NarrativeNortheast

Dinah Washington in the Land of Hi-Fi – Don Zirilli

on November 18 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

Her elegant hands caressing rich dark fur,

smiling like she ate a muffin, eyes open

but in a closed place, she’s not the diamond

set above the BULOVA, she’s the spoke of the time.

Let her through.

Night can be white.

Let her through.

She’s not a dancer.

Let her through.

Step to the side of the black line.

Intelligent bird resting on the pillow she filled—

luxury bill listing leeward seeks a harbor’s open beak.

She’s not through yet.

Donald Zirilli is a Healthcare IT manager with an English Literature BA from Drew University. He was the editor of Now Culture, the art editor of The Shit Creek Review, and remains a Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow Gang Member. His poetry was published in The 2River View, Anti- poetry magazine, ART TIMES, Nerve Lantern, River Styx, and other periodicals and anthologies. He and his wife live in an idyllic corner of New Jersey with two dogs and two cats. His chapbook, Heaven’s Not For You, was published in September, 2018, by Kelsay Books.
Read More »
A BULL MOOSE CIRCLES – Scott Hutchinson

on November 17 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

A bull moose circles at the edge of my lawn and woods.
His large head tilts oddly, as if he were looking or listening
for answers as to why the wildness has greyed and grown smaller,
why he no longer hungers for green shoots or deep forest paths.
Emaciated, stumbling—I should call a conservation officer
to come destroy this poor animal. Brain worms
have infected his cerebrospinal functions. I still know
this much, recognize the symptoms. Though this morning
I awoke confused, baffled as to where I was. A woman’s face
smiled at the edge of my bed, her head tilted as if
in love, offering me toast and tea. I did not know her.
I remember warm water, finding myself beneath the rain
of a showerhead, a possessive word pressing into my cerebellum
relating to answers I do not wish to possess. There was a time
when I put boots down on the paths leading to wild ponds
and ledges hidden miles away, places of untamed spectacle.
I can no longer see them clearly. The bull moose angrily
strikes his hooves at the soft ground, looking for the enemy.
If they come to shoot him he will charge
as best he can, fearless and heart-pumping
to face off with whatever wishes to paralyze
or end his unsteady gait. His muscles
buckle involuntarily, but he pushes back
into his circling. I am tired, confused
too often, but there’s a trace of me still
that chooses old paths leading to sanctuaries
of night rest, soft depressions of leaves.
I will take an antique rifle, open and close the door,
advance upon the bull moose, we will see
what final nourishment might offer itself
to the virile fragments that can remember who we are.

Scott Hutchinson’s work has appeared in The Georgia Review and The Southern Review. Poems are forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Floyd County Moonshine, ConchoRiver Review, Louisiana Literature, The Naugatuck River Review, Red Dirt Forum,Steam Ticket and Tar River Poetry. A new book of poetry, Moonshine Narratives, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing
Read More »
BONES – Ellen Girardeau Kempler

on November 16 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

When a beloved dies,
we gather like elephants
to mourn the bones
touching each foot
ankle, femur, rib,
vertebrae, shoulder,
stroking the pelvis,
jaw, cranium, moving
each one separately
with our trunk-fingers
as if by memorizing
and lifting each one
we could reanimate
body, spirit, self.

Ellen Girardeau Kempler’s poetry has been published Writers Resist, One (Jacar Press), Phoenix Rising Review, Gold Man Review, Orbis International Poetry Quarterly, Cargo Literary, Spectrum and a number of other small presses and anthologies. In 2016, she won Ireland’s Blackwater International Poetry Prize and received honorable mentions in Winning Writers’ Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest and the Writer’s Digest poetry awards. Called ‘a timely and powerful selection of climate poetics,’ her first book, ‘Thirty Views of a Changing World: Haiku + Photos,’ was published in December 2017 by Finishing Line Press.
Read More »
BASHO IN AMERICA – Sander Zulauf

on October 25 | in Uncategorized | by admininfin8 | with Comments Off on BASHO IN AMERICA – Sander Zulauf

Read More »
THREE POEMS – Anne Jennings Paris

on July 11 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

LACUNA

On trails of slash pine
and sabal palm, the sun
suggests she turn reptile
and sprawl toward water
know animal pleasure.

The wind wants to empty her
wonders if she’ll whither
to husk, involute
where language won’t go.

Inside her belly, sorrows dwell
she wants to label each one
like the wildflowers
she copied as a child–
naming the world made it real–
swamp mallow, lady slipper, trumpet vine.

Here, in the pines, she names
saw palmetto, tickseed
and the Lubber grasshoppers
that ride each other’s backs–
they slept all winter for this–
egg, then nymph, then adult,
repeat.

No name for what comes after
(encyclopedias fall short)
unless carcass.
Rot.

What is the name for her now?
Menopause–climacteric–say what she is not.
Senescence implies a coming end.
But here in the pinelands, she feels new
skin flushed with sweat.
Not hag, not fishwife, matron, or crone–
she waits on the wet season,
fecund,
conceives her lexicon.

