fall 2014
Table of Contents
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White Goddess
Afterward
Nettie Farris
The Old Guys at the Pantry, Breakfast, 5 A.M. Mark Jackley
In my version of heaven
Adrienne Drobnies
It's Usually Something Like This K.V. Skene
Prey Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois
Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Jason Primm
When I Call My Mother Matthew Walsh
Never Quite Coming of Age in Pontiac Michigan
Glen Armstrong


Never Quite Coming of Age in Pontiac Michigan
It’s never too late
to enjoy the information age.
But first,
there might be a bird in the basement.
There might be a hole in the house
where the birds get in.
I have been warned often enough
of the chimney and our home’s
state of disrepair.
There are discoveries to be made
on cable television,
countless programs on birds and home improvement.
A bird’s wing houses over 10,000 bones.
I wish that I had 10,000 bones.
A bird gets up early in the morning.
It catches the worm, and the worm becomes it.
Or it leaves the nest
to stick in the neck of a cat like a bone,
a sharp and slender bone.
All of my wishes are wrong.
The north wind blows
several birds from the sky.
It’s best that I stay inside.
My conclusions are all wrong,
as are the few decisions that I make
out of feathers.
Horse feathers.
I love that one.
It must be wrong to love that one
when the wind blows
and I have no other way
to be inside, just a bit
more inside than I already am.
If someone could show me how to compose
a protest song, it would go like this:
When we were children, even inside
our mothers, we knew nothing
real existed inside the television.
This is a comfort; this is an empty box
I will someday inherit.