Matt Morgan Load-Bearing Walls (Late 6 August 2005) Grace Gilbert Cycle 7 G.C

Kelly Lorraine Andrews Gordon Buchan B. Rose Kelly Chad W. Lutz Alexis Olson Established in 2013, Pretty Owl All artwork for the Fall 2018 Poetry is a literary shoe string issue was provided by Vanessa S. Adams operation based in Pittsburgh, How to Regain Sight: Begin Anew (II) [cover] Pennsylvania where it sometimes and How to Regain Sight: Nourishment (II) hosts live readings through its [p. 31] Spotlight Series.

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Matt Morgan Load-Bearing Walls (Late 6 August 2005) Grace Gilbert cycle 7 G.C. Waldrep still life with onomatopoeia 9 quatrain 11 Ziggy Edwards Hulett Pines 13 lydia flores Maria [Out] of Grace 14 Adam 17 Jade Hurter Why do not witches 19 become rich? Jose Medina Why I Tie Myself to the Chair 21 Meredith Davies Birdsong, Whale Song 22 Hadaway Brenna M. Casey desirous of change 24 Lauren T. Yates In My Name, Amen 25 The Christening 27 E. Kristin A Map of Everything I Disavow 29 Anderson feathers underneath her nights 30 Trinie Dalton When the Wind Blows You 32 Sound Like a Robot Alex Pickens When “Oops” Is Unwelcome 35 Robyn She always deferred her dreams 36 Schindeldecker 5 Load-bearing Walls (Late August 2005) Matt Morgan

Scene: a brother and sister huddled in a narrow hallway. No power. No water. Katrina’s wrath growing outside.

It was early morning and no one had slept or remembered to cut the hummingbird feeder down, and all day a hummingbird fed against the wind— when the night before, we watched the TV hum the weather’s off-key flume, as in, blue and green tumors blooming across the blue screen’s southern sky— when we couldn’t yet have known that it’s not like tornado, where we pray for our neighbors to be swallowed and not us, Lord—how no: it’s whirlpool. Maelstrom. And we’re all the split-wood flotsam, removed, removing, spinning away and against and against.

6 cycle Grace Gilbert

february again & i bleed through the same jeans i wore when i saw you last. i can’t help but think this is a tasteless sign from God or elsewhere, your blue-swelled figure still dripping, when i fill the basin & watch blood-clouds pollute sink-water— faucet pounding life into soaked denim, the same angry cascade. i don’t move when the trickle

7 starts to collect under my feet— i want to know how it felt to suspend

like drifting indigo, float months in quiet cold, only to be recovered from the docks, car keys still hooked to a tattered belt loop

8 still life with onomatopoeia G.C. Waldrep

I wipe down the garden with my cold cloth. Children stare in some other direction, hungry again. The brook sharpens its knife against ancient wrecks. Sensation is useless & guaranteed, a warrior home now from foreign service. He gilds his toys with the night wind—

9 he is devout in this way. It’s possible I will drink the weather’s cup to the dregs. Somewhere a dog barks. I am as patient as a ribbon held by a saint. Memory, memory— Let’s take a walk into the owls’ hot pan. I laugh into the green glass, which sweeps me up like twilight into its spastic engine.

10 quatrain G.C. Waldrep

Clay veil cast not into the fire, but next to the fire.

I am still sorting dreams from not-dreams, each into its lacquered box.

Intentionality is a pyre. We bleed into it.

11 I wore silk against my skin exactly once in life— a costume, for a funny play.

12 Hulett Pines Ziggy Edwards

Porch-swing shadows made the child lonely, any burnished second that escaped with no one else to witness. As she hummed she wished a presence toward her neighborhood: a shape to sense as distant, leaning on a mailbox. The sun moved on to cast the profile of a man carrying a rod—and when he lifted it to his lips coyotes howled, parents thrashed in their sleep, a streetlight fizzled. She shut the back door with a click and trod wet grass to join the silent crowd lugging blankets or stuffed bears. She gazed at leaves breathing on their branches like elf laundry. The breeze mild, the song hers only, as the mountain closed around her head.

13 Maria [Out] of Grace lydia flores

down into the belly of a whale inhaled by the mouth of her hurricane throat phlegm of our people she spits up her coughs heard worldwide Maria, and a country of weeping tongues.

I hear that name & I hear my abuela’s prayers return to me like a ghost coming up for air looking for a body to hallow itself in Hail Mary; Ave Maria no? dios te salve, Maria llena eres de gracia: El Señor es contigo. Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres. Y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre: Jesús.

