigo stained armor, denies the world
the rise and fall of fabrics below my waist.
Keeping me safe, unlike a summer dress
snatched by the wind. With a hemline
forced to meet the lips of my embarrassed smile.

Have you ever been followed for ten blocks
by a stranger, calling to slide between your thighs
with sloppy kiss effects, past apathetic witnesses
after witness?

Lending my body to eyes like a temporary
home, summer urges them to shred every
airy frock I own. Pushes subway car neighbors
to rummage through me with their dilated pupils.
Asks swarming pedestrians to wander
with their fingertips at my skirts lipstick stained edge.

Have you ever been followed for ten more blocks
by a stranger, holding the crotch
of his sweatpants, who just wants
to get a good look at them pannies’gain?

Midday heat orders them to bore me clean out,
persuades them to keep going through skin and bone,
as they hum with thoughts underneath my dress.

But my summertime armor, my blue jeans,
peel back slowly for my own sake. At my own
pace. No gust or man can separate us.

Tina Gross

SLEEP BEHAVIOR DISORDER
after Jennifer Chang

Something in the bed goes
twisting around. Cat-space.
Husband-shapes. Shouts
of dreamt fisticuffs, no
memory for it. Something
in the bed has found
rest by staying parallel
to the floor. Warm quilt, has it
jolts or cries? Sack of stretch. Pillow-
hush choking mattress-hush. Weave
and purr. Something in the
bed. Hypnagogia. I did not want
to mean that. Warm pajamas, have they
sleeper-song? Have they waking
dream? Sock-loss and preoccupied
seam, its fraying agenda. Some-
thing in the. Bed wrinkled and
somniloquy. I did not mean to
wake. Has it shrink and fade?
Has it twist and shout? A bristly
cheek, fraught paws, such
tender adjustment. Body-
and breath-hush. Do I predormitum-
cuddle? Do I suggestibility?
Something in the bed does.

Chuka Susan Chesney

MARILYN: PLUM

MARILYN: BURIED

MARILYN: GIRL BIKE

MARILYN: CROSSED OUT

MARILYN: GREY GOOSE

Artist statement:

Marilyn My Mother

I remember my mother lying on the bed in her negligee, sleeping. She didn’t look dead, but she was out cold in the middle of the day. Every week my mother went to the beauty parlor. She had an updo and her hair was dyed brown. Our maid or my father or my sister or my grandpa took care of me.

My mother wasn’t drunk. She was depressed. When I was older, I had times of depression and lay in bed and slept, too.

There is a certain photograph of Marilyn Monroe taken by Bert Stern in a Bel Air bungalow, six weeks before she died. One of her eyes is hidden by a shadow. The other eye half-closed. She is wrapped in a sheet. Her shoulders bare. She has a secret in her smile; she smiles slightly but her exposed eye is sad. I have painted and drawn this photograph of Marilyn over one hundred times, in watercolor, mixed-media, acrylic, pen and ink, pastel, and colored pencil. My mother was always a little bit vacant. I search Marilyn’s pupil for a glimpse of my mother.

Gregory Kimbrell

COMMON SPECIES

He peels off his synthetic outer, human skin
and wipes the red adhesive residue from the
enflamed, blistered amphibian flesh that has
always belonged to him. Tears of pain cloud
his eyes. He has no further need of pretense.

However long he stays on dry land, a watery
burrow will be his actual home. It hurts him
almost as much to have tubing penetrate his
nostrils as it does to feel a man’s warm body
only through a lifeless membrane of silicone.

On the vacant observation deck, he watches
the jointed transports slip in silence through
the night, across the bridge onto the plateau
beyond the darkened tower atop which blue
phosphorescent signals monotonously blink.

All is well, whether the sleepers surrounding
him survive in their luminous beds or not or
whether there never were fleshly people and
instead there existed only mineral accretions
of dust and fluid bearing a semblance of life.

His lover, who betrayed him as all terrestrial
natives must eventually, is as good and dead,
and every memory of that man will dissipate
into the ice fog rising over the wetlands that
will someday be covered with artificial stone.

Laura Mayron

HERMETICS OF MASS GRAVES

Romance is telling you how my favorite poet was assassinated.
Had anyone asked me ten years ago,
I wouldn’t have said that love would be you,
a shower in early summer (May, teetering
on the edge of ochre heat),
the bathroom too purple with steam
to fully see the paleness of your shadow
between the curtains.

