Volume 4, Issue 3 (2019)
A FABLE, A DECLAMATION, and A PARABLE
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"Ask not
whether Prometheus was right to steal fire from the gods... ...Ask, instead, first, whether Prometheus stole fire from the gods" "Once, in a prison far away, there was the condemned laid out under the machine. The prison warden, who took great pride in the machine and was fond of showing the condemned off as Tradition, built a museum around her with money saved from the railroad business." |
POETRY
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"The life discloses itself only once
it has burst. In a district inaccessible by ear, afloat before a deep blue bruise in the sky, the professional in his cerulean scrubs gives up, darkens. Sunday drains through capillary saplings, four-hour drip beneath the impending dusk, clouds so low that breathing is underwater labor. Same distant fin flicker. Same anemic intervals dim on your palate." |
ALLITERATIVE PROSE POETRY
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"The ladkin's listened, uninterruptedly, and understands, somewhat, and speaks slowly, wondering: Will the florist finally retire, roam the skyline, and snip the far, flourishing sunflowers, the sunrise- and sunfall-flowers?
The florist shrugs, and shoulders his hooped-stringed snippers. The ladkin looks and suddenly says he has seen sky-streaking fire. The florist can climb the dawns, descend the darkfalls, and gather gold, gold-orange, orange-red, red-raving, burning beauty. The florist finds it incredible. The ladkin, lean and skilled, strong and hale—He himself couldn't climb the dawns, descend the darkfalls, and arrange, around a sempervirent cypress vase, vibrant fire-flowers in impressive arrangements unseen, undreamed of, previously? Pah." |
POETRY
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"...Actually bowed, or faux?
Clear deLight of one’s brainbow. But sans mental filter, how can edgeless GodSky see? Without mental filter, it glows identically..." |
POETRY
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"There was once a man who loved in secret another man. Helpless in the grip of love unbestowed he resolved to speak to his beloved in code. His heart sang as he said Fine weather I'll try Shall we go and meant I love you, though you'll never know. The flaw perhaps obvious to you was revealed to him in time: Fine weather I'll try Shall we go are not reserved by tongues for lovers. He could barely speak these words to others. But as he heard others say I'll try Shall we go Be well Take this I will Did you know he saw that the world sang endlessly to his love: in prayers and shouts and the buying of bread, in the rites of the birthed, the married, the dead." |
Customized illustrations for all published pieces are provided by Evgenia Barsheva.