AT PINE ISLAND

The Everglades sieve runoff into armor,
periphyton plated as a gator’s back.
Holes in oolite, like puddles on the moon,
hint at worlds beneath this one.
Beneath bayheads, scorpions creep
and under brush, the pythons sleep.

Surveyors drive stakes along the road,
marks for mowers that daily speak
with sharp, sweeping tongues
these thickets into poetry.

Men rose rapine from the sea
laid roads and tracks,
drew acreages and platts.
Architects of imagined space,
they carved drain and swale
from Disney to the mangrove sea:
Florida, but as they meant her to be.

And if they looked away?
She beat them back with flails—
green on sun-thinned walls—
laid waste whole cities with water.

So the men fight harder.
Their machines dredge and fill
utopic maps of want, cement the veil
between asleep and awake.

I see you, killing men,
holding back storm and vine—
but my words flow deeper than fear,
a song you can’t contain:

I am the stake
and the wilderness it keeps at bay,
the river of grass and the sea,
I’ll sound until there’s nothing left to save,
hymn of what might still be.

ON THE OLD INGRAHAM HIGHWAY

When the world stopped seeing me,
I burned from the inside out, like grasses on the roadside,
deep orange thrust, saw-blade-sharp if stroked the wrong way.

When the world stopped hearing me,
I began to lose words. I let the wind empty me
till my voice became a tiny chirp, louder at dusk and dawn.

When the world forgot the taste of me, the texture of my skin,
my body hardened like the spiked head of a thistle,
purpled and angry. Then, all that was left was to walk into the grasslands–

Clouds drifted over the far cypress domes–
I let myself sink in marl, where the water hides,
until the Earth caught me. Now I am queen

of the frogs and insects, the tiniest fishes.
I use my last word to call the blackbirds to me;
they dart and sing in the mystery of my long shadow–

the days grow heavier, the earth darker.
We wait on the wide, grassy slough for the thing that will fill us—
they say when the water comes, it will not come gently.

Anne Jennings Paris is a writer, a visual artist, and a mother. She has lived in the Portland, Oregon area for the past 15 years, and she is native of Gainesville, Florida. Her recent work looks at the human and non-human ecology of threatened landscapes and watersheds.

Read More »
TWO POEMS & THREE PHOTOS – MICHAEL MONTLACK

on May 9 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

IN TAMIKA’S BASEMENT

Sorta stoned from the spray paint fumes.

* TWISTED FUCKEN SISTER *

Alternating black and hot-pink letters
scrawled across the white cotton sheet
lifted from her mother’s linen closet.

We’re not gonna take it, Tamika sang,
rattling both paint cans like maracas.
If I can’t hang it from the balcony,
I’ll wear it as a cape. Rush the stage!

My 14-year-old Superwoman. Unafraid:
ID-checking bouncers, mosh-pit metalheads,
her mother. What’re you gonna tell her?

I’m sleeping over your house—duh!

An all-access pass. To my bedroom.
The demure boy. (A twisted sister?)
As her accomplice I bubbled
like the second coat of hot pink.

Shivering in shorts, she kissed me
G’night beneath the corner streetlight,
my shadow spilling into hers—our odd shape
a tattoo on the asphalt where I imagined
the skid marks we’d one day leave.

SUMMER’S EVE (90’S GIRL BAND, NYC)

Who could’ve guessed a girl clumsy as a blind giraffe
on roller skates—the meatiest of the varsity softball team—
would one day summon, jangling a scuffed tambourine,
the gaggle of tattooed groupies, their mangy backpacks
stuffed with sanitary napkins for sticking to their bare chests
when you finally sang their request: Maxi, Maxi, Maxi Pad …
splattering Pollock-style all those open-mouthed boys
with a douche spritz—the girl who gave suburbia the slip
now pounding her dusty footprints into the floorboards
where Blondie and The Ramones lashed out their own bitter arias.

Tamika,
what would you have carried in your garter had you seen 30?
Your stash? A stiletto? Bells to warn us when you were coming?

CBGB’s is gone now too, your old stomping ground
a John Varvatos boutique. Yeah, men’s high fashion—
where your shabby boys once came to be baptized.

Michael Montlack is editor of the Lambda Finalist essay anthology My Diva (University of Wisconsin Press) and author of the poetry collection Cool Limbo (NYQ Books). Recently his work appeared in North American Review, The Offing, Hotel Amerika, Poet Lore, and Los Angeles Review. His essays have appeared in Huffington Post and Advocate.com.
Read More »
TWO POEMS – Anton Yakovlev

on March 19 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

NATURALIZED

The blinds on your windows have learned to make their own movies
and long outclass your transactions with ocean fleece.

Naturally predisposed to back flips,
you’ve become a dehydrated plant wrapped around a mostly-forgotten statue
no one will ever use
until rearranged
continents admit something
and no one is there to be their tree in the forest.

It’s been years since blood pumped through garden hoses,
but you still remember every death.
Stars forgot how to spy on you,
but you continue to feel their spying
due to the same delay that will make them visible
even after their Yorick moments.

You want people to play tennis with what you say,
but an immigrant child in the village frog pond
screamed for help in his own language and drowned.

