Unraveling By Evan Anderson

Issue 6

Last night I dreamed the Obama administration
held its final congregation in my kitchen. Wolves licked
the window panes. “We don’t need your governance
here,” said they.  “For she is but a wannabe vlogger
made of egg-whites and circa-1999-puns.

The Chief smiled that smile that melts the TV cameras
and whistled down the sink. Jewelers came wriggling out
of the neck of the plumbing and checked my fingers
for diamonds, frowned, then smirked my loneliness.

“I almost married a cricketer once,” I offered too quickly, and
everyone knew.

Everyone knew, because of course the TV cameras
hadn’t actually melted. The Canadian soon-to-be anthropologist
I brought home last night came out and gave Obama
a friendly jab to the ribs, made a joke about agriculture
and was promptly clapped in irons. I looked to the wolves,

but they had become GIFs of bears, and I looked
around the room though no one seemed to notice, but
everyone knew.

Everyone knew that in this moment absolutely everything
was unraveling except for their precious bylines and
I wondered: Would things have been different if I
had brought home a meteorologist?

 

Source: Twitter, first name challenge

Evan Anderson lives and writes in a bowl of a city, surrounded by swamps and brimming with stories and music. He has work published in Gone Lawn, Cleaver Magazine, Cease, Cows, and others. www.evanmichaelanderson.com.

Map to the Stars By Matthew Smart

Issue 6

smart-1

 

smart-2

 

smart-3

 

Source: dialog pauses from “Map to the Stars” (2014), written by Bruce Wagner, streamed on a poor internet connection.

Matthew Smart lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where he works as an information technology analyst. His writing has appeared in Vestal Review, Dead King Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly and elsewhere.

Two Erasures By Glenn Freeman

Issue 6

Artness: A Sonnet

an erasure of Dean Young

Let us suppose the impossible. Let us
forget ourselves. The nagging intention
always intends otherwise. Pay attention
and reconceive the fuel. We should fess up,
forgive ourselves, whisper the names of the dead
like clouds under waves. Desire always becomes
authority, music and incantation: One
fish, two fish:
the words are ahead
of the self’s multiplication, the life-
affirming perversity. We begin
to speak as verbs, a constant flickering.
Evolution doesn’t solve problems; it finds,
fits, makes do. Toto pulls back the curtain:
It is impossible not to make something.

Source Text: Dean Young, The Art of Recklessness (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2010)

Syllabus for a Class on Modernism: An Erasure

When does the modern begin? The poets’
range defined in relation, the same frame
but not until an audience. Tanks and planes
and poison gas: into the unfiltered,
the insurgent throb. Rites and myths come in-
to god: cinema, radio, new drugs;
Planck, Einstein, cityscape, polyglot:
influence is unknowable, golden,
and wholly other. Should art take its place?
The thing: a chiseled classicism?
The drama, a mental dreamscape? Expect him
to indicate the untranslatable:
no finish; dashes rather than prose.
Very well, the rapture selects her focus.

Source Text: Syllabus, ENG 361, Glenn Freeman, Cornell College


Glenn Freeman lives in small town Iowa with his wife and two cats. He teaches writing and American literature at Cornell College. He has published two collections of poems: Keeping the Tigers Behind Us and Traveling Light.

Let Your Yes Mean Yes By Peter Vanderberg

Issue 6

Let Your Yes Mean Yes

God has set before you
fire & water

choose life
& death shall be given

Blessed are they
who seek

We speak a wisdom
not of this age

what eye has entered
the human heart

Let your yes mean yes
& your no mean no

Anything more is from the evil one

 

Source Text: Catholic liturgical readings from the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Peter Vanderberg is the founding editor of Ghostbird Press. He served in the US Navy from 1999 – 2003 and received a MFA from CUNY Queens College. His work has appeared in various literary journals, and his chapbook Crossing Pleasant Lake has recently been published by Red Bird Press.