Adelaide Literary Magazine No.55, November 2022

REVISTA LITERÁRIA ADELAIDE

to the ground, sure that at least one of us would get stabbed and die.
There were still chocolate stains all over the hallway! And even so, I
didn't know her at all. She grew too quickly and changed too much.
At which birthday party will she sink into the corners, away from me?

§
When Ayla's siblings were six, seven, and nine, Gemma warned me
on her way out that they were "recently curious about sex."
"All of them?" I asked. She was already out the door.
"Can you have sex with a baby?" The middle child asked me. "A cat?"
"NO," I emphasized.
"How big is a human egg? This big?" The youngest child made a fist
and brought it to her eye like a telescope.
"Way too small to see," I massaged my eyebrows.
I prayed for Gemma to come home early so I wouldn't permanently
fuck up her kids with all the wrong answers.
The other week, I walked in on Gemma and the middle child in a
serious discussion. She's thirteen now, has pink streaks in her hair, and
only wears men's XL sweatshirts. At a recent sleepover, she and her
friends had gone onto a website where you can video chat with strangers.
"Did you see any penises?" Gemma demanded.
"No!" she noticed me listening and crawled inside herself.
I thought: I'm not sure how, but this is my fault.

§
I stared down at Ayla, who stared up at the museum worker. Usually,
she'd be melting down by this hour, but she was calm. I then pulled
Ayla, who pulled "Brown," out the automatic doors and into the cold.
We ambled slowly so that Brown could smell the occasional tree.

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"Does she smell a baby?" I asked. Ayla nodded, like: Of course.
Violet Piper is a recent graduate of UC Santa Cruz, where she studied
astrophysics. She works as an artist’s assistant in Brooklyn, writing whatever
and whenever possible. In 2020 she published an article in Slate magazine
about working with elders during the pandemic. This year she’s published a
poem with The Blue Mountain Review and an essay in Olit.

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NAMES, NAMES, NAMES
by Jae-Hyun Cho

On my first day of school in second grade, Mr. Sharp asked my mother,
Mrs. Kim, to come inside his classroom to ask if she had any questions.
My mother shook her head no, and she left hastily. I was too afraid Mr.
Sharp wouldn’t let me into the classroom if I corrected his pronunciation.
Yet, I yelled her name to myself, with a great blast of the ‘ook-’ from
the tongue touching my upper mouth to sudden discharge, trilling my
mouth wide for the abrupt blow of ‘Kyo-,’ followed by the long and
deliberate stroke of ‘-ung,’ So-ook-Kyoo-ung! The sonorous syllables
slipped through my teeth effortlessly. How could anyone chirp the
yodeling sound of ‘Sookkyoung’ with one flick of a tongue?

To my new neighbors, my mother was Missus Soo-ok. To our
landlord, my mother was Soog-young. To the store cashier, my mother
was Soo-hook-young. Hearing Americans mispronouncing my mother’s
name overwhelmed my ears as if a cold wind slapped against my head;
these incoherent syllables jumbling into somewhat of my mother’s name
made me question my hearing, arguing if I should correct them or not.
But my mom claimed it didn’t matter. I couldn’t understand my mom;
I mean, who would like to hear themselves called out for a wrong name,
or even worse, a mispronounced name for the rest of their lives?

I stood in front of the classroom door, took a deep breath, and opened
the door with a firm swing. As I entered the classroom, I noticed all the
gazes in the room suddenly pointed at me; the flood of attention was
pouring into my eyes uncontrollably. I could taste my tongue in my
mouth bitter. I could feel each fiery heartbeat pulsing upon my chest.
My head dropped down instantaneously.

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Maneuvering my way out of the cubbies after dropping off my
backpack, I sat down in the nearest blue plastic chair that was available.
As I looked to the right, I could still see classmates glancing over me with
alien eyes, so I faced away from them and turned my head the opposite
way. As I looked to the left, however, I noticed multiple posters adorned
the classroom wall with colorful drawings and fancy decorations, and,
in the middle, their individual names written in thick, black sharpie.
Max, Elizabeth, Julian, Nathan, Hannah, Caleb, ..., the posters read.