You wander through the tail days of summer
searching for pumpkin beer in immigrant stores,
putting ice on your creepy neck
and rye from closed distilleries in your cheeks.

They’ve spurned you by playing you
the unauthorized director’s cut of your movie

until you hoped for more allergies.
Now every reed bends lower than the river.

Fake meat arrives in the mail.
There cannot be any questions.

Every car you cry in suggests a joke.

The wooden huts of the people you recall out of so-called nowhere
hop around your front yard on their chicken legs.
The people will not come out.

Your Arc de Triomphe fell asleep
and went off the road last night.

BREAK

Sunlight looks great on your brush
but no paint ever sticks to the canvas
and how can you burn a painting until there is a painting?
Throw your paint and see it stop in mid-air.

Air rolls in air, polluted with Prince Oblonsky smiles.

They rolled away your baby grand years ago,
and did you ever believe in hammers?

You could write a letter to a lapsed friend, detailing
that restless cardinal’s rap chorus outside
your window. You know that could be enough.

Something squats in your aorta.

Lately you’ve been overcomplicating things
like love, drowning it in folklore.

Booze feels like ballroom dancing.

Your doppelganger is a pizza joint
in the township on the other side of the median
covered with cartoons
full of ambition
to make miracles you can’t get rid of.

Visitors write religions on paper planes.
Death would validate things, but its microphone is broken.
Better wait for another god to roll by.

After all, it’s twenty minutes to your next brain.

Anton Yakovlev’s latest chapbook Chronos Dines Alone, winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize 2018, was published by SurVision Books. He is also the author of Ordinary Impalers (Kelsay Books, 2017) and two prior chapbooks. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Hopkins Review, Measure, Amarillo Bay, and elsewhere. The Last Poet of the Village, a book of translations of poetry by Sergei Yesenin, is forthcoming from Sensitive Skin Books. Yakovlev is the current Education Director at Bowery Poetry Club. He has also written and directed several short films.

Read More »
THREE POEMS – Kelli Stevens Kane

on March 16 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

EXPOSURE

for Alex Honnold, 2011

You say finger locking feels very exposed. I’ll never know how
my body feels relying on skill to live, or do we all know how it feels
Alex? At any altitude the heart could stop, lungs could collapse.
I don’t mean what you’re doing isn’t dangerous, I just mean I understand
why you do it. Living in a van so you can climb all the time is some kind of
cousin to riding 11 hours on a bus to read one poem, then riding 11 hours
back home. I’m not even sure what home is anymore. I don’t think it’s your
van that smells like socks and underarms or the bus with its freezing
air climbing up the headboard of my dirty window, a pair of pants
for my pillow. It’s not in front of the cameras that follow you up Half Dome
or in the spotlight on the stage I read from. It’s not your mother’s house,
where you leave most of your clothes, or my house whose woodwork
made me cry when I first walked in. You and I both know, some
things just have to be done. And whatever that is, we call it home.
I take a pen, lock my fingers around it, and it feels very exposed.
Sometimes every muscle aches from this exposure and sometimes
I ache from failure to expose anything. Either way, the poems
don’t give a damn about me, the rocks you climb don’t care
about you either, and it doesn’t even matter. I can’t stop writing
any more than you can stop climbing. They say poets die first. One day
neither of us will be here. All that will matter is that we did what we came
here to do, even if everything and everyone else in our lives, including ourselves,
came in second. Some say you’re selfish, others say no, you’d be selfish if
you had a wife and kids. What would they say about me? Filthy house, no
dinner on the table, I moved back here to be closer to family and now I don’t even
visit them. No rope, this wife and mother’s version of free solo. I’ve jammed
my whole life into these poems, so if I fall first, remind them to bury
me in words. And if you fall first, we already know in stone.

PAUSE

As if my body doesn’t know
my body. As if abnormal equals
illness. As if I could be sick
and not know. As if, as if,
as if the womb is not a heart,
as if the heart wouldn’t cry,
as if this should be a time of action
instead of reflection. As I begin
my fourth month of bleeding,
understand–we are
having our last conversation, we
have loved each other deeply. I
am healthy. This is healthy. You
will not scrape away a pure thing.

REFRAIN

Irrelevant swelling. Ignore
ankle. Injury
is illusion. Resume movement.

Kelli Stevens Kane is a poet, playwright, and oral historian. She’s a Cave Canem Fellow and an August Wilson Center Fellow, and has received Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh grants from The Pittsburgh Foundation. She’s studied at VONA, Hurston/Wright, and Callaloo. She’s read her poetry and oral history, and performed her one woman show, BIG GEORGE, nationally. Her work is published in North American Review, Little Patuxent Review, Split This Rock, Under a Warm Green Linden, Painted Bride Quarterly, and African Voices. For more information, visit kellistevenskane.com.
Read More »
POOL – Derrick Weston Brown

on February 4 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

from the Aquahbruh/ Melinated Merman Series & for Black Men who swim

Underneath the blue rim of waves

the water breaks across my brown back.

I paddle my legs & crawl: a buoyant

black mass of bubble & sigh.

