Interviews:
Kari Gunter-Seymour Crystal Wilkinson Poetry: KB Ballentine Steve Brisendine Les Brown Shane Coppage Seth Grindstaff Kari Gunter-Seymour Jeff Hardin Maggie Rue Hess Hannah Houser Angel James Micah Daniel McCrotty William Rieppe Moore Amanda Oaks Emily Phillips Anna Laura Reeve J.T. Temchack Patricia Thrushart Adam Whipple Prose: Laura Dennis Visual Art: Lynne Marinelli Ghenov Rubens Ghenov |
Less of Silence - Micah Daniel McCrotty Hillsides guard a quietude without silence, a reminder that living near the ground eschews true blank noise. Even as I search for asparagus in March, the crickets and small spider-mothers with their egg sacks crinkle leaves with each passing, a car passes down the road, trains heave weight into the air. Even the woodland’s peace knows less of silence than of darkness. That Time of Year - Anna Laura Reeve Silky tufts billow from a hundred cracked milkweed cases Broomsedge, too, opens its mouths saying such soft things just before frost and doggedly after, till empty Spiderlings cast silk lines on this day, so warm Woolly aphids drift like milkweed fur, blooming in the last heat before freeze I don’t need a flint heart today How strange this knife looks in my hand I have to drop it to touch the silks rolling on smooth air like hair underwater How terrible if they were severed How killing, to not be able to feel them or the patter of aphids drifting lazy against my skin |
Interviews:
Kimberly L. Becker Frank X. Walker Poetry: Tohm Bakelas Ace Boggess Victor Clevenger John Dorsey Byron Hoot Ashley Massey Barb McCullough Jay Orlando Elaine Fowler Palencia Greg Ramkawsky Susan O'Dell Underwood Karen J. Weyant Prose: Peter Faziani Mitch James John C. Mannone Henry Yukevich Visual Art: Kelly Hider Alice Stone-Collins full moon and the sun shines - Tohm Bakelas
new jersey is a frost bitten coffin with miles and miles of pale clouds every winter the birds disappear, i’m left with crows that circle overhead toward the end of january sparrows and titmice return, just in time to shake off suicide at midnight, the flowers stop waving, the dead pass through the living, and i sit on my porch and scratch at the black tarry sky with broken glass just to recall my name. |
Sushi for Hillbillies - Susan O’Dell Underwood
It’s posh in East Tennessee tonight. Thursday maki rolls are half-price and all-American—tempura deep-fried with cream cheese, smoked trout, and sauce that’s nothing if not mayonnaise’s kissing cousin. In line for the ladies room, these two are Pentecostal, one with untrimmed lank and holy hair, the other with a braid hanging nearly to the hem of her acid-washed blue jean skirt. She’s preaching over again what she preached to some poor man who’s lost and bound for certain. “I told him, if you sin, you’re going to hell. There’s nothing to it besides that.” It’s a thin vein of roe that calls us home, reminds us of the small-mouth bass we split open long ago on some rickety back porch table, in view of the cow field and the river rising up into fog against the mountains. Now we dine on precious flesh we must practice to pronounce: maguro, ikura, unagi, nori, daikon some local boy juliennes to earn eight bucks an hour. This is the extravagance that tempted me when I used to make-believe grown-up, wishing my parents owned martini glasses, praying someday I’d cross over to that other, blissful side, sophisticated and redeemed. Now we’ve all arrived, our coveting accomplished. We’re proud our Southern portions are on equal terms with tender bites they pinch in chopsticks from Santa Barbara to Boston. But we’re like koi, those giant gold fish transformed, our copper scales grown crimson, larger and outgrowing, bound forever round and round, a swelling fatuous luxury of being bigger than the day before, in those same backwaters where we were bred, still circling. |