14 be a Noah’s ark, call us out we Jonah ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestro muerto language diseased by the cancer of misunderstanding. ay bendito ay bendito bright star bright star SOS in the constellation of our pride—bodies of flags wavering in the wait in the wind of prayer. bright star a hazard light in the watt of war minds in unarrest, pacing in a blue triangle bent out of shape for our sorrow don’t mount up enough for their soothing subsidies trapped, triumphant, or trying. we— alternating red and white stripes

15 trying to survive, healing, dying sighing blood leaking, seeping from the white space of freedom. there is no translation for the dialect of water and it’s raging. the accent of still dead water collecting around the ridges of our hope, dios te salve, Maria llena eres de gracia.

16 Adam lydia flores

You are child, you are man you are Peter and Joseph and John. you are a Hebrew boy in the fire. tongue splitting Pharisee, you are black boy you in Brooklyn, afro Latino suavemente boogie down Bronx you are the border of Mexico, a veteran of the war on drugs. baby boy you are Mark, Luke, and Paul praying and pouring yourself into Epistles. You are the broken one, built of muscle and secrets so tender only a woman’s affection can coo the melody from your lips. You are good kid, m.A.A.d city, Tupac and Biggie you are ready to die, but live large, man, you are

17 Cain and Abel trying to keep your sheep but tilling ground with the wroth of your anger… subdued, you are James and Lazarus and Obed-Edom. You are Sling-shot David, Elisha and Elijah, all your days— you are Summer Sixteen, Channel 0range 808 & heartbreak you are dream chaser. Counting the stars, you are Abraham. You are battle of pride and humility always giving & taking & giving and taking until you are arms full of someone else so much so, that when they kill one, they are killing you too and mama is weeping on a casket that ain’t yours, yet, but she knows it’s coming like Messiah, one day, no one knows and man you are in Him and He in you, always dead and rising like the sun who birthed you from its light, like lightning you strike hard and fast, boy burning through the apple core entranced by the match of her skin that struck you desire. you are in love and ruined atom you are Adam.

18 Why do witches 1 not become rich? Jade Hurter

I like to lie in the bathtub, conjuring. When I was young, it was easier: a pillar of sugar, honey dripping down my eyelids, bright chunks of rose quartz—silicon, oxygens, repeat— and the water sweetening, pinking. I learned to conjure sand, then fire, then stained glass. I cut myself on the Virgin Mother.

But now I’m just so tired after work. Night shift, morning shift, it’s hard to pay the rent. And why do witches need healthcare, anyway?

1 As asked in Question XVIII of the Malleus Maleficarum, the most well-known of the witch hunting manuals, published in 1487.

19 There are rules about casting spells that might lead to inflation, but still I’ve tried, sage in my left hand like a roll of bills. I say what I’m supposed to, close my eyes and imagine the bathtub filling with money.

Nothing happens. Tepid water, cough of the overflow drain. But then I choke: a burning coin, caught in my throat.

20 Why I Tie Myself to the Chair Jose Medina

To write. To free myself. To forget tenth grade, Harvard High, rich white boys yelling, “Spic, we should kick your ass,” and me crunch- ing dried leaves in the forest I walked in afterwards. To remember sixteen, opening “Of Human Bondage” to a random page, reading a description, and seeing a canoe rise from the text and sail away. To copy that magic. To try, again, to throw one leg over the side of that ghost boat and go. To find the lost toy airplane inside of me and, if possible, glue the wing back on. To walk a few steps in front of the path of my inner child and tell him, “There’s no danger. Continue.” To tell the world, “I’m not dead yet!” like a bedridden patient who slams his hand on the nightstand. Because a friend said, “You can get better,” and even though I didn’t believe her, I took a chance, and little roses the size of ladybugs blossomed on my spine.

21 Birdsong, Whale Song Meredith Davies Hadaway

I read somewhere that if you slow down birdsong, you’ll hear whale song—the same patterns repeating in different tempos.

Somewhere a bird is singing my song. When I was born, my older brothers turned my name to birdsong: Mer-a-dee, Mer-a-dee to mimic the Italians, who had no “th” for the final syllable. To mimic the chickadees that appeared in their bedtime stories.

Go ahead, bring us a girl, they said. We will change her name.

22 When I married, I changed my name. Where is your birth certificate? the visiting clerk from Social Security asked me.

I don’t have one, I said, though I had a passport. You could be deported, the official sighed.

A researcher slowed birdsong down to study its patterns. Then he sped up whale song. Somewhere in the middle, he found overlap.

I remember a film clip we saw in school. The bottom of the ocean, draped with starfish who barely moved. Then a simulated version in

“starfish time.” Now they lived a lifetime in just one minute—fish blinking in and out of the frame like stars through strands of cloud on a dark night.