I am writing a grocery list

one lap

Syncopating my breath

the other five

& ignoring the cooking

in my ample thighs

& hoping to leave

these extra pounds in the water

instead of just spent breath.

When the water breaks

across my brown back

when I breach the liquid seal

each time I turn my head & inhale

I am getting over myself

& all of the unseen inside me

that weighs I down.

When the water breaks

across my brown back

I think – I want to make

love like this

strokes brown breath breach

ease undulate muscle memory

wave tide tug current pooling

ample inhale liquid spent breath lapping

repeat.

Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in creative writing, from American University. He has studied poetry under Dr. Tony Medina at Howard University and Cornelius Eady at American University. He is a graduate of the Cave Canem and VONA Voices summer workshops. His work has appeared in such literary journals as The Little Patuxent Review, Colorlines, The This Mag, and Vinyl online. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2012. He worked as a bookseller and book buyer for a bookstore which is operated by the nonprofit Teaching for Change. He was the founder of The Nine on the Ninth, a critically acclaimed monthly poetry series that ran from 2005-2015 at the 14th & V street location of Busboys and Poets. He was the 2012-2013 Writer-In-Residence of the Howard County Poetry Literary Society, of Maryland. He is also a participating DC area author for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation’s Writers-in-Schools program. He’s performed at such esteemed venues as The Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe and the Bowery. He has lead workshops and performed at Georgetown University, George Washington University, Sweet Briar College and Chicago State. He has appeared on Al-Jazeera and NPR as well. In May of 2014 he was also the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant. He is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, and resides in Mount Rainier, Maryland. His debut collection of poetry entitled, Wisdom Teeth, was released in April 2011 on Busboys and Poets Press/PM Press. You can follow him on social media on Facebook and on Instagram @theoriginalDerrickWestonBrown as well as his author website DerrickWestonBrown.com
Read More »
WRITER’S BLOCK – Amanda Biltucci

on January 28 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

You’re in an empty grain silo—
so dark you can’t see
the domed roof. The only door

slams closed behind you.
All the light you’re able to see
shines from a nickel-sized hole

far above your head.
Your voice vibrates to the top
of the silo as you yell for help.

Surely, the farmer must hear
your echo. But he’s gone—
driving all the cows to slaughter.

Amanda Biltucci is currently studying English and Creative Writing as a PhD student at Binghamton University, where she is also a poetry editor for Harpur Palate. Originally from a tiny rural town in central New York State, the Mohawk Valley and Adirondack Mountains inspire much of her work. Her poetry has appeared in Blueline and Written River.
Read More »
OBSIDIAN – Tejan Green

on January 27 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

A prayer and a hymn to the heavens
Gran offers before preparing
for the hurricane,

scolding me on manners
and good housekeeping.
Born a burden, womb carrying

the history of ancestors. She tells me
we can make this journey
with spirit and good company.

But, who will remember you?
Her eyes fixed on the mountains,
holding trauma,

like an infant to be rocked.
Small black stone, rubbed
over ovaries.

Tejan Green is a New York based poet and English lecturer. Her most recent creative project is a co-authored poetry collection on love and loss entitled We Were Us (Teng Publishing 2015).
Read More »
SHADOW DOG – Marlene Olin

on January 26 | in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

She’s there and not there, a ghost lying on the rug, an apparition sitting by my feet. Maggie, my sixteen-year-old miniature poodle, died two days ago. I see her regal head, her soft black curls, her wagging tail. There and not there. I’m still not sure what happened.

One minute I’m at the movies and the next I get a phone call.

“What?” I say to my husband. “What?”

Michael’s voice is breaking in and breaking out. Panicked. A word here, a word there. My soon-to-be-divorced daughter and I are having an afternoon out. Trying to relax. Watching the world’s dumbest film.

But Michael’s panic is contagious. You just know something’s wrong. I drop the popcorn. Then holding the phone, I get up from my seat, walk into the corridor, pass the restrooms and concession stand, and try to find a place where there’s reception. I’m shouting to my husband while I shake the phone. “What? I can’t hear you!” Then I swat at the screen. “Stupid. Stupid phone,” I yell. Like you can talk sense into a phone.

Gradually I get one, two, then three bars. Before I know it, I’m outside the theater. The day is bright, warm, sunny. October in Miami. I can hear my husband clearly and realize it’s more than the phone. Michael sounds like his throat is closing, like there’s only so much space in his airway for words to push through.

“It’s Maggie,” he’s saying.” I’m upstairs doing some work,” he says, “and suddenly I hear this scream. This awful awful scream. I run downstairs and the dog’s shaking all over, screaming.”

The day before we were at the vet’s office. Dr. F. checked her over, clipped her nails, gave her fur a little trim. Years ago, when Maggie was in her prime, we’d see the vet once or twice a year. But now I’m a monthly fixture. My poor dog’s nearly blind and deaf. She gets a boatload of drugs for arthritis. Special food for her kidneys. Probiotics. Supplements. You name it.

The routine was always the same. The vet asked and I answered. Is she walking? Eating? Wagging her tail? Then she’s good to go. See you next month!

