Joe Baumann, 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” →

August 14, 2017 1

Jonathan Owen May, Spring•Summer 2017

Party City
Jonathan Owen May

Balloon flesh gleams through hot July windows,
winks in the light at all the passing goers-by.
The stoned employees slurp helium with shrill
glee, anxious for their next cigarette break. James
wants to wait for Stewart so they can make out.
Napkins and plates and table weights festooned
with the hero of a thousand and one faces, blue
and red for boys, funky pinks and mint for little
girls. No one rattles the maracas in the costume
aisle. The two night managers drink Continue reading “Jonathan Owen May, Spring•Summer 2017” →

August 14, 2017 2

Carolyn Martin, Spring•Summer 2017

To the Police Officer Who Let Me Off the Hook
Carolyn Martin

You were right: eleven miles over sixty-five.
Can’t argue with a radar gun. Fair and clean,
you net my Honda Fit out of all those speeders
slashing through the Sunset Highway’s curves.

I can tell you now I almost cited Kepler’s Law
of Equal Areas: planets move faster when
they’re nearer to the sun. I could have teased
I was mimicking this natural principle. Continue reading “Carolyn Martin, Spring•Summer 2017” →

August 14, 2017 0

Erin L. Delaney, Spring•Summer 2017

Coming Back to Bukowski
Erin L. Delaney

Dispirited, I flip through piles of books
looking for something new,
something to bring on some fire.
Instead I stare down Bukowski.

We’ve been introduced before.
I open Dog from Hell’s pages,
readjust the glue,
recover the nonstick binding.

He provokes me,
pours me a glass
of words,
and this drink ignites
my pen to paper—
a drunken admission
a bare-handed back alley boxing match Continue reading “Erin L. Delaney, Spring•Summer 2017” →

August 10, 2017 1

Craig W. Steel, Spring•Summer 2017

Sunrise Psalm
Craig W. Steele

“Dawn was breaking over the horizon,
shell pink and faintly gold…”
—J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Dawn’s light chases Ephialtes’
shadows back into their secret
caves, dispersing them about my
yard, beyond the fence and down the
road in all directions. Glowing
pink in every puddle where the
gold-eyed Eos bathes her face, it
burnishes the dewy leaves and
grass until they’re glinting like fine
crystal, brightening my way today.

Continue reading “Craig W. Steel, Spring•Summer 2017” →