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James
R. Whitley's smart, savvy poetry has
been widely published and praised.
At once emotive and intensely logical,
his words are scars—nervous
pentimentos, sideways glances through
half-open doors whose portent the reader
is invited
to explore, if
only she
will
turn the
page. MORE
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 Passage
by Robert Castle
Dutch
soldiers were allowed to vote whether they would
follow commands. In essence, the soldier voted
when he wanted to go into combat. As politely as
possible, I told him that as democratic as the
system might appear, as pleased as the Dutch were
with their inclusive command system which, apparently,
was based on utopian management-labor factory models,
no soldier was going to vote himself into a goddamn
death trip. First you give people the alternative
not to soldier, draft deferments and the like,
but after that in the army there are no choices.
A soldier shouldn’t have to know why he’s
going into combat, let alone be thinking that he
can avoid it. Just believe in his country’s
reason for fighting. Certainly, commanders will
not command well if their commands are up for discussion.
Now I was privy to the soft spot of the NATO defense:
the Dutch Army.
Fred
Rippon's Mushroom House by Tom Sheehan
But those days were our own glory days
at Rippon’s Mushroom House, working hard,
sweating, being part of a force, the group effort,
and having cash put into our hands at the end
of the day. Part of that force moved off and
away from us at regular intervals, bound for
army fatigues or sailor blue or marine or flyer’s
gear.
A
Dollar Bill by J.P. Maney
The woman shrugged and put the painting back
on the wall. I looked around quickly to see what
else
she had—oak dressers, silver plate, Currier & Ives
prints, a stained glass lamp. Everything was ugly
and expensive. As I headed for the door, she said, “All
right. You can have it for thirty.”
“Thirty?” I asked,
turning.
“Thirty dollars,” she
said, making clear it was her final offer.
Drifting
in Xochimilco by Zett Aguado
You would think there is no direction,
but there is a sense the tour guide in sneakers
and striped tattered sweater reflects: that he
knows what he is doing and it is obvious which
water road to take. You can tell from his dark
leathery face, his absent expression, the baseball
cap a tilted afterthought on his head, that his
mind is on another land. Maybe on a cockfight
he wishes to bet on, a girl he wants to bed,
a crying child in need of medicine (and in all
cases, the tips you will give him are already
spent).
Citronella
Memories by Martin Bayne
He ignored me. “You know, I could
have lived with ‘sweat hog’. I didn’t
like it, but I could have lived with it. But ‘carnivorous
incisors’? You’ve got to draw a line
somewhere. No, I’m afraid we’re going
to have to call this one in.”
And that’s how it went
down. Later that night I confessed to hundreds of outrageous characters, mangled
plots, and long-winded narratives. Four months later, I pled guilty to a Class
D felony, paid a $5,000 fine, and received ten years probation.
Mouse
by R.C. Cooper
One weekend, on a
patch of grass between the farm’s main house
and smokehouse, smelling of fresh white paint,
I discovered a wooden shelter for my dog. At first
I was hoppity excited—then alarmed. Was Sherry
to be exiled from the indoors, then? My pal, my
partner, my bedwarmer—banished?
The
Decay by Brian Howell
The question was where to live.
He hankered after living in one of those smoky
Czech villages that
you passed on the bus as it hurtled down a hillside,
a window of one cottage glowing orangey-red from
the coal fire from within. She wanted to get
away from it, from those memories of her step-father’s
clawing paws and his attacks on her mother, those
beatings he gave his wife in bed, transmitted
through the walls by muffled thuds, which it
had taken her all too long to translate. Why
it had come as a shock when he moved his attentions
to her, she did not quite know. It had happened
one afternoon when she was fourteen.
A
Mother, Another, and A Kid by Alicia Gifford
When my mom and dad divorce, my mom
won’t discuss it with my grandma because
she says divorce is enough stress without adding
her mother into the mix, and Grandma gets it into
her head that my mom’s a psycho. Grandma
talks to a lawyer about taking me away from her,
and leaves my mom messages, saying she’s
crazy and needs help. My mom about busts a gut
until my uncle, who lives across the Pacific in
Hawaii, calls and straightens out the whole mess.
The
House on T by Nancy Stade
Yesterday scalding water pelted me from above,
behind, and each side. I imagined the faded scars
on my forearms blistering and separating from me
in unbroken cursive forms. I will send him messages
on the parts of me I have disavowed, I thought.
Surely were I so brutalized by acts of penitence
he would receive me. I pressed my eyes shut against
the white tile and the light infiltrating through
the glass brick, causing the grid of mortar to
burn into the inside of my eyelids and draw nearer.