Of course, I knew my dog was a mess. But the possibility of her leaving never sunk in. When I walked through the front door, she was always waiting, circling my legs, offering a little jump, happy to see me. Like out of the whole universe I was the only one who mattered. Thank you thank you thank you she seemed to be saying. For being you, for coming home to me.

“What do I do?” says my husband.

There’s an ER vet around ten minutes from my house. I give my husband the address and tell him to meet me. Then I grab my daughter and drive like a maniac. I get to the vet before he does.

While I fill out the paperwork they clear a room. Snot’s streaming down my nose. I’m trying to talk and hiccuping sobs at the same time. I tell them about the seizure. About Maggie’s stage three renal disease. About how she seemed fine–truly fine–until she wasn’t.

The receptionist looks worried. Her eyes are darting back and forth. In fact there are two three women sitting at the front desk, and they all seem to be communicating telepathically, their eyes shifting, their hands flurrying, making tiny nervous gestures, thinking who’s this crazy old lady, we handle dogs every day of the week, but this crazy old lady looks like she’s going to have a heart attack, we’ve got to calm this crazy lady down.

Meanwhile my husband’s so flustered he gets lost. Usually Michael has a great sense of direction. But his head’s not screwed on so while my daughter’s holding down the fort in the examining room, I’m standing on US1 waving my arms trying to flag my husband.

Finally, after making an illegal U-turn and parking in a space that says “DO NOT PARK HERE. YOU WILL BE TOWED” he makes it to the ER. Of the two of them, my husband looks a whole lot worse. Though Maggie’s wrapped in a towel, her little head is peeking out. She takes in my smells and licks my hand. When my daughter offers her a dog treat, she gobbles it up. But something’s off. When we lay her on the examining table, she just lies there. There’s no fight, no protest, no Mommy I just hate this place! Get me out of here right now!

Meanwhile the vet is all business. While I stroke Maggie’s head, she listens to her chest. Then she proceeds to talk in doctorspeak, a jumble of words I barely compute. “The dog should stay at the hospital, ” she tells us. “She needs an IV for hydration. We have to run a few tests.” Blah. Blah. Blah.

My husband, daughter, and I all look at each other. Maggie has already outlived her lifespan and more. We had long ago decided on no extraordinary measures. When the big crisis came, we had decided, we’d let her die in peace.

But then again….

“I want to take her home,” I hear myself saying.” Just make her comfortable, ” I tell the vet. “Shoot her full of fluids. One seizure means nothing, right?”

I’m in the middle of my little speech when all of a sudden Maggie starts shaking once more. Her little head is moving back and forth while my hand moves with it. Then her whole body starts seizing. Instantly, the doctor scoops Maggie in her arms and whisks her away. “I’m putting in a port,” she says, over a shoulder. “She needs an anticonvulsant now.”

Ten minutes later the doctor comes back alone.

“It’s time,” she says matter-of-factly.

The vet acts like she does this every day of the week. Go to the grocer’s. Check. The dry cleaner’s. Check. Whip out the Nembutal. Check.

“There’s already an IV in her leg. So it’s easy. First we give her a sedative. Then the second drug stops her heart. “

Crying, holding each other, my husband, daughter, and I nod yes.

Soon Maggie appears. A nurse carries her into the examining room wrapped in a fluffy blanket. Though I want to hold her, Maggie’s still flailing. I’m not sure if she’s seizing or just disoriented. The doctor works quickly, too quickly. She lays her on the table and plunges a liquid into the port. Within seconds, Maggie stops twisting and turning. It seems like she’s nodding off for a nap.

For a moment, I’m confused. Maggie looks fine. Really. Her eyes are open. Her chest’s moving up and down. And in that wedge of time between hope and despair, my mind starts wandering. Maybe me and my dog should make run for it. Head to the hills. Do a Selma and Louise. Jump in the car and go. This euthanasia thing is crazy. A big big mistake. This isn’t nature taking its course. This course really sucks. This course will and can be changed.

But before I can speak, before my lips can move and words can form, the second liquid plunges into Maggie’s leg. It happens faster than I ever imagined. And after a single heartbeat, she’s gone.

***

It’s been two days and still she lingers. Though we’ve cleaned the house and donated Maggie’s stuff, her presence looms. I see her crate next to my bed, her water bowl in the kitchen, her blanket under my desk where she liked to sleep. I hear her paws tapping the floor, the jingle of her collar, her bark when the garbage truck rolls by. And every time I come home there she is, waiting by the front door, the wisp of a snout, the flick of a tail, my shadow dog, there and not there, to greet me.

Marlene Olin was born in Brooklyn, raised in Miami, and educated at the University of Michigan. Her short stories have been featured or are forthcoming in publications such as The Massachusetts Review, Upstreet Magazine, Arts and Letters, Eclectica, and The American Literary Review. She is the winner of the 2015 Rick DeMarinis Short Fiction Award, the 2018 So To Speak Fiction Prize, and a nominee for both the Pushcart and the Best of the Net prizes.