It’s all the same—birdsong, whale song—in different time signatures. Slow down these lines to hear ice creaking as it drifts closer to the sun.

23 desirous of change Brenna M. Casey

cross-stitched cross-hatched hoodwinked and all that down-trodden downturned damp corners like a grecian urn my-mother-told-me nothing so precious in the found years between abandonment and return that i couldn’t turn it out at night like a badly behaved dog. swerve i say to students when i teach sonnets think of the years my sister and i listened to hooked on phonics cassette tapes toll-free peddled for literate promise anticipating any kind of would-be gimlet-eyed volta glimmer bless me, father, i am a sinner. this is just to say, this is just to pick the very best one and you are, i wanted to be, it.

24 In My Name, Amen Lauren T. Yates

My mother saddlebagged me with a Bingo Club name. In gift shops, I ransack racks of necklaces and keychains, looking for myself in a sea of Marys, Melissas, Michelles. During roll call, people assume I am eighty-five and white. Rest assured, everyone thirty years my senior is dead (except, my mother). She calls Mildred “a family name.” It invokes “dreadful mildew.” Or, “my ill dread.” A sick lock of hair.

Not “gentle strength.” Not top ten name for girls in 1912. Each time at the buffet, the cashier cards me. He swears I look too young for the 10% senior discount. My driver’s license says I crowned my way into the world in 1963. I demand my man-servants call me “Angie” or “Lisa,” evangelizing them to my life in a sweeter universe.

25 June 1964. My first words: “Ewww, Mill-dwed.” Hating my own name? Mere target practice. I always begged to change my name. I asked Mother again last week. She said, You are eighteen three times over. You could have done it decades ago…

The Christening Lauren T. Yates

In the sanctuary, I do my Kegels with my legs crossed. Each leg shaved and greased with coconut oil, peppered with little black dots, like French vanilla bean ice cream.

I flex to the kick drum in Usher’s “U Don’t Have to Call.” I will clap my hands during praise and worship, the day the choir director stops looking like a kewpie doll on speed.

I search for this week’s scripture on my computer Bible, mahogany as the greeting card that my sister and I both buy because it is the only one with Black people on it.

27 I bow my head and scrunch my eyes like they are glued shut. I cannot choose between “Angie” and “Lisa.” I pray for a new name. Lord, not my will, but yours be done.

I will call myself “Angelisa.” Remember Linda Evangelista? Its her last name minus three letters. I need a new last name. You would never buy a new dress without shoes to match.

My mother used to describe getting hit in the ponderosa. Angelisa Ponderosa. I am christened a triple threat. Less singer-dancer-actress, more pornstar who uses every hole.

The pastor speaks on overcoming vices. The devil speaks to me through jalapeno poppers and fear of abandonment. God answers my prayers with laxatives and big black cock.

28 A Map of Everything I Disavow E. Kristin Anderson

A golden shovel after Kesha

Finding my way in black boots, I call myself monstrous. I hear that word in my mouth, know it to be true. A woman in the wild, I was dirty as earth, burned like incense. You see this is humanity before we dance down the hawthorn, as if vine could find branch. Here I trade my fingers for an answer. Come collect me now: denim caught on cement, jukebox across the street. (I kept birds crowing as if you could hear song.) Consider me here, on the sidewalk. What if I’m lying for pleasure, eating the roses empty? See, I know that I’m a disaster and

I spit thorns into my left hand, put them on a plate. Is this cheating? Does it matter? Everyone says the weather is fine. While you’ll turn on the news tonight, I’ll be the one with an omen, a flower cut inside me, sinking wet. So I taste the words, singularly: rowan, apple, yarrow, slut.

29 feathers underneath her nights E. Kristin Anderson

I knew hungry // I could eat myself with the sun // still // I had the strength—trembling—covered with sweat // after a nightmare // after a nightmare—empty eyes—teeth on the floor // I’ve wondered what my own life was // a spool on a spindle // Joan of Arc that day, mean on her grave // I imagine a person can die a lot // a kind of panic // like a snake // the love of foolish girls in fire // the summer rules // the precious world was new and I asked the waves inside // the moonlight damned to my mistake // I dared to think the truth was believed // I shake out the killing //because grief is an island // and the mice were there // eyes packed away in the attic // bright red and ready // and I never went back // shoes in the corner // cold all afternoon

Erasure poem. Source material: King, Stephen. Dolores Claiborne. New York: Pocket, 1993. 68-79. Print.