“Hey class, we got a new kid today!” Mr. Sharp said in his upbeat,
comedic energy.

“Can you tell us your name and one interesting thing about yourself?”
I stood up out of my chair and scanned the whole room before talking.
Classmates were still staring at me like I was an anomaly. I took a deep
breath and started.
“... My name is Jae-Hyun, and I like…”
“Wait, what was your name again?” One classmate questioned, but
I could see him jokingly giggle over me.
“It’s Jae-Hyun. You pronounce it Jae-Hyu-eun.”
“So, you say it like Jay-Hun?” Another classmate blurted, mimicking
my Asian accent. They started chuckling a bit.
“No, Max, I think it should be Jauu-Hung.” Somebody murmured
out of nowhere, with a full-blown Chinese accent while pronouncing
my name. The whole class flipped and soon burst into laughter.
“That’s enough! Stop making fun of him; he is going to be part of the
class for the year. Jae-Hyun, you can sit down now.” Mr. Sharp scolded
the class with his unusual ear-splitting voice. The silence hit the room
like a brick wall.

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I was quivering; disappointment and embarrassment took over me
just as quickly as my name fades into oblivion in our class. All the
confidence that I had embraced before coming to school vanished
precipitously. I found myself wishing that I had an alternative name —
a truly American name — so that I wouldn’t be perceived as an ‘exotic,
bizarre’ Asian kid ‘who uses weird Chinese names.’ But I had one name,
the only name that I’m proud to say: Jae-Hyun.

I thought ‘who I am’ — my charming character— was what would’ve
made me introduced to other classmates, what would’ve mattered.

But it didn’t matter. They didn’t see any of my true self; instead, they
insisted on my inherited name to define ‘who I am.’

Although I inscribed my name poster displayed on the classroom
wall as Jae-Hyun with long and callous strokes of sharpie with black
and dense ink, I was Jay or Jesse at school, and one time the substitute
teacher mistook me as Jesaiah. It took a while to get familiar with my
different names.

By the time I turned into a third-grader, friends had called me Jesse
or Hey Jess, and I was genuinely Jae-Hyun only to my mother and
father and brothers and relatives who would come over to eat (1)
and (2) occasionally on Saturday nights. My initial ambition to
be known by my proper Korean name had faded faraway. I just wanted
to be Jesse to blend with Calebs and Julians and Nathans in our class.
Shame burned through my spine whenever they would single me out
as a ‘foreigner,’ an odd, exotic Asian friend from a random country tens
of thousands of miles away. However, my skin coloring, facial features,
and accent were a dead giveaway.

“So, where are you from, Jesse?”

“From Asia,” I answered ambiguously, because I assumed no one
would know where my home country is.

“Where in Asia? Are you from China?”

“No,” I shook my head, “From South Korea.”

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“South Korea? Where is that?”
“South of North Korea.”
I understood; they were just curious about me. However, an uneasy
feeling started to settle on my chest. Once it was locked into place, it
shuddered in protest to being pulled back. It grew larger in size and
weight with every second to the point where I could deny no longer; I
was ashamed of my origin.
“Really? Then do you have a Korean name?”
There was an irrepressible silence forming around me. I took a deep
breath.
“... No.”
________________________________________
(1) : Korean traditional soup
(2) : Korean traditional BBQ

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POETRY
POESIA



REVISTA LITERÁRIA ADELAIDE

PERVERSION
by Kristal Peace

I Will Miss the Train

My shift starts early
On the ward, so I see
And hear what most
Of my countrymen
Only learn about second-hand.
For instance,

This morning the sun
Stretched its arms
Rather timidly. I’ve never seen it
Be so shy. And this morning
The gym refused to open.
The greengrocer too.
The petrol station made
The attempt, but changed its mind

When the tread of the tanks
Tickled the ground

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And the earth laughed. Silver birds
Rent the sky, then
The people knew
It was time to flee.

So they fled.