Read More »
THE BANCROFT MILL – A.E. Milford

on January 26 | in Fiction | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

Ever since the principal had banned texting, Mia barely talked to her boyfriend during the day. Sometimes she didn’t see him until lunch. That morning, though, he was standing right outside her classroom, a smirk on his face, his dark hair framed by the brown and orange poster for the fall dance stapled to the wall behind him.

He whispered hello and tried to kiss her. She shifted her weight to avoid his lips. The graze of his stubble smeared her foundation.

“Stop it, Danny. I don’t feel good. I have to get to class.”

She pushed him away but he slipped his arm around her waist, bringing her closer. She knocked his hand from her stomach and broke free.

“What’s wrong with you lately?”

“Nothing, I just don’t feel good today.”

“Well, you better start feeling good, ‘cause we’re all going down to that mill by the river tonight. We’re meeting at nine or ten by that ranger-station-thing. By the cliff. Near the quarry. You can get in by the waterfall.”

“What? Why?” She tried to squeeze past him.

“We’re gonna’ look for ghosts and stuff, it’ll be fun, it’s supposed to be haunted.”

“I don’t wanna’ go. I’m tired. I just wanna’ go to sleep early.”

“You’ve gotta’ go. C’mon. We all are.” He planted himself in the center of the doorway and refused to move. The morning bell began to ring.

“Fine, whatever. I’ll go. Just get out of the way.”

“Awesome, I’ll see you later.”

He kissed her one last time before stepping aside.

She hardly ate any lunch. The scent of onions seemed to taint the whole cafeteria. It was only near the end of the day when her stomach finally settled.

She found Danny sitting on his car in the waning sunlight.

“So, you’ll meet us at ten, right?

“I don’t know.”

“C’mon, you have to go. Ethan and Kelsey are going. It’s like a double date, but with ghosts and stuff.”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Fine, I’ll go. I told you I’d go.”

“Cool, I’ve got these huge flashlights. My dad bought two of them. They’re really powerful.” Danny pulled out his phone and began absent-mindedly staring at the screen. “I hope they’re not too bright, though. But I guess nobody’s ever down there by the river, like, at ten at night or anything.”

An autumn wind blew through the trees, stirring up chimney smoke from nearby houses. Mia felt hungry for the first time in days.

“Just make sure to wear boots or something, since we’ll have to go through the woods and there’s tons of broken glass and stuff like that inside.”

She pictured the old mill. She’d studied it in eighth grade. The Bancroft family had made fabric there starting back in the 1800s. It closed in the 1960s. Now it was just falling apart, abandoned from a forgotten era. She wasn’t sure if Danny even knew it was called the Bancroft Mill.

For dinner she ate mashed potatoes on the couch with her mom. They watched the news and the weatherman said something about the dew point causing fog, how it was bad for pumpkins if they were cut already. Her mom went straight to bed. It was easy to sneak out.

Mia stayed off the highway and drove cautiously, barely able to see the murky neon sign of the drive-thru where she stopped for fries.

It only took fifteen minutes to get to the gravel parking lot by the cliff.

A streetlamp illuminated Danny through the mist as she approached. He was on the hood of his car, drinking a beer. Ethan stood next to him, trying to light a cigarette, his arm around his girlfriend, Kelsey. They shielded their eyes.

Danny yelled through the darkness as she turned off her engine.

“Don’t use your high beams like that, people could see us.”

As she got out and walked up, he offered her the beer.

“You want a sip?”

She pretended not to hear.

“Seriously, don’t use your headlights like that. We don’t wanna’ get caught.”

“Sorry.”

“Just try to be more careful.”

Ethan finally lit his cigarette and blew some smoke into the haze. Mia stepped back from the cloud; a stick snapped beneath her. Kelsey jumped.

“What was that?”

The boys laughed.

Hundreds of feet below, over the edge of the cliff, the dark river churned on steadily. They stood quietly in each other’s company for a moment until Danny finally spoke up.

“C’mon, let’s go, we’ll take the path by the quarry. It’ll be quicker.” He took another sip of beer, offering it to Mia again. “You want some or not?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“God, you’re never any fun. Why are you so uptight?”

After hesitating a second, she grabbed the can and took a drink.

Danny snatched it back.

“Hey, don’t drink it all.”

As they moved into the forest, Mia let the bitter, lukewarm liquid sit on her tongue for a second, waiting for Danny to move ahead. As soon as she was sure no one else was looking, she quietly spit the beer into the dead leaves behind her.

They reached the river in less than five minutes. The mill stood along the edge of the waterfall as if the foundation had grown from the water. Almost every window was broken, the roof caving in. Staring at the building, Mia wondered why she hadn’t just stayed at home in bed.

Near the edge of the waterfall a rotting wooden platform sat perched on some boulders, a pedestrian bridge once used by mill workers. A rusty door hung from its hinges, blocking their way.

“Danny, check this out.” Ethan kicked the lock with all his strength, ripping the metal door from its frame. It slammed onto the wooden platform, then bounced, reverberating off the steel beams supporting the bridge. Birds scattered from a nearby tree.

Mia searched the woods for impending reproach, but no one came. The sound of the waterfall resumed. The evening carried on.

