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”
Just Exactly Like
Philip Athans
“What’s this?” she said after she’d crossed right in front of him.
He didn’t really think she wanted to know the name of the movie she’d momentarily interrupted but still he said, “The Vampire Bat.”
There was, of course, no reaction, just the sound of her opening a cabinet in the kitchen then the refrigerator. Continue reading “Philip Athans, Spring•Summer 2017”
A Shorting
Micah James Bauman
I have a shorting
in my heart
not a longing as some say
I have been living
a tiny thin truth
and by no shrink
of the imagination
can I explain it Continue reading “Micah Bauman, Spring•Summer 2017”
Long Nights with B
Brian Fanelli
B liked to raise his fists,
sneer at me with booze breath,
College boy, what you got on me, huh?
B liked to call next morning,
not to apologize, but to plan the night,
promise to buy first rounds.
B liked to forget how he tangled with friends, Continue reading “Brian Fanelli, Spring•Summer 2017”
At Odds
Bob Beagrie
When there’s no hope of a phone signal
and I know, if there was, you wouldn’t pick up,
these are the things I can use to call you:
the mat of moss sighing damp over a tumble of rocks
among an oak’s exposed roots beneath dripping branches,
the wind, carrying threads of fret into a white sky, Continue reading “Bob Beagrie, Winter 2017”
Word Fountain 