1 R E V I E W ISSUE 7W 2 This issue of Corvus Review is dedicated to: Margaret “Marg” Josephine Pittman Feb 22, 1922-Feb. 13, 2017 EDITORS: Janine “Typing Tyrant” Mercer, EIC Luciana Fitzgerald, Fiction Editor COVER ART: C.F. Roberts Writer/Artist/Videographer/Provocateur/High -Functioning Autistic/Former Zine Publisher. Blog: http://cfrobertsuselessfilth.blogspot.com/ Art: http://cfrobertsuselessfilth.blogspot.com/ 3 4. R.Q. Flanagan 5. N. Sumislaski 6. T.L. Naught 8. A. Tipa 9. J. Riccio 11. D. Fagan 12. S.A. Ortiz 13. A. Cole 14. R.G. Foster 15. L. Suchenski 16. D. Tuvell 17. M. L. Johnson 18. S. Laudati 19. R. Nisbet 20. R. Hartwell N.F. 57. M.D. Laing 92. C. Valentza 23. M. Watson N.F. 62. S. Roberts 93. D.D. Vitucci 27. T. Smith N.F. 63. J. Hunter 96. J. Hickey 28. G. Vachon N.F. 67. N. Kovacs 99. J. Bradley 31. K. Shields 69. T. Rutkowski 100. S.F. Greenstein 32. J. Half-Pillow 70. B. Diamond 104. J. Mulhern 37. M. Wren 72. F. Miller 109. B.A. Varghese 38. D. Clark 79. K. Casey 113. K. Maruyama 39. P. Kauffmann 80. K. Hanson 119. K. Azhar 42. Z. Smith 82. J. Butler 120. Author Bio’s 44. J. Hill 83. R. Massoud 46. J. Gorman 86. M. Lee 51. B. Taylor 88. J. Rank 56. M.A. Ferro 4 On Taking a Complete Stranger to the Gynecologist Ryan Quinn Flanagan I have allergies and I have glow sticks and I have driven a complete stranger to the gynecologist, wondering about the sanitary nature of my passenger seat the whole time, playing it cool like Clint Eastwood with a cannon in my pants but soon feeling bad for the girl abandoned by family and friends, no one to take her, thumbing her way to a clean bill of health… and I know there are more hustles than sparrows, that I am an easy mark beyond the doom and bluster, but she played with my radio dial and I did not mind, there are worse things than bad taste in music; and she arrived for her appointment and I asked her if she wanted me to stick around and she laughed and said no that she would take the bus home and the world is always at war but I was not not in that moment backing out of the lot of that professional building in the east end with the long brown chimney stacks feeling good about myself in a way I hadn’t in years. 5 High Moon Nate Sumislaski Gloria watched her son die miles away but back home, New Orleans weeps for forgotten angels the whole world will tell you what the truth is even when you insist otherwise, the Moon will laugh at your contemplations. bulky ruffian types strut streets making sure the hour lasts every precious second some windows will gaze at you with yellow cat eyes – like the sun does when daytime figures you out Some cemeteries house the sacred dead yet most were just servants to the Faith. were they saved by dying for their lords? or imaginations running wild in misconceived dreams? is the World really out to get anyone or does it stand back and smoke a pipe whilst watching all of our fateful interactions 6 Maturing Almost Instantly Travis Laurence Naught he will learn to claw his way along the texture Tommy is navigating the winter parking lot of a system supposed to be set up for success. at a Northwest regionally based state college, Perma-grin of natural hope chemically replaced holding the left hand of a girl with his right. by a burned out drug scowl. Tatters of clothes She is wearing a blue spot dress dotted in polka; fall from the waist and shoulders which once held small, white. The chalk drawn American dream all of the best brands to help catch second glances waiting to unfold a future promising privilege cast from the eyes of desirable coeds walking by; based in genetic circumstance, easily erased, no big deal, dark side pussy is easier to impress. beyond his control. Tommy is ignorant, grateful. Stumbling, falling, scraping, landing propped up His youthful exuberance makes him childlike; against the scratchy insides of this new stretch, 9 years old, holding a balloon, skipping in step a peephole shines through Tommy's hangover with his sister, mother, girlfriend, whomever eyes, which snap open in stark recognition. she specifically is does not matter. To Tommy, Combined with snowflakes finding exposed skin women are necessary counterparts for happiness, through shredded garments passing as shirts, and that is the highlight of her storyline existence: pants might as well be down around his ankles, a living adjective cohort on this side of a brick for worse exposure than blackout nightmares. wall of mortar construct currently hiding fate. An idyllic version of himself is proudly coming Binge work can ultimately