There was no shadow over my G.D.R. childhood. Later I acted in such a way that I would not have to live in constant conflict with the state.” –Angela Merkel As a child she stands on the diving board for the full hour of her swimming lesson: at the bell, she finally jumps. […]
Poetry
Cross-Country Skiing and Bratwurst: A Brief Study of Angela Merkel
This Allegory Landscape
by Nandini Dhar
If I have wandered around this city’s broken sidewalks, pothole-ridden roads, too crowded to notice another memory-heavy somnambulist, it is because, I see no glory in being ache-chiseled into an immaculate alphabet. The lengthening shadows of the hawk on the lamp-post, the murky water that fills the rust-heavy bucket of the […]
Orville Wright Lies Prone in a Flying Machine as His Brother Wilbur and Associate Dan Tate Give It a Running Start by Roy Bentley
This isn’t the Wright Flyer. This is a prototype glider. Orville wears a hat since he doesn’t expect great speeds. He isn’t at all worried about a hat; he is Icarus stressing about aeronautical success and lift-to-drag coefficients. It may be white-knuckle joy to have invented the Flyer, but this isn’t that. This […]
Peter Milne Greiner, Temporal Cyborg
Reviewed by Christopher Cokinos
Lost City Hydrothermal Field by Peter Milne Greiner The Operating System, 2017 148 pp., $18 The poet David Wojahn has made the distinction between the poetry of stuff and the poetry of wisdom. The former, he claims, is the deployment of references in often pell-mell fashion; it does clutter so much poetry today, especially that […]
The Covenant of User Agreeements
by C. Kubasta
“Many of our passwords are suffused with pathos, mischief, sometimes even poetry.” I do not know what I am agreeing to when I am agreeing yet I click the button that signifies I agree. In the aftermath of tragedy, you may get a call, asking personal questions: “What is your wedding anniversary? Tell […]
On a Certain Sort of On and On
by M.A. Istvan Jr.
Whether immortality from here on would be acceptable depends on the person. But whether one would accept such immortality—that is a better tool for detecting scorn for life than whether one would accept Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same.— 1 Most would embrace the power to keep animated for centuries, say, by […]
Detroit
by Ian Haight
I. On graduation day, President Bush gave the university’s commencement speech, but when I left the campus gates, Dad whispered Steelcase closed another plant. Only a skeleton crew runs the day shift, touching up paint on machines. Rich friends from Detroit offered work. How little college had prepared me. Deceiving smiles, a compliment laid for a favor— so […]
Feather Bones of Wax
by Ian Haight
“…furthermore, some good advice, that I received myself in infancy. Don’t strike your father, but take these wings in one hand and these spurs in the other; imagine you have a cock’s crest on your head and go and mount your guard and fight; live on your pay and respect your father’s life. You’re a […]
Tesserae
by Hedy Habra
When I close my eyes I see the child in me hug the hour hand licked by the flame of memory emerging in stark darkness a faint light filters through cracks a half-open door frames a shadow tiptoeing to make the moment endure some nights fired tesserae reassemble the father who left too […]
Inside Out
by Matthew Guenette
— for Nate Pritts My mother’s voice could jerk you inside out like a shirt. Then you’d be sorry like when Steve stuck a snake in the fish tank. My mother’s voice could throw ice buckets over shower rods a mile away. Could kick an attitude up and down Winter Street […]