“Let me go first, since I’ve been in here before. It’s crazy.”

Danny offered his hand to Mia.

She took it, noticing how cold his skin was, but how it also felt somehow comforting. They held each other tightly and shuffled across the bridge, inch-by-inch, the river rushing below.

Upon reaching the end, Danny led them through a short passageway to an open door.

The fog gave way to damp, stagnant air.

It was a big room. Sprawling. Broken tables and shattered glass and discarded factory equipment littered the floor. Graffiti stretched from wall to wall, scrawled chaotically in different layers from all the kids breaking in over the years.

Danny pulled out his phone and started taking pictures.

“I was only here a couple minutes last time. But this is the boring part, where people worked. There are other places where they did tests on people and stuff.”

“Yeah, right.” Ethan shined his light in Danny’s face.

Kelsey rolled her eyes as she moved closer to her boyfriend. “I’m sure,” she said.

“They did, seriously. I hear a guy killed a lady in here once. There’s all kinds of crazy stuff. I’ve never even been in half of it. It’s like a maze.” Danny stepped over a puddle, pulling Mia along. “Let’s try this way.”

As he led them through a door in the back corner they entered a deserted hallway, eventually hitting a dead end by a stairwell. Danny pointed his flashlight towards the second floor.

“Let’s check it out.”

They climbed quickly.

Mia’s heart was pounding by the time they reached the top. It was kind of fun. Like a haunted house. She almost even smiled when Danny swung her around at the top of the landing to kiss her on the cheek.

She couldn’t truly relax, though. That one thing in the back of her mind wouldn’t let her be happy.

She let her hand drop.

“What’s your problem?”

He’d moved on before she could reply.

The upstairs hallway was empty save an overturned bench. Tight, windowless. Danny herded them along to another door, this one paneled and locked.

Ethan skipped ahead, wanting to be first.

“Let’s go inside.”

As he kicked his way in he called back to the group.

“Check this out!”

It was an office. A nice one. A place someone important must’ve spent a lot of time. There was a big oak desk, covered in dust, resting beside a cracked leather chair. A mangled filing cabinet, rusted and with no doors, lay on its side. Above the desk, a framed map of the river, still intact and under glass, acknowledged them with their own reflection.

“This is awesome.” Danny scanned the room with his flashlight. “It’s like people just ran out in a hurry. Like they left everything exactly where it was.”

“Not really.” Ethan searched the filing cabinet. “They took all their papers. They obviously knew they were leaving.”

“Whatever.” Danny made his way over to the old leather chair, running his fingers along the bronze studs, picking up black dust. “Gross.” As he wiped his hands on his jeans in frustration, he kicked the aging legs. All of the sudden, without warning, the heavy seat gave out and crumbled to the floor, crashing with a bang. “Whoa!” As Danny jumped back in surprise he spontaneously ripped the map from the wall, throwing the frame to the ground. Glass shattered. Mia covered her face from the shards.

“Danny, come on–”

“What?”

“Stop breaking stuff. I think we should just get out of here. It’s getting late.”

“What’s your deal? We’re trying to have fun. Why do you always have to be so serious?”

“I’m tired. It’s been a long day. And I don’t feel good.”

“You never feel good. It’ll only be a little longer. Me and Ethan and Kelsey are having fun.”

As he continued marching around the room, the floorboards bent beneath him.

“What’s this?”

He’d stopped in the corner, focusing his light on some peeling wallpaper behind the filing cabinet.

“Ethan, get over here.”

A glint of metal sparkled as they examined the wall.

“I think it’s a door knob.”

They put down their flashlights and began tearing long strips of paper from the wall. A tarnished brass lock revealed itself.

“Dude, Danny, what the hell is this?”

“It’s a secret door.”

Danny tried the knob first. It wouldn’t budge.

Ethan added more force. But it still wouldn’t move.

Finally Danny told everyone to stand back.

After getting a head start from the other side of the room, he exploded into a run, kicking his boot out at the last second, striking the door with all his might.

A loud crack shook the walls as the lock broke. The door swung wildly back and forth for a minute before creaking to a stop.

It wasn’t another factory room. It wasn’t an office for a secretary, either.

It wasn’t the type of room that should’ve been in the mill at all.

There was more peeling wallpaper, but this time it was green and yellow and floral in design, running down to a carpeted floor. It smelled sweet and moldy, like no one had been in there for a hundred years. The thick carpet had once been gold or teal, and was now a faded and filthy combination of both.

As Mia’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, she made out dozens of small pictures decorating the walls. They were indecipherable at first, but she could soon see clearly. They were delicate watercolors. Paintings of animals. Bunnies. Kittens. Birds.

Goosebumps ran up her arms.

Danny began pacing the room.

“Now this is creepy. What the hell is this place?”

Mia’s heart was beating faster now. She followed the line of watercolors to the corner.

That’s when she saw it.

Right there, in the back of the room, a tiny mobile hung from the ceiling. Little stencils of people holding hands were looking downwards.

Down into a small, empty cradle.

“This is insane.” Danny stomped around the nursery. “What were they doing in this place? Keeping people hostage?”

