spring 2020
Table of Contents
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Tchaikovsky, Age 52, Finds His Inspiration
John Barton
she is in the kitchen now
Nora Pace
Communion of Tongues
Hege A. Jakobsen Lepri
Family Dinner
In Which I Re-name My Father
Poem Containing Only Words I Hate
griffin epstein
Stem of Old French Creistre, To Grow
Of Stinging Nettle
Page Hill Starzinger
Humid Weather
Me of Me
Catherine Strisik
Breathturning Chris Checkwitch
blue light
Stephanie Yue Duhem
A Symptom of Resignation
The Gee Whiz Element of Tropical Storms and Symphonies
Jen Karetnick
sold separately Lesley Battler
There Is No Substitute for Good Planning
Erin Kirsh
Like the best myths
Medusozoa
Sarah Lyons-Lin
Supermarket Lobsters
Robbie Gamble
A Twohanded Cut
The Tornado Cut
The Pandora Cut
Torben Robertson
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Nachos
Jessica Covil
Six Gray Moons on a Screen
Eleanor Kedney
Monologue of a Fly's Shadow
Monologue of a Cow's Shadow
Danielle Hanson
Moon Turned Her Half Face From Me
Lawrence Feuchtwanger
Another Vision
Patricia Nelson
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Of Stinging Nettle
Faint, overripe aroma
of gardenia petals
drifting above a dark halo
of evergreen leaves up
toward olfactory chambers:
detected and diffusing
into salt, enzymes and antibodies—
a changeable flow
replacing itself
every ten minutes. I am
never what I was and
never quite what
I want to be. Sepia-grey iguana
flicks his tail
while shredding black
seed-studded papaya:
unripe, thrown in the garden.
We are done with it. Disposable—
our lives and
possessions. Bougainvillea
bought for papery blooms
is thorny with toxic
sap. Villas are fumigated—
methyl bromide, not approved
for residential use
causes seizures and worse:
two teenagers in medically
induced comas. Neurologically
it’s like being
in a torture chamber. We
name our world
as we see it: Black Caper, Flamboyant
Catch n Keep, Christmas Bush,
yellow Sap Sucker. Or
after ourselves:
like the Scottish naturalist
Alexander Garden, who didn’t
even discover the flower.