But I have rounds to make
Patients to see, those
Invalids who came here
To get well. Besides
Hospitals rarely close,
So I stay

And play with charts and
X-rays. In the background
The tune of soldiers
Advancing reminds me
Of those silly childhood games
I used to play

With my neighbour who had
A chest full of toy soldiers ready
To cross the border
Between his house and mine
And destroy the newborn grass,
The elderly earth,
The infant trees,

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The middle-aged rocks, everything
That stood in the way. Foolish lad;
I thought the games were harmless.
Just boys being boys.

I didn’t understand.

A patient cries out
When he hears the first shell
Fall outside his window, and I
Get up and stroll
To his door and tell him
Calm yourself my friend,
There is nothing to be done.

This is how we die.

The toy soldiers have been
Taken out of the chest again
And we are standing in their way. Calm
Yourself, my friend. For ages and eons
This is how we will die.

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Perversion

Her voice is a poisoned apple,
The internet the kiss. She is
That which will never defeat
True love.
Kristal Peace enjoys autumns coloured with russet, lavender and red,
winters obscured by snow, and books. Her poems and a short story have
appeared in the Pennmen Review, Scrittura Magazine and Ink Pantry.

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THE DAY THE MACHINES CAME
by John Linstrom

The Day the Machines Came

We said, finally, here is some help
and for cheap. Somewhere someone
had dug the graves of a bygone age

and turned up the muck to racket
the tractor to life. We thirsted,
had no money, that day. Oils forced

from subterranean slumber became gold.
We could bring bananas back from town,
send the children to school, buy more

land, send our youngest son away
to college. Why didn’t he return?
Sunlight glinted off metal shoulders,

beat less long on our backs. The earth
smelled warm, that day, felt still
soft and inexhaustible, while the prophet asked

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Why do you spend your money
for that which is not bread, your labor
for that which does not satisfy?
Soul thirsts, flesh faints, the soil
grinds below the turning blade, we eat
of new cheap calories, energy dug
from deep and irreplaceable. Were we
worse sinners for what we began,
that day? Then we thirsted, needed money,
left the land to others and fewer.
We sit down to eat and drink
and then rise up to play. Someone
somewhere exfoliates the earth
to charge our little bricks, the metals
and the heavy metals someone somewhere

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has ordered from the rock,
that hands have bled against,
so we may sit to eat and play
and bend above the little worlds
that we’ve retreated to. When the screen
goes black, what does it reflect?
Here is help, and cheap. Does this test
provide a way out? We thirst, need money,
dig new graves and leave the land to play.
 

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Chloe Gazes through the Window Blinds

Watchful child, slatted with sun, I wish
that we could always be like those who dream

and never consider the things of old.
Already, clouds break the lines of light

and you squirm. You will someday learn
of those taken weeping, bearing the seed

for sowing. They say, sweet pea, that we
shall all come home, carrying our sheaves,

someday. The lines return, in spots of time.
Sooner, you will surely see some uniform

in flesh: as to zeal, a persecutor,
as to righteousness under the law,

blameless. Will you plant with me
this root of spikenard? Will you render

the costly pound and kneel, with me,
before the weariness of this world?

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We do not always have each other, but
when we rise, my shoulder will be close
for you to lean a cheek on if you will,
as you do now, in elbow crook, dreaming—
a new thing now springs forth, do you not
perceive it?—your eyelids streaked with light.

John Linstrom is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality
at The Climate Museum in New York City. His poems have recently appeared
widely in journals including North American Review, The New Criterion,
Atlanta Review, The Citron Review, and Roanoke Review. His nonfiction
has recently appeared in The Antioch Review and Newfound. He is also the
series editor of The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library for Cornell University Press,
making available the works of Progressive-Era environmental philosopher
L. H. Bailey. His editions of Bailey's works include The Nature-Study Idea
(Comstock-Cornell UP, forthcoming), The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener’s
Companion: Essential Writings (coedited; Comstock-Cornell UP, 2019),
and The Holy Earth (Counterpoint, 2015). He holds an MFA in Creative
Writing and Environment from Iowa State University and a PhD in English
and American Literature from New York University. John currently lives
with his wife and their baby daughter in Queens.