Didn’t you know they lined him up there,
in Granada in August?
Didn’t you know, I ask the rippling
scythe of your hair down your back
—gasp of copper—
that they’ve never found him?
In waters of re-becoming,
I tell you how I wish I could divine
in ink pools like he did: unknown
last words in the dregs,
foretelling the three he would die with,
lashed to the moon.

Together, scrying in fogged-up mirror,
we conjure liquid slip back to heady rot of August.
A chaos of brackish sunflowers,
the gulf-mouth sadness where insects
feed down to his bone marrow.
Take him away, if for a moment
(his eyes like mercury).
Show him what love will be:
dawn-loveliness enshrouding midnight,
two women together,
I—perched on lip—
the poet’s poppies weeping on my thigh,
her, half-Venus in the way she moves light.
Almost-alchemy, suspended,
all ephemera.

Emma K. Shibley

EARLY FEB., MEDICALLY

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Q:

A: biting into crust i lost a bracket of my fixed retainer: leftover of
braced youth, wire protrudes just past invisible to annoyance. the last
time i went to the dentist i surprised myself by freaking out. lying on my
back reclined past one hundred eighty degrees w/ three faces above me,
entering my mouth with needley clickclacks and whirr drills, me feeling
vulnerable and out of control — I had mentioned my anxiety and they
hooked me up to laughing gas, felt heady dizzy panicked — trigger
waking up with something else out of my control unasked entering i
am eternally perforated. my tongue bridges inside over out, bonded to
lingual of lower anterior, cause calculus to build up against the surface;
stain with a form of cement. morning has ceased to exist to me.
rigor sleepy, sleepy mortis. i can not wake up until the rape the chase
the death the slow moving through mown mazey parks i realize it has
been all dream. as you can imagine this is hard to explain to whoever
with whom i missed an a.m. appt. co-morbidity pretty macab re word
when you think about it, acorn acronym i wake up if only to strip my bed
repeat rinse. portrait in chalk of me with lover next to: lover sleep sound,
i at home in my bones as waking up woman, reuptake side effect of winsome
insom, ambulant somnolence. when i share sheets i purposefully dehydrate to
avoid eternal sin of wetting the lovesunk bed. mom the retired pelvic
floor physical therapist tells me from the driver’s side to always pee
after, in order to avoid uti. i lose my water under piles of clean clothes
bridging my floor bed to door and, abandoning hope for finding, give up
on dihydrogen monoffsides / hydrochloric oxide entirely. i wake up
headachey a sober hangover and wonder why or how is it so late, do not
know how i missed another alarm, decide catatonia is better than the
shame of being late, excuse excuse o do not know and wonder why. if i
had a dollar for every denied spoon i would take myself out for ice cream
i would find a new dentist

Margaret Wack

METHODS OF CONSUMPTION

Eat until you feel full
of life. Eat until you feel full
of sorrow. Eat until your mouth hurts
from swallowing and your gums
bleed and your stomach recoils.
Eat meat red and raw from the bones
of animals and let the juice
drip down your chin. Eat until
you feel as if you are lighter
than precious metals, the wind,
the weight of your combined
parts. Eat until your bones
show through. Eat bones until
the shards cut your stomach.
Eat only fruit, like an animal,
pull out your canines with tweezers
and become pure. Eat only liquids
until you feel as if you were on fire
with water and whiskey, until everything
burns. Eat until your clothes swallow
you, eat until your skin stretches
its bounds. Eat until you cannot contain
any more of the universe inside
your body, until you lie surrounded
by yourself and still want more.
Eat until you are as wan and beautiful
as a ghost. Eat until your skin is the color
of pearls. Eat until your lips tremble
with hunger. Eat until your fingers
bleed and you suck the blood
from them and taste the salt
and grow dizzy with need. Eat until
your bones break. Eat until your flesh
becomes so weary of itself
that it lies down on silken sheets
and spreads its limbs wide open
and will not get up. Eat until you become
invisible. Eat until you fill the corners
of the eye. Eat until you consume the world
whole, head first and squirming, until it becomes
you and you become full and you no longer
want.

Cat Dixon

“WRESTLE WITH YOUR OWN DEMONS”

Greg says I shouldn’t write
in persona—write about your own life.
I’d prefer not. To write
is an escape from the shadows,
and without an escape,
I hide in my closet behind
those long dresses
that hide my legs. I’ve hid
in basements for days
and no one searched for me.

