By Marike Stucky
She listens for his motions, attentively,
but does not hear for the blare of the television.
It’s switched on
the couch
she’s nestled in the crook.
As a little girl
I listened closely as well,
but now I have seen
the things that men can do.
I feel the fear
that salted her trembling lips.
I only wanted someone to love, she tells me.
Can I climb my way out?
The voice-over keeping on
from the television
blares.
By Jocelyn Wilkinson
Backfired
We have some problems
Real life, fucked up, serious ones.
Actually, fucking tons.
Is it our culture?
Is it our government?
Is it our military?
Seriously, what is it?
Because I don’t understand.
My mind is incapable of comprehension
I can find no sense.
The killing, the innocent,
Death doesn’t ruin only the defiled.
Hitting that point,
it ruins society.
Perhaps we encourage it.
Or maybe we just don’t challenge it.
We live, expecting shit to fix itself.
By Andrew Unruh
A burned out light in the sky,
its life-spark lost to the aether,
throws shade across its hollow-eyed
desolation tenement lodgers…
Telephone wires above are sizzling like a snare
smoking in the supernatural darkness,
floating across the tops of cities
reproducing flowers of green-gold, red-gold and fire…
The cinders of psychic respiration flow on
within you and without you, as we lay
by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
By Miranda Weaver
I am standing, trembling
at the edge of all my dreams
the dawn of new and promising things
glaring and shimmering across the abyss
I am not afraid of falling- no!
I am afraid of what I’m leaving behind
of breaking with this familiar, beloved ground
So many memories born in this warm earth
But the enchanting, beckoning blue above
calls to me with its freedom
its freshness, its mystery
And my heart is answering
urging me on to this last step in my safe, known place
I will leap! I will spread wings I knew not of, burn with fire I knew not I had
soar in joyful wheels at heights I thought unattainable
By Jocelyn Wilkinson
A brush, a swipe, a breath
I feel you against my neck
I can’t find you though.
Where did you go?
Hand flings through the air—I’m growing up to you.
You were just there
But now you’re gone.
Where did you go?
There
There
There
I see you but can’t get you
Try catching up, you’re gone.
Where are you going?
Stop
Stop
STOP
Please I said stop
Just slow down so I can catch you
I can feel you—I’m almost big enough for you—just slow down.
Where are you going?
My body is
B U R S T I N G
trying to find, meet, understand you
Can’t you see I’m trying?
Why are you going?
Oh there you are…
Almost…
I missed you again—bigger, bigger—slipped from my hands.
Why are you going?
You stopped…but…you were going somewhere…
You couldn’t have stopped for me—I shrink, I’m normal.
Why did you stop?
A granite-tinged
violet fog enshrouds
my brainstem. I become
a tepid traveler, shuffling
and sore. Lantern’s light,
snagging on a million little dew impedances,
unspools into thick threads
of every single color.
Streamers barely billowing, celebrating
existence and the gaps
that permeate it (the exact
coordinates where red becomes
orange becomes yellow…)
Brushing angel hair from my
face, every movement
a bruising moment; I begin
to become color. My blood
brings all my auras to the surface,
making it easier for them to diffuse
through thick skin and
evaporate. So yes,
it is deflation–—a harmless
loss of self–—But more so it is
integration,
time stitched seamless into passages through spectrums.
By Anthony Gonzalez
In the weeds I
Felt the grasses I
Felt the rushes under my
Earthen toes
Sooty feet
I felt the lashes
Of concrete patches
Upon crusted fingertips
Plastered
In the midday dewy lens
Of christened sapphiric
Blooms
If forgotten I
Grow molden and I
Shift to dust and suffer
The rust of hinges
In the seasalt air
Molasses thick tears
Of mineral remains
Sticks of carbon
Fretting in
The dirt
Ill begotten I
Give passage to
The sun above though
Powerless to say
Otherwise
By Andrew Unruh
I.
A southern Kansas wind…
My favorite friend,
I wonder where she lives now?
II.
Bare sycamore branch—
Laughter pervades the air,
Leaves fly
III.
Deep spring’s blue hour
Movement through an alleyway
One dog’s lone bark
IV.
Early morning’s lavender mist
The ever-recoiling shore
A baying hound
By Rebecca Epp
Sitting by my dear old friend;
Her feet planted firm, toes reaching out
For water, burying themselves in the
Creekbed slate, crumbling beneath
Her gentle weight. She’s so strong
My friend, strong and still;
An ancient relic upon the hill.
Surrounded by others who look
At her with curious eyes; their heads
Tilted with the wind as if saying
How long has she been here?
So long she’s become one with the
Earth, one with the sky, one with
Me. Lucky I am to sit in the shade
Of her attentive gaze; like a shepherdess
Lovingly watching her sheep graze.
A rod in hand and a clear eye;
She walks with grace and purpose
In the low sunlight. Always rooted
In the same spot on the hill, yet
Travelling where her heart would will
Her to go; roaming free among
The mossy puddles, all that remain
Of the flood. I nestle into her bark
So soft and wait for her to speak
Her wisdom. But, she only sits
Basking in the sun, soaking up the
Last of the heat waves; for the frost
Will soon be on its way home.
By Kyle Doesken
This isn’t a story of heroes or fairies,
the kind that you’d find on the shelves in libraries.
You’ve heard those before, so I’ll tell you instead
of a story neglected: the heel of the bread.
Our story begins with an average loaf,
purchased by some unremarkable oaf.
An average loaf of whole grain wheat
for an average guy wanting something to eat.
This may sound bizarre, but it’s perfectly true,
that slices of bread are like people like you.
They share but one goal. They have but one dream.
They want to be eaten, as strange as that seems.
They’d find that they’d met with a wonderful fate
If they’re grabbed from the bread bag and put on a plate.
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