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PLANET
by Livio Farallo

tenth millennium

i’m sure i was the same
as the

stone; round and ungolfed;
fractured from something much larger

that stumbled down
the
mountain.

there is nothing that
laughs any
harder than

a murder
of crows. i can sit, without
a
fossil etched

any-
where; bland as rock, and know

they
aren’t

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laughing REVISTA LITERÁRIA ADELAIDE
at
me.

something acute as one blade of
grass is enough to make the

water
run and pitch as if
screaming for shelter

at the end of its life.
horizons avalanche running their

fingers through
forbs.

i won’t borrow
blankets or quicksand
in mud

unless winters
are the same as blood.
for one more night

i can stay folded and dull
as a
memory of sun barely moves soil.

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planet

i carry a postcard telling me that
penguins hop like cannon
but,

swim for all existence
like bereavements ritualized
for every person who has ever

died.
water, for whoever it drowns,

is an
eternity,
and the jellyfish that someone
called
my soul has grown legs
and spits at the ground.

i mailed a letter to
angkor

wat asking a keeper
to bury it

under ruins that
hadn’t yet breathed.

i wanted the rust
of

night to be a beard you

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couldn’t
simply
shave
away
with an
unmannered sun.

i told myself
something today i could
never forget: the
thin shale you break
over your knee is a
half-open door without
echoes.

and while i waited
in the ER i realized the spores i
inhaled were buttons of
time, exhausted and
dripping through a decade;
shoveling and blooming,
like an accordion
pressed in fog.

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silence becomes midnight

the curtain on the window is
unclear

and proofs exist
without license
for making yesterday

a shadow
on the prairie.

if i can’t find you
there are newspapers
with stories and

sermons
without
priests that will trace you like a stencil.
so i try to

break the glass
that hugs you
in blades of color while a thousand

people
plummet from

a cliff but shatter
before they hit the river or,

as night

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is a
statue that melts in snores,
an avalanche
can bring the one-eyed sun laughing in your face.
and maybe you are peeking
from the balcony
of a disinterred day,
still blind;
still unprepared

for paralysis
but,

screaming little tufts of
morning

that are crumpled train
whistles without smoke:
calendars say nothing of time:
your carcass lays down without a word.

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i’m sorry to see us go

some misfortunes deep as a pitchfork
might grab a bale of hay
is how
a blanket squeaks on wet skin.
and i pass
you by

determined to investigate sanctuaries
packed with promises but
really,
full as a gall bladder.

and there you stand
benevolent and pink
as all yesterdays still
to be: a blossom of salt.

there is a fortress here, likely
as a soccer team
to tear shirts and scream,

and the provender
it eats
disappears like atlantis
before
daybreak or another gallon of whiskey

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or another cinnabar of flag colors dotting the sky.

i swallow the night air of a morgue; some
beeless

hives drop to dust. i can’t calculate
whether
hearts should matter
or
just
breathe.
a picture comes to mind
involving
a florid nightmare where
aviators
are not piloting planes but drop bombs
anyway.
sleep is not a deterrent. its
stones are only the failsafe of architecture.

and once more,
that palaver
you brook
in cross-
eyed

garden speeches,
drifts in a steamy heaven; there is a rainforest of incognito
in small places under

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foot. there is a cross on the parking lot from which
radioactivity can ripple in dominoes
and poachers take liberties in

shadowy sunlight.
it seems there is never enough to let go.
X marks the spot.
Livio Farallo is co-editor of Slipstream and Professor of Biology at Niagara
County Community College in Sanborn, New York, USA. His work has
appeared, or is forthcoming, in Rabid Oak, Old Pal, Rise Up, The Blue
Collar Review, Beatnik Cowboy, Helix, and others. His collection, "Dead
Calls and Walk-Ins" chronicles his job as a taxi driver many, many years
ago.

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IN THE BEWITCHED AVIARY
by Pawel Markiewitz

The sonnet according to Mr. Shakespeare

Helots muse about moony Golden Fleece of the condor.
Drudges think of the dreamy eternal dew of the hen.
Philosophers ponder on winged fantasy of the crow.
Kings ruminate on a picturesque gold of the jay.