He stormed across the mildewed carpet towards the cradle. Next to it, as if it had just fallen out, was a miniature toy rattle. An old-fashioned ceramic one, its fragile surface painted with muted pink roses.

Mia took a stilted breath.

In an instant, before she could even exhale, Danny’s boot smashed down, splintering the rattle into a thousand pieces.

His booming laughter spilled out of the nursery.

She couldn’t take it anymore.

Without so much as another breath, Mia found herself throwing the entire weight of her small body at him, pounding closed fists into his chest.

“Fuck you, Danny! Fuck you!” She could barely scream through the shaking. “You can go to hell!”

He was stunned, standing there drained of color, unable to comprehend what was happening. Ethan and Kelsey were frozen too, their mouths open, eyes wide.

She tried to control her tears.

“You’re a fucking asshole, Danny. You’re a son-of-a-bitch.” She pushed him against the wall, ripping the flashlight from his hand. “I’m going home. Seriously, I’m fucking going home you asshole.”

They called after her but she wouldn’t stop.

She ran down the hallway past the overturned bench and back downstairs to the factory. She ran across the rotting bridge into the forest, back to the foot of the cliff.

Finally, she turned to the mill.

Through the mist, she could trace their flickering light as it wandered behind broken windows, from the nursery back into the office, down to the factory. Their light, like her thoughts, searching for a way out, trying to vacate the depths of some unrealized fear.

A gust of wind rustled fallen leaves along the riverbank. Mia placed her hands on her stomach. Then, turning away, with the cliffs high above and the river racing behind, she took a step forward, disappearing into the fog.

A.E. Milford was born and raised in Delaware. A graduate of Berklee College of Music who is now based in Los Angeles, Milford has written for various film projects and has had fiction published in Philadelphia Stories, the Schuylkill Valley Journal, and the Broadkill Review.

Read More »
The Bluer The Berries – Sabrina Pinthiere

on January 23 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

Kiss of strawberry, a thug,

yet like nectar to me—

at least in the beginning.

Hint of raspberry,

pizzazz and dazzle,

every inch of him.

A phase of cranberry

completely convinced me

that he was good for me.

Strawberries turn to raspberries

Raspberries into cran—

it could no longer be

he without me

as he drowned

in my cherry sea.

But then

berries became bitter,

sour, acidic,

memories of what were

ripe and luscious

became daily crutches.

“Maybe he will change.”

But oh,

the only changes were

Straw, rasp and cranberries

turning into black and blue berries

staining my toffee-colored skin.

Sabrina Pinthiere is a poet and the mom of two amazing children, four year old, Knowlan Cazimir, and his one year old brother, Corey Ahmir. The twenty-eight year old, who comes from a proud Haitian household, is currently working as a lead teacher at private day care center. When she has time, she loves to play with words and holds an English Degree with a concentration in creative writing from Bloomfield College.
Read More »
TWO POEMS – Margo Harvey

on January 15 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

ODE TO THE GARDENER

“i can grow love even when it’s not there”

see

how closely these bruises resemble hydrangeas with enough molding

how each petal changes colors based
on the pH of the blood beneath it

each capillary roots downward
curls around skin-soil
bursts i coax out new blossoms again

it’s almost beautiful this makeshift garden

these hydrangeas have won me awards you know

been featured in magazine spreads for Home Living

how i tend my garden in silence

ideal woman

doesn’t mind a little downpour once in awhile

would rather have a garden than a desert

knows there is nothing attractive about bleached bones and sand

at least flowers grow in the rain
at least these fractured bones make good planters
at least in the right light a garden can be made ethereal

and tell me: what woman doesn’t wish to be otherworldly?
that is to say what woman doesn’t sometimes imagine herself sunlight

soft still fiery enough to scorch the hand of any man who dares reach towards her light

AN APOLOGY TO MY RAGGEDY ANN DOLL

I’m sorry I pulled your hair
That I pushed my fingers into your torso
So roughly your chest caved
I’m sorry I didn’t stop when I heard that first rib crack
I’m sorry I didn’t look at your uneven button eyes
Your cloth limbs splitting and bent
Stuffing peeking out of your torn checkered dress,
And think to get a needle,
Some thread,
Start sewing
Untangle your knotted yarn hair
I’m sorry
I didn’t understand until
He pressed his fingers into my torso
So roughly I heard my sternum crack
Until I looked into his eyes
Realized he wouldn’t stop even when he saw me
Skin splitting
Limbs bent
Palms up
Begging for some kind of reconciliation
My own body unrecognizable
I’m sorry
I didn’t mean to take advantage of your softness
Mistake it for weakness the way he did mine
I know now how much the needle and thread sting
As you pick them up,
Start sewing
How much you wish you had someone to help untangle your hair
Make your body yours again
I’m sorry it took me so long to write this,
That this apology will seem empty to you,
You are long gone.
I am still sorry.

Margo Harvey is a full time student in the field of Community and Justice Studies with a passion for poetry. This is her first time being published! In her spare time she enjoys baking, dreaming about world travel, petting every dog she meets–and trying to find solutions to social inequities.
Read More »