Vol. 7 No. 1

Summer 2024

Red Astral Uterus
Editor's Note
Albanian Folk Dance
In the Barn
Death Cleaning
How Everything And Nothing Changes
The Civilian Conservation Corps
Sunrise and Mountains
GPS
One Spoon or Two
Pando
Matching Blue
The Body of God
Annual Visit
Joshua Tree Yellow Flowers
Neighbors
Artichoke
Centaur
Epiphyte Lessons
Joshua Tree October 14 2023
Invisible Work
Loblolly Pine in August
Enthralled to the Dead
Nothing Compares
The world goes on
Why We Let the Striped Bass Go
Sunset in Joshua Tree, 2024
The Walker
shame and the way it hangs from the body like wet linen
Life Cycle
Unsafe at Any Speed
Today a River
This Man on the Street
Alder and Salmon
Induced by the Ice Moon,
Don't Look
At South Lido Park, When My Husband Has COVID
Ice Cave
Nonverbal Communication
The Making of Horses
Series: Asemic Metamorphoses of Space, (vers. 14)
What Noah's Wife Did
The Pregnancy Pillow
Sunrise, September Five
Even Though My Ulna Popped out of the Skin When I Fell off the 6th-grade Monkey Bar…
Loosdrecht schaatsen
Wood Ear
Foraging for Wine
Wisława Szymborska and the Wounded Angel
Bracken
The Forgotten Tree
If you could be any animal?
When My Mom’s Ghost Comes To Visit Me
Parent's Day
Blues
A Decade of Seasons I
Hairpin
As Highway and Bridge
The Drive Back Home from School with Mom
A Decade of Seasons III
Two Defenseless Haibun
Germination
Elevated Convection
Marigolds
Turbulence, A Zuihitsu
Harmony of Humanity: Evolving Empathy
Missing Persons Report #3
What's It Like To Be a Guinea Pig?
Desert Penumbra
Tangled Yarn: Abstract Elegance in Tufted Artistry, Where Fashion Meets Canvas IV
Keep Child Away From Window
Red Signs
By Water
The light at the end of the tunnel
Starting from Scratch
Bird Singing in the Moonlight
The mnemonic FINISH neatly summarizes the symptoms of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome
Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence
Bad Omens
This is My Impression of a Very Good Girl
Ordinary Nights
Dialogue with the innocent dragon

Even Though My Ulna Popped out of the Skin When I Fell off the 6th-grade Monkey Bar…

1.

I want it all back, my playground where I was catapulted
through the air, six feet off the ground, landing on my left arm,
exposing gray bone, nerve & artery paralleling my fifth-grade
universe. Mrs. Harrison calls my dad who’s walking out the door
to go fishing on his only day off. Instead of the river we go to the
          hospital
where I get a shot with the world’s longest needle. The nurse with
          her crisp
clean uniform tells me that it won’t hurt. They always lie. My sister
          says
I told you so. I shoot her the middle finger & mean it. I hope you die
she says.

2.

I outspell everyone in my classroom, except Mimi Sullivan whose
          father
took her to Tokyo for a radiology convention. We have a spell-off & I
          beat her
by one word. I buy ice cream from Brookshire’s Dairy with my
          winnings
& a big chocolate sheet cake as big as Texas. I’m the hero for one day.
          I misspell
circular at the county bee & lose to Connie Dick who was a dick, but           a nice one.

3.

Miss Evangeline Tubbs, our music teacher, was a staunch advocate of
          German lyrics,
the fat on the underside of her upper arms, swinging like hammocks
          as she directed choir.
She forced me to sing a solo in the Christmas musical & I told her
          that I was gonna mess
it up, & I did mess it up, & I felt vindicated & powerful at least as
          much as a kid can feel
vindicated & powerful.

4.

I popped the sleeve of a nylon parka in Rebecca Bowden’s left eye, &
          she yelled that her mama was
gonna pay us a visit & I lived on pins & needles all night but they
          never came. Rebecca was a sort of hero
with her pirate patch & she never spoke another word to me & that
          was okay because I knew that what she
had said to me was malicious & uncalled for.  Fairview School made
          me happy & I wish that I still fit into
the mold. Sadly, my body has outgrown its youth, but my brain
          retains memories. At least for now.

Share!