Chain Link

by Mara Buck

    A child's voice echoes in my ears, in my bedroom, in the night, his faint cries weaving within my nightmares. It is a distinct voice, a pleading voice with an accent from the lands to the south, lands of palm trees and chili peppers and hot days and nights with strumming guitars. Lands of machine guns and drugs and terror. Have you heard this voice, too? Or have you heard another? Can we listen closer to these voices so together we can ride our white horses to the border and like a fairy tale gather the children who cry in the night, and transport them to a place when children can still dream the dreams of childhood?Every night Esteban calls to me.

    Hola?

    Help?

    Anybody?

    My name is Esteban Gonzalez and I'm scared. I used to be scared of the dark. Now I'm scared of the light that never leaves. It bounces on all the silver blankets. I see spots even when I close my eyes.

     And the noise never leaves. Crying. Slamming. Moaning. I moan too. I cry for my Papi.

     My Papi used to tell me, "Ask for the jefe to help you." I ask to see the jefe with the tall wife who never smiles with her eyes.

     The woman with the keys laughs at me.

     "The jefe? You mean El Presidente! He hasn't time for beaners like you, you pissant scum. Your Papi is a criminal in jail forever and you'll be here in this place forever until you die or run out into the desert and rot."

     Little beaner.

     No beaner. My name is Esteban.

     I repeat. Esteban Gonzalez. I'm so afraid I'll forget it. If I forget my name, then how will Papi ever find me?

     Take me to the jefe and the lady who never smiles with her eyes.

     I do not know where I am.

     I am Esteban Gonzalez and I am lost.

* * * * *

Mara Buck writes, paints, and rants in a self-constructed hideaway in the Maine woods. She hopes to leave someday. Winner of The Raven Prize for non-fiction, The Scottish Arts Club Short Story Prize, The Moon Prize. Other recent first places include the F. Scott Fitzgerald Poetry Prize, The Binnacle International Prize. Awarded/short-listed by the Faulkner/Wisdom Society, Hackney Awards, Balticon, Confluence, and others, with work in numerous literary magazines and print anthologies. The ubiquitous novel lurks.

The River

by Deanne Napurano

Knee to knee we weep,

our backs arched like

     slow willow pendulums.

The river shines beneath us,

brackish tears carrying us

half buoyant, half drowned, stuck 

air in our thick throats.

Knee to knee we stand,

elbows locked like

     the grafter’s union,

grotesque and joined without end.

The river rises over us, kind

tears soundless, subtly numbing us.

Our eyes, the sky, the river –

all one, all done, all done.

* * * * *

Deanne Napurano, a New Jersey native, has been an award-winning copywriter for over 25 years. Recently, breast cancer excised its pound of flesh, resetting her writing trajectory. As she healed physically from bilateral mastectomy, she began to focus on more personal creative expression. Napurano is currently working on a new collection of poems that explore loss and the hope of recovery. She holds a BA in English from Drew University and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. To learn more, visit www.deannenapurano.com.

The Hunter

by Deanne Napurano

I tried to keep you from the window edge –

You sliced the sky with old Orion’s belt.

You dared us all to contradict our pledge –

You touched a place where we no longer felt.

I sometimes laughed at how you screwed your face –  

At last red pocked red pocked and rocks red glare.

Your tongue stuck out without an ounce of grace –

I climbed inside where life was made of air.

Two grey birds hop from limb to limb to limb –

Their songs sweet only to the other soul.

Queen Anne has lace and I my knife to trim

A stem, a leaf, my hands an empty bowl.

Tonight your red has burnt your inside black.

Tonight I sit until the stars look back.

* * * * *

Deanne Napurano, a New Jersey native, has been an award-winning copywriter for over 25 years. Recently, breast cancer excised its pound of flesh, resetting her writing trajectory. As she healed physically from bilateral mastectomy, she began to focus on more personal creative expression. Napurano is currently working on a new collection of poems that explore loss and the hope of recovery. She holds a BA in English from Drew University and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. To learn more, visit www.deannenapurano.com.

Repurposed Life

by deb y felio

discarding old fashioned ideas 

for contemporary

identifications and ways

of being

this loose thread 

pull         unwinding, unraveling

original patterns and notions

into unmapped traveling

and in this

heaping pile 

I search for meaning

in everything I 

shredded

now myself

at loose ends

searching again

grabbing hooks

and needles

knitting together 

variations

of the past

that nurtured 

and guided

me to the place

I thought I was going

Hospice 

by Mary McCarthy

  

Your hands rest in mine 

Light and still warm 

Though blue nails insist 

We don’t have long 

All your attention on the fight 

For breath 

Each one a prize 

Won harder than the last 

Your hands so soft and light 

Knobbed and twisted 

And not much use 

Done after years 

Of endless work 

Resting, not rewarded 

Somehow reminding me 

Of the newborn’s first 

Blind movements 

The searching mouth 

The hands like starfish 

Opening 

Opening wide 

* * * * *

Mary McCarthy has always been a writer but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. Her work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Third Wednesday, Earth's Daughters, the Ekphrastic Review, and Verse Virtual. Her electronic chapbook, Things I Was Told Not to Think About, is available as a free download from Praxis magazine.

Telling 

by Mary McCarthy

  

Anger wakes me 

pushing me out into the air 

to speak where you will never 

be welcome 

no matter how well you cover yourself 

with denials and apologies 

no one will believe you 

no one swallow your refusals 

or crouch in your shadow 

no one will carry 

your shame for you 

as you stand naked 

dissolving into smoke 

and a sour taste 

a ghost no one will notice or regret 

Don’t think you can follow me now 

into the wind and sun 

my dark hair burnished 

by golden light 

a wild tangle 

rising glorious 

as though alive and dangerous 

as Medusa’s snakes 

their tongues tasting power 

turning you and all your lies 

to stone.

* * * * *

Mary McCarthy has always been a writer but spent most of her working life as a Registered Nurse. Her work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Third Wednesday, Earth's Daughters, the Ekphrastic Review, and Verse Virtual. Her electronic chapbook, Things I Was Told Not to Think About, is available as a free download from Praxis magazine.

My mother’s rings           

by Nina Rubinstein Alonso

Three rings on her hands

one gold two silver maybe sleeping

when someone slipped them off

doesn’t know what happened

maybe coaxed away during a bath  

by fake-helpful soapy fingers

simple as children blowing bubbles

but now her hands remember

feel empty and wrong without rings

mom gazes down finds

no gold no silver no mist

of memory no suspicious breeze  

while I check blank faces of aides

tucking clean sheets on an empty bed

preparing for the next worn out body 

their white uniforms have

slim pockets where swift fingers

might hide an old lady’s rings but

my complaint brings stiff denials

officially polished lies about

the whole shitty disgusting business.

* * * * *

Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work appeared in Ploughshares, The New Yorker, The New Boston Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Ibbetson Street, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Southern Women’s Review, Black Poppy Review, Tears and Laughter, etc. David Godine Press published her book This Body, and her chapbook Riot Wake is upcoming from Červená Barva Press. She taught at Boston Ballet, directs Fresh Pond Ballet School and practices raja yoga meditation (sahajmarg.org).