Priests contemplate the dreamed, soft, meek weird of the woodpecker.
Masters daydream about nice marvelous songs of the tern.
Soothsayers dream of fulfilled gold of the yellowhammer.
Knights philosophize about poetic dawn of the wren.

Hoplites fantasize about a red sky of the sparrow.
Athletes describe the most tender treasure-charm of the snipe.

Gods remember an enchanted, dear temple of the seagull.
Goddesses recall fairytale-like heroes of the kite.

Poets commemorate the elves-like heaven of the owl.
Bards reflect on most amazing dreamery of the rook.

soothsayer – fortuneteller

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Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet
who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long
poem.

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FOREVER AUGUST
by Linda Barrett

We hate to see August drain away

Like the grains of gold

Fleeing from a dying miner’s hand

From an old movie.

We want to remember the

Lush, emerald-green of the vegetation

Which surrounds us.

Like a sweet-smelling cocoon.

My nose picks up the fragrance

Of a barbeque pit’s waning odor

The scent of watermelon

The mayonnaise of a devoured

Potato salad

The sun sets earlier and earlier

Purple clouds surround him

Covering him over

As he retires to the west.

Deep blue evenings

Thick as the Pacific Ocean’s

Marianas Trench

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Where fireflies bobble and float around

With their glowing tails

To guide them in their mating dance.

A dark-haired woman reaches

Out her bare arms

To embrace us.

She wears a sheer, thin summer dress

Billowing around her.

A picnic table behind her,

Standing before a chain link fence

In Abington Township’s Alverthorpe Park.

A little dark-haired girl

Dressed like her mother

Holds onto the table.

August becomes that scene

If we embrace her,

We still hold fast to August within us,

Even when it’s December.

Linda Barrett was born with a pen in her hand. She writes for hours and
hours every day. Adelaide Magazine has printed her works for many years.
She lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with her elderly mother.



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I HAVE MISSING PIECES
by Nanette Rayman-Rivera

kaleidoscoping a sun-dressed mare

Lest my heart becomes a seagull, soars away—the world is a cold
country—lest my heart effervesces in pyrogenic fever, leaving my body
unlike a lamb, but a naïve bull running from red, hanging now in a
slaughterhouse--
Lest my heart returns, let the River Styx make oaths I can’t keep while
it sucks me down.. I need none of the falling stars’ safeguards, but over
the tossed beer bottles and crack pipes in lonely fields, let my heart be
turned out toward blown brambles from rain-city air while gray barbed
wire breaks into my eye-sockets and grates against my lips—
You went missing. Purple Beauty Creeping Phlox blooms without you.
Vespertine.
From beneath the moon-shimmer, dusty-white moonflowers blossoming,
oh-so lusciously scented, keeping the city safe. Deadbolt. Homeless men
barking, the night is alive. You are gone. My heart is simply gasping in
blood, but the air—aroma alive. You are gone.
Lest my heart shrivels like a pumpkin or an old woman’s avocado-shaped
breast—
Lest my heart never hears the sweet song of the coqui bulging so pretty
near Flamboyan—

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May my heart spin spastically, kaleidoscoping a sun-dressed mare.
Because I might not see you walking up the hill, coming, coming to me.
There you are, walking up the hill accompanied by angels--a glowering
moon
an emaciated palace commiserating with the sorrow of gone-missing
still locked in with an Alukah and bleeding. Your hand reaches through
white mist and the hell of that moment-going-gone is still here.
Alukah as a blood-sucking witch who can fly like a bat when her hair
is let loose and shapeshift into a wolf. A seductress with two demon
daughters who cry “Give, give,” Alukah will die if her supply of blood
is cut off.