conclude a project toward a door, carrying arms full of high hopes faster than tortoise over hare stories portray, that appear as a beautiful woman in one hand, but applied differently, that mindset will edge upward reaching freedom balloon in the other. a person in the direction of death. Overexertion Now older, curmudgeonly, jaded, a chance begins with noble intent; get the job done, is presenting itself to warn the child version nose-to-the-grindstone, no shit's too tough. of himself against the pratfalls of unbidden life, One false slip off a worn slick wrung comes but cold confrontations rarely go as planned. from a misplaced step, threatens to bring down Older Tommy settles himself, opens the door the entire red ash colored divider. as the boy begins to reach for the handle. It took nearly 4 years' manual labor Not caught off guard, the young lad starts right in to blackout pleasant images from the past "Hey, Mister. I hope you have one hell of a day," against a more substantial present discomfort and with that, the younger Tommy passes founded in various booze bottles, vials of heroin, a string, along with a smile, between his selves. syringes, other paraphernalia hiding in shadows It is a touching moment, causes tears to form on the lee-side of a mountain named addiction, a line of second graders waiting for the bell unearthed, top-down, by Tommy. At school, chime, freeing trapped identities to cascade out from discomfort, experience a boundless rush, remove heavy shackles and feel weightless 7 for the first time in years. From above, clean metaphors, wash recent painful history away until older Tommy's legs imitate his boyish counterpart's drive to skip toward the sky. High is often misinterpreted as giddy, and vice versa, before blood toxicology reports delivered by autopsy doctors who ran postmortem tests cleared correlative similarities. Drugs didn't cause an elated Tommy to race into the street, nor did a de-icer truck driver numb cold nerves with a delightful, warming swig. Sometimes circumstances that begin so perfectly ignorant end up leading to death of the all but innocent. 8 Jukebox Rasputin Arielle Tipa Bear paw – the wind-up nonsensical doll tags, glass eye with ballroom glances reflected on an antique tea tray and fireplace smells of wet fur, pipe bomb marionettes and chimney wafts of hair uncleansed. He’s playing Stravinsky again, and Borodin and Cui, and Tchaikovsky takes salt in his tea and makes shadow puppets on my, on our off-white curtains and our, and my Romanov Faberge eggs. A Moscow farmhand whistles a hymn, snow-laden and a mystic winds, a windy porcelain orchestra. 9 Germany’s Cryptid Diners Jon Riccio Cod liver for the zoologist, immanent in a minute like tempo markings glossed on a Fortean gate. One Zeppelin’s zuru ckhaltend is to vegan as vascular is to pristine fruit, the chowder absent its coelacanth, hash in lieu of the missing link. There’s chatter between Loch hunters cajoling their photos over eggs Benedict, the grease by which they obtuse the more they chase, gastrology and Mothmen mixed in the quandary trade. There’s footage – millimeters debated while my diverticulum inclines a cantaloupe – auteurs examining their oatmeal when evidence leading to Momo and other Missouri monsters stales. There’s belief – my body streamlining digestion with a probiotic – that in puzzling a Yeti’s duodenum I’ll distract my own with each breakfast-veritas plate. There’s a notion in stomach circles: you ire what you eat, a bestiary of medicine caps belonging to the regulators ferried from cabinet to throat, so many they child- proofed the Rhine. Placemat predicament like sodium from a Slender Man saltshaker, the enzyme that chews the more it obtrudes. 10 Sylvia Browne Jon Riccio The grainer the fulcrum, the more brazen its flam, your output filling two rows of the library’s New Age section. Sylvia chanteuse, if aura were opera with a call number and a cover, tell me heaven stocks medallions by the billion. I catered your call-in special, incense and an audience channeled onto videotape, the craft services table draped to its nodes. You were cold reading the aisles, dry-cleaner aromas pulling at your id like phantom kith, a matchbook of vagaries relayed by a disembodied J, maybe T, the third eye earns a living playing coy. You kept it ambiguous for the family in row eight. What’s messengered to a whim? I’ve relocated to a Southern town, hospital adjacent the television repairman, supermarket shaded by library mortar, the antebellum radiator debasing a dust jacket of its shimmer.