fall 2017
Table of Contents
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qualifications
for your consideration
Laura Yan
cold bright waves for sorrow leaf kotasek
Unsolicited Relationship Advice
Erin Kirsh
Ode to a Desiccated Olive
(Love is easier the headless way)
James Cagney
Familiar
Pianissimo
Jennifer van Alstyne
Ecstasy Like Water to Soften Leather Jasmine Sky
Persuasion
Freedom of Speech
Emma Winsor Wood
Rebelling Unrest Errata Dani Spinosa
The Malice in My Footsteps
Conyer Clayton
What It Is About to Do Le Mouton Noir Dessa Bayrock
Somebody Else's Heroes
Small Change
Jocko Benoit
The Travel Section Ghost Train Christopher Levenson
Pamplemousse Dominique Bernier-Cormier
* (It was a lake, used to bodies :islands) * (Arm over arm you expect) Simon Perchik
Limits
New York
Brian Jerrold Koester
Stereotypes like like i love you Andrew Warner
Small Change
I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.
-Salvador Dali
At the bottle depot, I empty garbage bags
of recyclables worth small change. The man
separates plastic, glass and metal—drinkables
off to be reborn at container rehab. A mood I can’t
define fills me—I am the vessel for my emotions.
Sledgehammers of ten types of salvation batter me,
but not one can beat a single feeling. I can put on
a Broadway façade, but the microbial stew
in my gut knows me better than an anthem
or public transit—steering me anywhere fast.
I am not one to bet the future in a ballot
or a sweepstakes ticket. I do not stand near
the centrifugal bumblepuppy for the ball
to come my way, or play an astral bingo
that calls out the planet best for me. I send
stunt optimists to job interviews and first dates.
And sometimes on my dial, “Beauteous” is set to
“Maximus.” A kiss turns her and I into a tuning
fork. A weight lifts without the help of a diet.
I remember to fix my life in post when memory
insists my imaginary friends were not Hell’s Angels.
My pocketful of change today is not a reward
for saving the environment, but a bit of beat-heavy
coin music from the bottle depot machine,
with no dreams of being a symphony.