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because there are eyes that see birds as telltale

when a train plows through me
it is the place where crows kiss and
crepuscular green grass grows like firefly teenagers
when I set my face to life
I have a hard time with that
lonely train, windows looking at me wondering
why I swallow a lungful of trailing brambles
the windows are cavities there are eyes that see birds as telltale
because birds are fed on omens and gunpowder
because the birds say the train is not coming
and for once I wasn’t hypervigilant and listened
to the birds and the train came. it is that militant train
which knows why not the windows wondering.

when a rapist plows through me
the quadriceps of gravediggers slam against
my vespertine wounds I lost my bird-heart
my earth-soul still far away so I grew thistle and jasmine
between my legs; I grew a birdhouse on my breasts
for myself so as to steal a home for myself
without no man’s hands rummaging through
my room in the world. when I look back and
wonder why I swallow a lungful of trailing brambles—
It is the gravedigger. The birdhouse. It is swallows

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I swallow: that my husband’s gone missing
I return with my-earth that I left on the tracks
our bodies have grown together; oh, do I see a bird?
Bodies of birds and body of you become one in grimaces—
I see a bird. I don’t see you. I see a train. I see a gravedigger.
I don’t see you. You’ve gone missing.
 

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I have missing pieces

One minute walking, next straight ground-down,
Puppy crying in circles,
Vena Cava stopped; my heart fled,
Vaporizing like a ladle of dregs
My heart still loves
Is it still woman still?
Poetry my love wrote I can’t find,
Missing along with his stonewashed jeans
I guess that a relic-thief lives in my body.

Where all the fallen women gather
To let their blood flow pouting into earth
The tight-fisted sun poking at the edges of our bodies,
Its bastion within a white dwarf star the world now
Where Lethe’s whispering sound departs with my pieces
Of you in my gone-heart. My puppy lies
Trembling from my body and finds yours.

 

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blue

I don’t want to think of the puppy I saw today while out on the main
drag. Still, I do. Could I have a puppy when my husband is gone?
Wonderland-eyed puppy,
Looking up at me, as if we’re allied in sorrow, the pumice-hard sun
turning her pretty fur frosted like my mother’s beehive in 1965. And
still, the puppy looks up at me,
already beginning to sit Shiva with me in the sudden wavering rain.
Someone knows where you are, someone dealing crack until your tongue
lost itself in bloodstain while
you tried hard to talk: Tell me! who did it, you are still my husband.
You had the sense to hate sympathy. You said: You might as well hit me
in the eye. Love me, and don’t be
one of those sickly women who feels sorry. Just love me. I took it to
heart. I only said: I love you. I wish I could take your demons and open
the gates beyond crack-fever and
sweat and throw them into what lies beyond our world. I saw a LeConte
sparrow tonight—it reached me, a destination, but I knew because they
prefer damp fields and I’m not there.
It watched me fall to my knees because someone knows where you are;
someone knows if you turned blue at twilight after buying bad drugs
and meeting the end of God as you tried
to speak to me on the phone. Cops did nothing; my heart swelled to
one thousand times its size, as if my body was a balloon or a home. You
were my home. Blue and nights have been
stolen from me; as I combust, the cops do nothing. The gist of summer
dies out in the moonlight. I’ve been sitting outside since you couldn’t
speak at 5:07 p.m. Blue is silhouette;

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it is an inability to accept that you’ve found your ideal, and someone
thinks you’re the ideal, an innocence of wonder that I loved you in spite
of your high on Bazooka, your loss
of vivacity, the onset of your eyes as running arrows. I want to take that
puppy and return with it to some component of air, of still-ing—so that
blue, which once was calm and
Cornflowers and Blue Linckea Sea Stars Is now the Anemone flower
(Forsaken) and the Blue Ringed Octopus, a sudden poisoning of the
distance, will be forever, a cold kindling
of the flesh. Heart. Eyes. A cry unstoppable. Let me hermit with my
new puppy; maybe she’ll soothe my hurt at having to go on and live.
 