But if he wants the truth,
I sat in a chair in Betty’s house
for fourteen hours a day, seven
days a week. The walls and books
stained by cigarette smoke,
the grandfather clock chiming
every hour—its ticking ate
my minutes. Betty snored
in her recliner so loudly
Barbara Walters’ on 20/20—
blond hair, sharp suit—was
voiceless. I tried to read her lips.
Mark always in the corner,
rocking and whispering, crawled
over, made eye contact for the first time—
how blue—and he pulled my hair.
Betty said the lamb on my hair tie
tempted his hands. At naptime,
I lay next to Ashley who smelled
like some kind of plastic; her hair like pulled weeds.
Betty didn’t bathe children,
but she did change Mark and Ashley’s diapers.
She changed the other boy, 11 or 12,
—I’ve forgotten his name—
who laid on the couch, never moving,
who had his feeding tube waiting
there like a vase open for water and roses.
Ashley, with her balding brown hair,
lowered ears, wide-set eyes, grabbed
my hand as we sat watching TV.
I jerked away and saw her wrist
was bruised—blue and green—
like a flower corsage given to a date
at prom or homecoming.

See, I’m fishing and the wind
picks up and the sky’s dark green.
This fish, detached from the hook,
wiggles and jerks. The scales slice
my fingers, and I let go. His body slaps
the wooden dock—
he flips
over and over.
He plunges back into the lake.
Just let that one go.

When the doctor washed his hands,
the hairs on the back of my neck
stood at attention—soldiers marching
the room into shock. The jolts sent
me into spasms, but I was strapped
down—the man refused
to let me leave. A flame tunneled
down my spine seeking the earth,
and like a charred tree, all
that remained was bark
and burnt leaves on the dirt.

Lightening pock-marks my vision
and mutes any meaning. See, I bite
my fingernails, drink too much wine,
vape on this nicotine stick,
email unattainable men, obsess over Cohens,
baseball legends, a boy my son’s age, Larry David,
the space program, Bonheoffer, Seinfeld trivia,
French cuisine, Medea, and Margaret Atwood
to avoid the tornado siren that blares.

If he wants the truth, I don’t
go to the dentist. I claim
I have no time for chairs, waiting,
flossing, x-rays, but it’s truth
decay that I know the hygienist can
never clear away. My teeth
rot so I turn my head when
the boy pulls me close
to kiss my lips. Tongue black—
I spit oil into the sink. Every time
I brush my teeth, the blood runs
down the side of my hand. I rinse
it away—all clean. I’ve taken
a new name—cutting off
the last syllable. Now I’m
playing the game.

The truth is I never learned
how to ride a bike, how to skate,
how to jump rope, or swim. My sky
has always been the ceiling. The fan
that rotates there, the sun, and it spins
in place like a globe. While standing
on a kitchen chair, I jammed my finger up
hoping to cut off a digit—instead a mouthful
of dust and spider web. Home
was salt and pepper shakers from every state,
miniature houses with tiny inviting
doors and windows, an unused
treadmill that was a coat rack,
and the never-silent TV. Tom Brokaw,
my father. Or maybe Regis Philbin.
My mother, Erica Kane,
a soap opera character that I watched
religiously in the summer. The bar
Tommy took me to after All My Children
was over, basted in overdone smoke,
but I liked the way the old stool spun
and the never-ending supply
of salty pretzels. Weekends
meant Tommy’s grandchildren
visiting and holding me down
to tear off my pants while
she disappeared to smoke
and drink in the kitchen.

The truth is I found a book—
in Tommy or Betty’s house,
not sure which—printed in 1923,
and its binding was worn, pages brittle,
and I brought it home, tucked in my pants,
and hid it beneath my bed. When my friend
Sheila spent the night, she lost a sock,
and found the book. I demanded she
drop it, but she held her side of the book
and would not let go. I grabbed and pulled.
Eventually it ripped. We each held half.
I read the even-numbered pages—she the odd,
and we reconstructed the plot,
the character development
separately, but somehow we were
both wrong. We read
the story in the order that was meant,
and snacked on popcorn and candy
I stole from the kitchen when my mother slept.

The truth is when the tornado warning
was announced—I was in the library,
my second year of college, those
campus sirens screaming,
and the people, nameless and white,
all hollered stay here stay here
—I exited the front doors into the rain
and wind. I knew I couldn’t die
for I had survived nights
filled with infanticide, and later,
male rage. What could hailing
gales do to me that I hadn’t already
weathered? What did it even matter?

Now, when the aging beast invites me
to dinner, I know I’m on the menu.
I put off the meeting with excuses—
my daughter’s softball game,
my son’s band concert,
the evening work phone call,
the POS car’s in the shop—
eventually I run
out of delays—the bait is money—
I can’t resist. I drag my babies,
cowering and yawning,
to the table in a poorly lit room
so the beast may snap their necks, and leave
me with their flesh.

