The Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library
Forget the Snail
Mary Panke
Maybe depression is the color of biology,
painted on genes like green-brown eyes
or chalk-blue streaks, blurred by staying under
water too long. Or olive-grey lichens clinging
to oaks, their leaves mothers’ hands calling
you back to shore, while you drift and drift, numb
in the salty sling of the tide, Continue reading “Mary Panke, Two Poems”
On Thursday, November 2nd, Word Fountain, the Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library will celebrate the launch of our 14th issue since that first experimental leaflet in the fall of 2009.
There was a two-year hiatus between the spring of 2014 and the summer of 2016 when we re-launched the lit mag with a new look and a new mission, to bring local, national, and global writers of poems and short stories together into one place for our patrons and friends. This will be the fourth issue since the magazine’s rebirth. Continue reading “Launch Party for Fall•Winter 2017”
There Aren’t Any Ducks in the Duck Pond,
Jonathan Greenhause
but that’s OK because there’s no God either,
so the lack of ducks
in a pond named after them
shouldn’t be cause for concern, this absent divinity
allowing us to believe in other things, like science
or perhaps ourselves;
& if we try hard enough,
we can put the ducks back into the duck pond,
put the water back into water, remove Continue reading “Jonathan Greenhause, Spring•Summer 2017”
Miners
Joe Baumann
They set you down in an old dentist’s chair, yellow stuffing clumping around the strips of duct tape that catch on the holes in your jeans. Then they apply blue jelly, cold and clammy, to your temples, massaging it against your skin with two fingers each. Your hair has already been buzzed short so the gloppy mess won’t muss into anything. It is, apparently, impossible to wash out. While they fiddle with their instruments—just out of your periphery, but you can hear something whirring that fills your mouth with a metallic taste, saliva bunching behind your wisdom Continue reading “Joe Baumann, Spring•Summer 2017”
Word Fountain 