30 31 When the Wind Blows You Sound Like a Robot Trinie Dalton

His insomniac’s sleep aids-and-wine diet means it’s safer to scamper down the middle of the street at night. He gets lost in hip hop hits on his miniature Walkman and the small town sidewalks here are wonky, cracked from ice and big trees, poorly lit. Midnight strolling isn’t common in the country apparently, there’s no infrastructure for it. Mud holes, brambles, even an occasional salamander slithers out from under some rock when there’s no owl around. This little guy sewed sandals out of sycamore leaves this summer because his claws, which eternally need trimming, trip him up and crickets litter the night roads; he doesn’t want insects & amphibians hopping rides on him, plus he hates crickets because their chirping keeps him up. If he wasn’t walking he’d be burrowed in his nest cursing wildlife choruses invited by the moon. Loud music and his back-strapped Tempranillo- filled water bottle helps him forget that he should be asleep. Wine in the water bottle makes him feel like Don Quixote journeying with his

32 wineskin. Should sleep: he used to tell himself that it was simply moralistic peer pressure for all of his species to sleep simultaneously. Why do we need to sleep all at the same time? He does all right pass- ing out at dawn, after the sun is high enough. Is he a vampire? He’s often wondered. Right now at 3am, all windows are dark, not even TVs flickering inside these strange, giant houses. Everyone snoozing except him, sleeplessness his shamanism, the Blood Moon beaming low carmine light down on his muscular hind legs. Part of him feels like being out and about with the other nocturnal hunters isn’t so bad. He wonders what goes on in the oceans at night, what it’s like to float suspended in salty black. And what it must look like from the depths when a moonbeam penetrates the water’s surface, the way sunrays showcase particles in the water. Jellyfish probably have massive, ethe- real raves that terrestrials will never witness. He finds comfort in this thought, clicks his tongue then squirts wine into his mouth: that there are still occurrences out there we will never have access to.

January: The Wolf Moon; February: The Snow Moon; March: The Worm Moon; April: The Pink Moon; May: The Flower Moon; June: The Strawberry Moon; July: The Buck Moon; August: The Stur- geon Moon; September: The Harvest Moon; October: The Hunter’s Moon; November: The Beaver Moon; December: The Cold Moon. And all those seasonal fourth full moons: The Blues. He’s gamboled under them all. Is that where the music got its name? Listening

33 to Charlie Patton at this time of night will send any sentient being into a K-Hole of sadness. He only listens to the Blues under sunlight’s supervision, in his high-up-the-trunk tree cave, reserving upbeat summer jams & dance beats for the wee hours. Drake, Bone Thugs, Kendrick Lamar. His tassled, furry ears perk up with pea-sized earbuds drumming beats into him. Skip, jump, sprint down the street’s middle, no cars will flatten him now.

Mornings are bogus. Dude can’t get a grip on rising after two hours of sleep, and has a hard time not walking into stuff, stubbing his knobby toes, putting his shirts on inside out. Morning is for robots. Oh, he’s got his rituals just like the humans, and even likes to be out in the summer winds like them, listening for the birds’ first songs through the hissing trees, but once the sun cracks the horizon he’s out of there. He buries his nuts in the dirt and leaves them til the Wolf Moon, puts a pinecone over them like a gravestone to remember their locations. The nuts are his sleep aids, not pills as you might have suspected. At what point in this story did you start to wonder if the protagonist was a squirrel? And if he is a squirrel, where’d he get schooled in merriments like music and oenology?

34 When “Oops” Is Unwelcome Alex Pickens

While taking the SAT, touring a nuclear plant, driving in West Virgin- ia, handling the wedding ring, right after liftoff, before the due date, on the anniversary, picking up the kid, checking the bank account, from the basement, during a vasectomy, while cleaning the gun, visiting the zoo, during a mental health test, while backing into a park- ing place, starting the campfire, feeding the grandkid, falling on the stairs, sorting out who is still alive, holding the wrong hand, from the nurse pushing the wheelchair, from the pilot, after taking the medica- tion, from the paramedic, when life flashes before my eyes, from my guardian angel.

35 She always deferred her dreams, Robyn Schindeldecker

waiting until tomorrow, next week, when the time was right—the time was never right. She always walked like she was running late— ten, fifteen minutes, tops. She had alwaysjust left. Always taking off, almost there, never quite landing. She always posed as if she was trying to rewrite her body into a different language, something less legible, a scrawl. She always had to remind herself to look up, look around, that there was beauty everywhere. Always looked away when she saw her reflection in a storefront window. She was always too much and the world was never enough, and always convinced herself that the world was too much and she was never enough. Always con- fused a change of heart with a change of scenery, always mapped the landscape with her peripatetic thoughts, escape always her solution. She always forgot to water her flowers, noticing them only after they had become sun-scorched, unburdened by color. Always lit the flowers on fire. Always wanted to dye her hair to match the sunrise,