See, the swaddling was too tight,
the arm of the rocking chair
too hard, the volcano
on the neighboring island—
a laboring cancerous lung—
polluted the air and dusted
my dark dresser and bed.
When she moved us to Nebraska,
the furniture traveled along
with gritty Pacific salt embedded
in its grain. The lava spilled
from her mouth and I was
“idiot” “dipshit” “bitch”
and I carried those words
in my head until I discovered
releasing them by blood
felt better. And better still,
the vodka on ice, a whole
glass filled to the brim. Black
out. That’s where I’ve been.

The truth is I’ve chosen not
to wrestle what I know I can never
defeat. Better to believe
the myth, live a lie, die
thousands of times, than
to waste tears on the demons—
for they always return to the door,
always slip under the sheet,
always have the last word.

Issue 44 Contributors

Chuka Susan Chesney grew up in the L.A. area and is a graduate of Art Center College of Design. A poet as well as an artist, her poems and art have been published in Peacock Journal, Claudius Speaks, and Inklette. Her paintings and collages have been featured in New England Review and Compose Journal. She is coeditor of an anthology of poems and art titled "Lottery Blues"which is scheduled to be published next year with Little Red Tree in Nebraska. She recently collaborated with Dr. Laura Madeline Wiseman on a book called People Like Cats. An award winning artist, Chesney's paintings have been shown in exhibitions across the country.

Cat Dixon is the author of Eva and Too Heavy to Carry (Stephen F. Austin University Press, 2016, 2014). Her poetry and reviews have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Sugar House Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, Eclectica, IthacaLit, Yes, Poetry, and Mid-American Review.

Julia Gerhardt is a writer from Los Angeles, California. She studied Creative Writing at Goucher College. Her work has previously been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, Monkeybicycle, Sun&Sandstone, and others.

Tina Gross works as an academic librarian doing cataloging/metadata, which accounts for most of the publications in her ORCID profile. Her poems have appeared in journals including Poetry City, USA, The Laurel Review, Third Point Press,Emrys Journal, and Flyway. She is an MFA candidate in creative writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Gregory Kimbrell is the author of The Primitive Observatory (Southern Illinois University Press, 2016), winner of the 2014 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Manticore—Hybrid Writing from Hybrid Identities, Otoliths, Rune Bear, Impossible Archetype, Alcyone, and elsewhere. He is the events and programs coordinator for Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries. More of his writing, including his magnetic sci-fi/horror haiku, can be found at gregorykimbrell.com.

Rebecca Kokitus is a poet residing in the Philadelphia area. She is a student at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where she studies English with a concentration in Writing. Her work has been published and is forthcoming in over a dozen literary journals, most recently in Rhythm & Bones, {isacoustic*}, and Mookychick Magazine. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @rxbxcca_anna, and you can read more of her writing on her website: https://rebeccakokitus.wixsite.com/rebeccakokitus.

Laura Mayron, a queer poet from Hawaii, is a graduate of Wellesley College pursuing a PhD in Spanish literature at Boston University. She has won Honorable Mention in the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award and is nominated for the Best of the Net 2018 Anthology. Laura has been previously published in Noble/Gas Qtrly, Arlington Literary Journal, and 3Elements Review, among others. If she could go back in time, she’d have a drink with Spanish surrealists.

Carolyn Oliver’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in FIELD, The Shallow Ends, The Greensboro Review, Booth, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, and elsewhere. A graduate of The Ohio State University and Boston University, she lives in Massachusetts with her family. Links to more of her writing can be found at carolynoliver.net.,

Evyan Roberts is a queer, fat, black, femme who is deeply committed to intersectional feminism and #blackgirlmagic. She holds a BA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing from Wells College and has won the H. Helena Zachos Prize for Fiction in 2007. She currently works as a Medical Librarian and is pursuing a Masters in Social Work. She lives in Maryland.

Emma K. Shibley has grown mostly up in southwest Ohio and is now a creative writing student at Miami University. Her poetry has appeared on poets.org as a winner of the Harris S. Abrahams College & University Prize, and also in the campus literary magazine INKLINGS, where she currently serves as editor-in-chief. She can be found on twitter @marzipansy and has a cat with a whistley purr.

Margaret Wack has had her work previously published in Strange Horizons, Arion, and Liminality, among others. More can be found at margaretwack.com.

ISSUE 44CONTENTS

Julia Gerhardt