Winter Night: Snow Squall With Trees
Three men walk in a squall under a line of trees, brothers, lost in the branches and snow. Their faces have vanished in swirling air. They appear as nothing more than red streaks through a white smear of sky as it bends low overhead to lick the ground, rising in mounds and hillocks and drifts. Night falls, swallowing voices. Nothing human remains. Their hoods flutter around phantom faces, elbows and knees have disappeared. They float outside themselves, watching for shadows, for movement or wings or fur. They are cut and blind, hear nothing but wind and creaking trees, footballs crunching through ice. They have slipped into some new madness, the embrace of cold.. Their blistered eyes burn windows on the face of a frozen lake. Steve Klepetar Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared worldwide, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Expound, The Muse: India, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Voices Israel, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (including three in 2015). Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (Kind of a Hurricane Press). His new chapbook, The Li Bo Poems, is forthcoming from Flutter Press.
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Angel, Falling
Thread by thread, twisted, knotted, woven in intricate ways, my cells are thus rather like beaded prayer strings, their respiration the recitation of Hosannas, mitosis meant for the Mother of God, each Hail Mary a plea for protein proliferation, for lost wings to re-bud, for feathers gone to dust to reassemble, barbule to barb, barb to quill, all to allow my pull-up, to avert my spin-out, my stall, my fatal fall to earth. Roy Beckemeyer Roy Beckemeyer is from Wichita, Kansas. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals including The Midwest Quarterly, Kansas City Voices, The North Dakota Review, and I-70 Review, and in anthologies such as "Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems," (Woodley Memorial Press, 2011) and "To the Stars through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga," (Mammoth Press,2012). Two of his poems were nominated for the 2016 Pushcart Prize competition. His debut collection of poems, "Music I Once Could Dance To," published in 2014 by Coal City Review and Press, was selected as a 2015 Kansas Notable Book Award by the State Library of Kansas and the Kansas Center for the Book. Long Weekend
“You’ll never find a man with your nose in a book.” How many times has Irma heard that? So she sits in the Paradise Hotel with no view, not even a decent lamp. Mama’s idea: “You have to put yourself out there. At least go read on a beach. Those legs of yours will do the talking.” The tangerine swimsuit seemed exotic back in Omaha. Checking the mirror, she sees only a Dreamsicle on a long stick. What choice does she have? She studies the room service menu. Alarie Tennille Alarie Tennille was born and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, and graduated from the University of Virginia in the first class admitting women. She became fascinated by fine art at an early age, even though she had to go to the World Book Encyclopedia to find it. Today she visits museums everywhere she travels and spends time at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, where her husband is a volunteer guide. Alarie’s poetry book, Running Counterclockwise, contains many ekphrastic poems. Please visit her at alariepoet.com. Times Square Mosaic Gather without collecting a moment of this city: Two women—long friends—may link arms, set out when the sun is bright, tan coats jaunty snapping in the breeze without doubt. Their hair is gathered in clips sporting fake flowers, bright red and big as a fist. They are off to spend the day shopping, their multi-colored bags stuffed with gifts. Not here—here they shimmer, their fragments scattered like dropped coins in the rectangles of a cheap chandelier swaying by a vent in a window display, reflections jumbled. My camera—quick—a dusty red blossom flees or a wound blossoms. Only the lens sees. Elizabeth Hoover Elizabeth Hoover is a feminist poet who enjoys working on projects with a conceptual or research element. Her current project, Some Poems About Pictures is a hybrid text that offers art as a space for resistance to and transformation of dominant gender narratives. A portion of that project was awarded the 2015 StoryQuarterly essay prize, judged by Maggie Nelson. Her poetry has appeared in [Pank], The Los Angeles Review, and The Pinch, among others. She is a freelance book critic and lives in Pittsburgh . You can see more of her work at ehooverink.com. Winter Night: Reading to Margaret Until She Falls Asleep
Margaret sleeps in the heat of her red dreams. Above her, winter sky: bands of cold black, deep as wells beneath an iron land, and blue- green smears of starlight on the crusted snow. Wind subsides and trees rustle, then regain their dignity in this icy calm. An owl swoops above the tree line, wings extended toward streetlights, where shadows stretch in ghostly gray. Margaret breathes the gentle rhythm of her rest, dreams herself into the rich voice of her father’s tale. Hand over hand she climbs a rainbow ladder through inky chill, until the lights of her town shrink to pinpoints far below, and her hair glows with a bright new flame Steve Klepetar Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared worldwide, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Expound, The Muse: India, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Voices Israel, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (including three in 2015). Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (Kind of a Hurricane Press). His new chapbook, The Li Bo Poems, is forthcoming from Flutter Press. |
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