36 to match the sunset. She always listened to The O’Jays in the morning. Always skipped breakfast. Always wore black, or blackish, to convey her abridged emotional amplitude. She always felt a smug satisfaction when she could fit everything she needed in her pockets. She always had good taste in bad men, always laundered their vices and rehung them as virtues. Always hid behind the easy fiction of a forced smile, of a proffered cup of coffee, its combative smell. She always ordered spaghetti when she wore her slinky white dress. Always ordered dessert—tiramisu for two—and silently hoped she wouldn’t be asked to share. Always had a glass of the house red, always just one more, one too many. Always said her name like she had just taken a bite of something she wanted to spit out. Always hushed herself, preempting what she knew wasn’t going to sound just right —a ceasefire silence. She always believed people when they said, “You’re something else, you know that?” She always wondered what that something else was.

37 38 CONTRIBUTORS

Vanessa Adams is an artist from New Orleans, LA and based in Pittsburgh, PA. Vanessa creates prints, zines, and installations exploring the life-cycles of plants, the phases of the moon, and “the future.”

E. Kristin Anderson, based in Austin, TX, has been published widely in magazines. She’s the author of nine chapbooks, including Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night, 17 seventeen XVII and Behind, All You’ve Got (forthcoming). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked nights at The New Yorker.

Brenna M. Casey is a writer and educator based in Durham, North Carolina, where she teaches in the Depart- ments of English and the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Ploughshares, Bitch, Post Road, The Boiler, and more.

Trinie Dalton has authored/co-edited six books. Her seventh will be released in November as limited edition through The Pit gallery in Los Angeles. She lives in Joshua Tree.

Ziggy Edwards is the proud owner of a loft bed. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her poems and short stories have appeared in publications including 5 AM, Grasslimb, Main Street Rag, Illumen, and Dreams and Nightmares. lydia floresis from Harlem, New York. She is a Writographer *(writer & photographer) Educator, Salt of the earth, Light of the world & various other mysteries. Her work has been featured in Kettle Blue Review, Rising Phoenix Review, Deaf Poets Society, Visceral Brooklyn, & several others. A full collection and other surprises are forthcoming. Find her at inlightofmysoul.com

Grace Gilbert is currently studying creative writing at SUNY Geneseo in Western New York. Grace’s poetry has most recently been featured in Anomaly Lit, Twyckenham Notes, Maudlin House, Gandy Dancer, Glass Mountain Magazine, and the Metonym Journal. She hopes to pursue an MFA in Poetry after undergrad.

Meredith Davies Hadaway is the author of three poetry collections. Her most recent, At The Narrows, won the 2015 Delmarva Book Prize. She is a former Rose O’Neill Writer-in-Residence at Washington College, where she taught English and creative writing in addition to serving as vice president for communications and marketing.

Jade Hurter is the author of the chapbook Slut Songs (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2017). She was a finalist in the 2016 Tennessee Williams Poetry Contest, judged by Yusef Komunyakaa, and her work has appeared in The Colum- bia Poetry Review, Glass, Passages North, New South, Menacing Hedge, and elsewhere. José Enrique Medina earned his BA in English from Cornell University. His work has appeared in Burnside Review, Reed Magazine, and other publications. When he is not writing, he enjoys playing with his baby chicks, bun- nies, and piglets on his farm in Whittier, California.

Matt Morgan lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His creative work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Pinch, Potomac Review, The Monarch Review, Fifth Wednesday Online, and The Tishman Review.

Alex Pickens grew up in the mountains of Virginia and recently graduated Magna Cum Laude at the age of 33. He has written award-winning screenplays and this year his work appears in such outlets as Jersey Devil Press, Crack the Spine, and Allegory Ridge.

Robyn Schindeldecker is a Minneapolis-based writer whose work has appeared in Chicago Literati, Entropy, and Typehouse Literary Magazine, among other places. When she’s not making a mess in the wordsmith’s forge, she can be found making a mess eating pancakes.

G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are feast gently (Tupelo, 2018) and the long poem Testament (BOA Editions, 2015). Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in APR, New England Review, Yale Review, Iowa Review, Colo- rado Review, New American Writing, etc. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pa., where he teaches at Bucknell University and edits the journal West Branch. From 2007 to 2018 he served as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.

Lauren T. Yates is a writer and artist based in Oceanside, CA. In 2012, Lauren earned her B.A. in English with a Creative Writing Emphasis from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in Foundry, Anom- aly, Crab Fat Magazine, and Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. Find her online at www.laurentyates.com.