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widow

She will be silent, she will be migraine, and she will go walking.
She will wait for him to knock on the door.
She will remember the bad times as if they were good.
She will remember the two dozen purple roses and he copped a feel.
She will buy a platform bed but keep the box spring he’d wanted.
She will think of Nietzsche and that man has not come far,
when in moonlight, only moths come to call with kindness.
She will think of Nietzsche and that Truth might be attained too soon.
Up until tonight she’d thought she’d see Jose’s hair bobbing fancy and
curly
as a head-dress, as he walked in that bounce, up the curving hill.
She will freeze at the photo booth in front of H& M, her alluvial
nonchalance
over. He’d wanted to take photos with her. She’d said, oh,
no, precisely. She didn’t know why. Rain, pocks, the blowing of gnats
and
mosquitoes. She forgets how to use language.
She will remember how he called her breasts mosquito bites.
She will remember saying but they are roundy and that he copped a feel.
She will unfasten her eyes, place her ears on the sink.
She will call herself Oleander (Beware) and place signs

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on her nightstand. She will begin to melt away like a Lilac
(First emotion of love) in drought-stress and spill her Sofrito rice
all over her doused failing Hyacinth (Beauty).
She will marry chocolate swirl Brioche and sexy shoes believing
he’s beside her handing her money. She will cry as she remembers
how he cleaned the bathroom at a computer store to pay for her
broken tooth. She will cry because he warred with demons, because
he heard voices, and because he’d put his hand on her face:
just to see that you’re real, baby.
She will try to undress her grief as she puts on her nightgown
but his burning hand—is that him? —is copping a feel.

Nanette Rayman-Rivera, author of poetry books, Shana Linda Pretty
Pretty, Project: Butterflies, two-time Pushcart nominee, Best of the Net
2007, DZANC Best of the Web 2010, winner Glass Woman Prize for prose.
Publications: The Worcester Review, Sugar House Review (mentioned
newpages.com), Stirring's Steamiest Six, gargoyle, sundog, Berkeley
Fiction Review, Editor's Pick prose at Green Silk Journal, Pedestal, ditch,
Wilderness House, decomp, Contemporary American Voices, featured
poet at Up the Staircase, Rain, Poetry & Disaster Society, DMQ, carte
blanche, Oranges & Sardines. She lives with her puppy, Layla.

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KILNS FANTASTIQUE
by T.J. Masluk

for J. G. Verne

Neath the kilns
of Coplay,

one mile deep,

adrift

through caverns
of twinkling aquamarine.

Rooms untouched,
musty cold,

gurgling streams teemed
with finned marmalade,

shrooms golden brown
like altar bread,

opening worlds
within worlds.

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T. J. Masluk, poet and writer, has work appearing in The Columbia
Review, Wisconsin Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Ekstasis, Writer’s
Block Magazine, New Contrast, The Hong Kong Review, The Seventh
Quarry, The Galway Review, in the anthology Without a Doubt (NYQ
Books), and elsewhere. He’s from Northampton, Pennsylvania, has master’s
degrees from Columbia University, a Ph.D. from Sofia University, and
studied creative nonfiction at the University of Oxford. Further details about
him may be found at: NYQ Poets - T. J. Masluk

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TRICKSTER
by Kiara Nicole Letcher

There’s a fly in my champagne coupe
the door is locked from the wrong side

Freshly squeezed stars and glitter all over the floor
freshly squeezed heart vessels and vermillion all over the ground
I once read that even an asteroid can be a celestial body

A drop of blood in fresh water pooling out
mercurial water color portrait of self
there are nights when something is happening
that should not be happening
a black swallow tail emerging and transforming
inside of a women’s home

Bleed into emptiness
a hungry stillness beckons with airy hands

Is being alone loneliness?
What does one do with an amorphous heart?

If I was a werewolf I would tear this mourning to pieces
at night leave my body skin, teeth, feet

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peel them off like a wet bathing suit
leave them in the backyard solitary, limp, detached
I would moan low
up there over in the ether
hovering in the violet heaven before twilight
Airy/breathlessly chilled/maybe
not really anywhere at all.

