Issue 4: A Parachute in the Wind

Issue 4: A Parachute in the Wind (Jul-Aug 2015) is an unthemed issue featuring poetry, prose, videos, and artwork from writers and artists around the world.

Unmusically

by on Aug 11, 2015

You ask me
to write about
you – a sonnet
or two;

I ask you
to encore me
alive – a bard
anew;

You say: I
soul you, seal
us – a lyrical
duel.

I offer you
a note, syncing
apiece – melody
mute.

You take me
tuned, to key
a story – frayed
loops.

 

—
Sheikha A. is the author of a short poetry collection titled Spaced (Hammer and Anvil Books, 2013), available on Kindle. Her poems have been published in numerous zines/anthologies, the track of which is kept on her blog Write Me, Saudade. She edits poetry for eFiction India.

Lime Light

by on Aug 10, 2015

Lime Light

 

Lime be your light,
bright citrus bite,
sans sallow,
sans shallow,
deep echo hush.
Light hissing and molten,
bliss to an albatross wing,
and sky kissed spring
on a rejoice for green.

 

—
Marilyn ‘Misky’ Braendeholm lives in the UK surrounded by flowers, grapevines, bubbling pots of sourdough starter, and always keeps dog biscuits in her pocket for her blind Springer Spaniel. She never buys clothing without pockets.

Walking in Chinatown on Sunday, You Do Get Lonely

by on Aug 7, 2015

When the woman lounging in front of
Nu’uanu Pawn
waves a skeletal arm at me,
it seems churlish to refuse,
so I join her in the
stone doorway where she sleeps,
blanketless
in thick Honolulu night air.

People remember Ching’s Grocery,
they give me no stink-eye.

Clear back, back in time, I see
cats sleeping on prehistoric linoleum,
baskets stacked to the ceiling,
flowers, papayas, melons and cabbages in front,
a game of Go always in back.

I was the Queen of Go, she laughs.
but I’m still here.

 

—
Trish Saunders lives in Honolulu, Hawaii. She spent her childhood years in the pretty small town of Snohomish, Washington and credits excellent teachers (including her late mom) for her love of poetry.

Wabash & Balbo

by on Aug 6, 2015

A Chicagoan who sees Death on the way
may then and not an angstrom before
whisper their innermost Parking secrets
to an heir, their next of kin, to a lucky care-giver
on shift when the spectre appears. Locations,
special techniques. How to swipe the Mayor’s spot
for a week and avoid towing. Ten steps
to dismantle a metal parking boot,
and reassemble it, and so roll to drive
another day. Rumors about Big Johnny,
who can erase records when he wants to,
who can wipe those debts. The time you blocked
two lanes of Upper Wacker to get a haircut.
No spaces then, per se. When the offspring lean in,
one fader says, Wabash & Balbo—two bucks
for the long weekend. Three should you wish
valet service. He coughs half a lung out, croaks,
Ask for Murray, say I sent you,
say I told you before shoving off.

 

—
Todd Mercer won the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts Flash Fiction Award for 2015 and was runner-up in the Palm Beach Plein Air Poetry Awards. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance appeared at Right Hand Pointing. Mercer’s poetry and fiction appear in journals such as: Apocrypha & Abstractions, The Camel Saloon, Cheap Pop, The Lake, The Legendary, Main Street Rag, Midwestern Gothic and Spartan.

Elegy for Apologies I Will Never See

by on Aug 5, 2015

The summer I found my two pet goldfish belly up,
like a fistful of dignity falling to sand, my mother
prayed for the tomatoes. She spoke chaos in tongues,
each convulsion meaning, “red,” “plump,” “juicy.”

That summer’s harvest yielded tomatoes so perfect,
they looked as fake as a virtuoso’s uncalloused fingers.
The hands of someone who takes showers and not baths.

My mother explained our good fortune: “I asked and
the Lord delivered.” She said He blessed us with this fruit
for letting the wall-eyed woman, with a pack of gum
and National Enquirer, cut us in the check-out line.

It was my grandmother who let the truth slip as she
sucked on her dentures. “Your mom buried Lily and
Sunflower with the tomatoes. They sure worked.
This BLT is excellent.”  My mother meant “circle of

life” as a comfort, said we had made lemonade from
lemons. She buried my darlings like a tell-tale heart,
plagiarized an act of god from this domesticated rot.

 

—
Lauren Yates is a Pushcart-nominated poet who is currently based in Philadelphia. Her writing has appeared in Nerve, XOJane, FRiGG, Umbrella Factory, Softblow, and Melusine. Lauren is also a poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly and is currently a Poet in Residence with the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University. For more information, visit laurentyates.com.

twigs

by on Aug 4, 2015

this house i bought  in its fortieth year
has sheltered other lives
the people who sold
it to us                        for instance

my son’s room
belonged to the girlhood of a middle aged
woman because she dropped
in once to tell us how

she gazed through those levered windows
over the shed at the silver gum
that knew the paddock before the street
the bush before the paddock

and knows us all through turgor, touch and
light, currawong and native bee
flood upon flood       bark stripping
in September winds

sketching the inner shape
of things

 

—
Duncan Richardson is a writer of fiction, poetry, haiku, radio drama and educational texts. He teaches English as a Second Language, part time, in Brisbane, Australia.

searching

by on Aug 3, 2015

 

searching
the entire cupboard
for that shawl …
feels like I’ve lost my mother
even before her death

 

—
Neck deep in haiku, her face barely visible, Kala Ramesh, an award winning poet has been instrumental in bringing school kids and college youth into haiku. Her latest obsession: to paint city walls with haiku, to weave in a pause, a breather into our hectic lives!

Angel

by on Jul 31, 2015

Angel

 

—
Olivier Schopfer lives in Geneva, Switzerland, the city with the huge lake water fountain. He likes capturing the moment in haiku and photography. His work has appeared in The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2014 as well as in numerous online and print journals. He also writes articles in French about etymology and everyday expressions at Olivier Schopfer raconte les mots.

Dog Whistle Effect

by on Jul 30, 2015

Over dinner, she asks if I have ever been to Uncle Tom’s Taco Shop. “You mean Honest Tom’s?” It becomes painfully obvious that we are two women—one black, one white—on a date in a “Mexican” restaurant. I look at her pork belly banh mi tacos, my own shrimp tempura tacos with tom yum aioli. This neighborhood used to be affordable.  Now the coffee shops sell vinyl and breakfast sandwiches with names like “The Notorious E.G.G.” Uncle Tom aside, she has asked me if I have been to a restaurant three blocks from my own house, as if I won’t pass it on the bus ride home. She eats her “Vietnamese-Mexican” tacos, calls herself an “activist.” A war cry only I can hear.

 

—
Lauren Yates is a Pushcart-nominated poet who is currently based in Philadelphia. Her writing has appeared in Nerve, XOJane, FRiGG, Umbrella Factory, Softblow, and Melusine. Lauren is also a poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly and is currently a Poet in Residence with the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery at Drexel University. For more information, visit laurentyates.com.

Bystander

by on Jul 29, 2015

The radiance of evil
burns the world down
to a fine white ash.
It settles on your hair
and eyelashes. You
breathe it in, you
taste it on your tongue.
You don’t know who
has been burned
but you are part of it.
You walk in ashes,
you find them in your
pockets, you rub them
out of your eyes. The streets
are deep with ash.
Women weep
behind high walls
until the air is thick
with grief. You
have not lifted
a finger. You fear
you will never
be clean again.

 

—
Mary McCarthy grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, studied art and literature but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. She has always been a writer. She has great hopes for the future despite the horrors reported endlessly in the daily news.