Still I couldn’t summon the smell of his
breath or the lightness of his limbs when in sleep
they lay across mine, could not even recall his
likeness.
Daddies
by Frank Thomas Smith
Carlos’s skin was naturally
caramel-colored and the brief stay in Puerto Rico
had made it a shade darker. He tried to keep his
strong black hair slicked back with gel, but swimming
in the ocean had released the curls that now cupped
his head. Flaring green trousers with the cuffs
turned up over his ankles, blue suede shoes, a
black T-shirt with the sleeves and most of the
sides cut away, and an earring dangling from his
left earlobe completed the picture. “It’s
impossible for me to stay here in Puerto Rico,
Daddy,” he said with his mouth full of doughnut.
The
Grey Sets In by Judd Hampton
“When I was that age, everything
was different.” The wind catches her hair
and flecks of grey sparkle in the sunshine. “Look
at that long beautiful hair, that smooth skin,
that tight body. I bet Daddy gave her a car when
she turned sixteen and Mommy washed her clothes
until she moved out. She wore a white dress at
her wedding and married the frickin’ boy
next door. The world’s still black and white
to her.”
Catch
of the Day by Laurence C. Schwartz
What’s the problem? I’ve
always seen you smiling when you’re together.
And what about the restaurants he takes you to?
Do you think my Bernie took me to steak houses
on a regular basis? And those wonderful seafood
places? You’d be foolish to pass him over,
Lisa.
Uniforms
by Daniel Bronson
In this small Pennsylvania community,
not yet suburban enough for people to worry about
locking their
doors, the Colonel had sauntered in on a five-year-old
Henry, three days after the Allens had moved in,
and had spent an hour relating a favorite war story
while playing with the toy tanks and soldiers handed
down from Henry’s older brothers. Then he
had wandered up the block to the Bells, where he
had blundered in on the lady of the house taking
her bath. The police had been called.
They
Said It Stapled Together Pretty Good by Stevan
Allred
The compressor
shuts off and it’s quiet,
except for the snap snap snap of a nail gun above
us, which is Curtis nailing off the rafter tails.
Then that noise stops, and there’s birds
making noise in the trees at the edge of the lot,
and Curtis’ steps as he walks a ceiling joist
over our heads. One
more snap. I look over at Shawn for no particular
reason, maybe I felt him staring at me. It’s
one of those frozen moments in time kind of moments.
Shawn reaches up real slow to touch the top of
his head.
The
Conductor by Gaither Stewart
He couldn’t bear to hear her say again that Rome was like
a bad French novel—to be read and then thrown out the train window. Dominique
thrived on her French clichés. He had to admit that he didn’t
understand Rome either, but how could he explain that he liked the way he lost
his sense of time there among her monuments—those eternal monuments that
could be related to almost any moment in time? He was tenderly indulgent of
Rome’s pathetic attempts to be modern like its rival Paris—attempts
that he knew were as phony as Italy’s economic statistics, probably faked
to get into the European Union.
The
Looking Glass Self by Scott Carter
The mirror is chipped at the edges and a small
crack at the top spiders into the corner, which
he covers up with a yellow sticky note that reads:
I am intersting. He tapes a sheet
of paper on the left side of the mirror. The
Four Commandments of a Positive-Self. He
looks at the phrase scrolled across the top and
whispers, “The Real You is a marvelous,
distinctive being with enormous potential and
power.” 
High
on a Ridge by Rochelle Mass
Dash would force the earth into taking the seeds,
then circle the land every day
till sprouts broke through the crusty surface. His stalks would stand proud
in the light of winter. His crop has come again
Belly
Walk by Khadijah Queen
Soon,
soon the spiral
Comes nakedly twisting,
Opening like a fruit rind
Physics
and Grace by Laura McCullough
He gives
us pens, gold,
azure, cerulean,
crimson, tells us to write the morning
you first
remembered you knew how to live.
Thirteen
Gray Lines by Sandra M. A. Ogle
My
grandmother hid
jewelry from Benito
with the deluded hopes
of an American child
on the beach digging
to China. The
Remainder at Gettysburg by Corey Mesler
there on a remainder table I
found a biography
of Gandhi for 1.98.
What saves us is always unexpected.
Hand
Articulation by Arlene Ang
They
say
hands divulge
through anatomy
what is kept in check
by gestures.
When
Everything Was Different by Rochelle Mass
My bed isn’t
in my room anymore, the space filled with
mattresses lined up against the wall. The curtains
I sewed are torn.
Buoyant
by Laura McCullough
My mother tried
to teach me, squares
of duct tape over each key. I’d peek
when she left the
room. She gave up,
said: if you learn how to type, they’ll
just make you
do it.
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