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He Left You In The Basement

Hello, high tension
I live for her and all her rage her big moods

This mood is busting a pumpkin skull
into tiny little pieces
it is saying assault or non-consensual
and maybe not laughing about it this time

Here is a slice of unsolicited advice…
if you have a sexual attraction
to destruction
do not unearth things
that are not meant to be uprooted
push to tell the truth to yourself
talk to mirrors and waterways
yell out the goons in your lungs
and the phantoms in your memory
if that’s what it takes

Write these things in old photo books
scribbled them on fortune cookie paper

Let me impart an obvious secret…
There is no elevation in achieving

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disastrous outcomes
do not turn back
to the echo you might hear
in a darkened tunnel
Maybe a harsh fact with help with your heartache…
Your cherub face is gone
deal with that sorrowful truth
shed those old childhood books
leave the pages on the ground
a trail of snake scales
Return home like slow sunrise

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I undressed my face for you

“It hurts here, in this delicate place”
I pointed to the cracked shell
prized it opened to viscous yolk

Shame lunges forward on grasshopper legs
when I look at my loss
I find no golden embrace or tether
of closeness
I am without a thick knot or bow for my gift

My face a bruised purple sky from all the cry
a carmine tongue licking a mirror
glassy reflection looking back wet

Vexing hurt left split open
slices of tomato like tender palms
red and demanding
Are we just all broken pieces of mountain
waiting to avalanche?

There will be no cleaning of this wound
I am on the lookout for thunder
perched over a high cliff waiting
like a cloud that begins to
sigh.

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Trickster

The Coyotes sang against
the moon and I was the only one to hear
their lyrics full of athletic inflection
What a foul waste
that I was only a child
unable to understand their possession
only learned to hold my face
to the sky years later
In their vocals I felt and found
we “humans” are just animals with souls
pushing love off of a
Steep
Sharp
Cliff

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Moth Mother: I

A busted birthday gift
I am ripping my mind open
my chest open
my womb extending
and reaching

Moths pour in the streetlight
Lately there is always some lust
I am not allowed to swallow
my mouth trying
to cram too many
rubies like so many plucked jewels
from a pomegranate

I wish I was pretty

Kiara Nicole Letcher is poet who currently resides in Omaha, Nebraska.
Weaving lush imagery with horror and harsh realizations. She explores
the darker side of being a woman. How to deal with shame and growth.
Loss, want, need and the shadows of self. She received her MFA from
The University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2014. Her chapbook Scream
Queen was released October 2019 through The Orchard Street Press. She
has also appeared in Green Mountains Review, Plainsongs Magazine,
Stone Highway Review, New Bile, Pismire, Villainess Press and Quiet
Diamonds.

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LEARNING A SONG
by Jyothsna Phanija

Writing on a Tree

Thick plainness as soda
Ice like migraine
Slowing down thoughts
As a relief
I find
Fingers covered in sandalwood paste.
Half of it is wiped away with water, tingling,
Listening to kajri(1)
I think of scrubbing fingers harshness in your passionate writings on
Pomegranate skin.
yellow
For an hour, twittering
I splash water to wipe the thickness on pupils.
I open my eyes fully to read you.
Then I find the kajri is ended.

1. Kajri: Indian semi classical composition.

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Drawing a Tamarind Tree

My aunt’s desperate hands to pick the leaves
to cook with meat, is cooked hundred times in her imagination’s clean
kitchen,,
Wiping off garlic smell from her hands, scissors and rags, are her
envelopes.
She becomes ice before the tree, in our return to the fair, where we carry
the fair in our smile, she inspects for more new fresh baby leaves of that
overlooked tamarind tree on the side of the road.
Her husband calls her, “get into the car”, she pays no attention, chewing
the tamarind flowers alone makes her resistive, this is the time for her
rough sketches of silence.
The breeze is in solidarity with her.
She picks it with innocence of
a child who builds a nest with pillows and blankets to prevent the
wind from fluttering.
“Get into the car, people are watching you here, such wasting nostalgia”
her husband shouts again.
She things of climbing the tree, she sees better leaves reaching the sky.
Summer’s real heat she finds in her real tiny kitchen with no electric
light, not enough place for the stove,
where the conformist husband always says spices should be ground
with hands.
She wraps herself with the branches. Nobody finds her voice either
occupied with chewing.
She fills the polythene cover in her hand

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