fall 2016
Table of Contents
Return to Home PageWith Their Flicker Fork Tongues, Snakes Taste the Bitter, Bright Air Blue Moon Enters the Street Arleen Paré
Tuesday Shared Accommodation Shaun Robinson
Penmanship in Catholic School James Valvis
That Night She Happened So Easy Nicomekl River Claire Matthews
12:33 AM What Colour is That? Mormei Zanke
After Jim Morrison, May 1985 Manny Blacksher
* (You test each hole for winter) * (Your shadow spreads across) * (Shielding your lips this stone) Simon Perchik
Sigmund Freud, Action Figure Meghan Bell
Livingston Cape Celyn Adam Day
sometimes old name warning: leaf kotasek
common time cloud variations Rachelle Pinnow
A Little Soap Work Leena Niemela
Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers Stuart A. Paterson
Notes From a Relationship with Hades (#1) Cindy Pereira
Certain Things You Should Know About Rusty Kathleen M. Heideman
10 words repeated Falcon oHara
Indian (4) Blood Quantum (8-9) Jordan Abel
Penmanship in Catholic School
You sat writing page after page
of single letters, cursive l
like a fish standing on its tail,
the S snakes, beheaded lower case i
like a procession of John the Baptists,
t like little crosses waiting for Jesus.
On pads with blue lines big enough
to ride your bike on, with a dotted line
down the center of the road,
you wrote W until the sheet became
an ocean, wrote h until it looked
like a church filled with chairs.
It was more like drawing than writing
and writing would never be this fun again.
Maybe nothing else would either.
Soon you would learn how to string
letters together like a rosary, form words,
explain why Crusaders crusaded
so many times, as if we knew why,
as if we knew anything at all,
other than the comforting v-shape
of Sister Teresa Anna’s breasts,
and O abyss of our priest’s mouth
while he listened during penance.