Saturday, April 16, 2011

Submissions Closed

We are not currently reading submissions. Thank you for your interest.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Editor's Work

Fiction

Poetry

  1. Peycho Kanev

    A NOTE

    naked
    fearless
    in front of the window
    in this summer Sunday morning
    how I came to this?
    throwing sesame seed
    in the room
    and thinking about Siberia
    as the ravens outside on the wires
    try to scream at me
    but I don’t scream back
    because they have places for people
    who do that
    and my life is something like
    a meat chewed down to the bone
    upon this earth I keep dreaming about
    Babylon and Cleopatra
    and I know that the summer in Rome is green
    and the winter in Russia is too much vodka.
    how long can we carry on?
    upon this land
    with this wasted air in my lungs
    we keep dreaming for better days
    we keep dreaming for salvation

    as someone winks at us.

    ————————————

    THE POETRY IS NOTHING TO FUCK WITH

    Well, let me explain to you:

    the bum on the street, with
    the bottle hanging in his maddened
    pocket,
    stretching his hand to you
    is poetry

    all the f-male creatures of the night
    dressed in cut skirts and sucking
    cigarettes in their colored mouths
    are poetry

    all the girls in the punk clubs
    with their anger and their beauty
    and their stamina
    are poetry

    the bombs that falls down in the trenches
    and tear up bodies and transform them in pile
    pile of useless organic junk
    are poetry

    the demented men in the madhouses,
    strapped to their beds,foaming,cursing,shaking,
    their heads full of pills and visions
    are poetry

    the bars full of quiet,shelterd,beautiful,
    little people,starring down at their glasses
    full of hopes for something better
    are poetry

    Hemingway’s shotgun was poetry
    the bullet too

    the booze is
    poetry

    the drugs are
    poetry

    the dead trees
    the wasted lands
    the knife in your
    hand

    your girlfriend lying
    in the bed

    everything and
    everyone

    is poetry

    and at the end
    when this world
    explode into the nothing

    it will be poetry too

    no more
    no
    less.
    —————————————————————————————————-
    Peycho Kanev loves to listen to sad music while he drinks slowly his beer. His work has been published in Welter, The Catalonian Review, Off Beat Pulp, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review, Tonopah Review, Mad Swirl, Southern Ocean Review, The Houston Literary Review and many others. He loves to put the word down and not talking on the cell phone for days. He is nominated for Pushcart Award and lives in Chicago. His new collaborative collection “r”, containing poetry by him and Felino Soriano, as well as photography from Duane Locke and Edward Wells II is now available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/r-Peycho-Kanev/dp/0979129494/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245429788&sr=1-1

  2. Neila Mezynski

    PINK DRESS

    Her small jaw thrust forward
    when she drank.
    Behind the large rock
    I saw the ruffle of her pink dress.
    Sarah was atop the rock,
    the baby unattended.
    Dad, too far gone
    under the ruffles.
    Mom hiding in the sweet peas.

    ——————————————-

    PAINTING

    Reds nestled against blue.
    Those blues, won’t budge those blues.
    Better not push or stand too firm.
    Try some green to get over the top.
    Maybe brown will get me through the woods.
    Weaving in and out
    Words, wordless words.
    A fairy tale.

    ————————————————-

    WORDS

    Slippery words.
    Stand still words.
    Make me proud.
    Words.
    Prickly butterfly net.
    In the middle in between at the end.
    Anywhere I’m not.

    ————————————————–

    MY CYPRESS

    Uncle Ned resembles you, tree. The way you stand there not saying much. Tie that needs watering, hair like mud your shirt with holes where birds have pecked. That you are planted in. At the time of my birth there was a lot of trees in that arboretum. And bird’s nests. My bird nests.
    ——————————————————————————————————-
    One time dancer/ choreographer now painter/writer, Neila Mezynski currently has fiction and poetry published and forthcoming, on foundling review, snow monkey journal, 13 myna birds, apt, mudluscious. also writes art and music reviews for online and in print magazines.

  3. Tim Scannell

    MA NATURE’S CONCRETE NICHE

    From a maple rookery,
    One mile SE, an inerrant
    Sky highway funnels 200
    Crows to town, 3 miles NW
    (Daily): 6 a.m. and 4 p.m.
    Crows are working stiffs!

    ————————————————-

    THE MATCHBOOK

    A little, so little
    How easy
    The tabletop
    Leveled by a
    Matchbook:
    Years & years of,
    “Oh, he’s fine!”

  4. Kyle Hemmings

    WILL YOU SURVIVE WINTER

    When it creeps under your skin
    your mama’s voice
    buried in the walls
    or your laundry
    your hand me down cable knits
    your corduroys
    worn at the seat
    taking on
    someone else’s life
    assuming the pose of scarecrows.
    Your thoughts of anorexic girls
    in empty pools.

    By the first snowdrift
    you will grow autistic
    speaking in signs
    to people shoveling the sidewalks
    a strange guest locked
    behind their windows.
    The hungry girl you thought
    you knew so well
    is now dry ice
    under your shoes.

    It once felt like water.
    It understood everything.
    It did not burn.

    ———————————————————

    AN EXAMPLE OF HOW A MICROBIOLOGIST MIGHT LOOK AT PHYSICS

    My sister believes I’m more transparent than dead.
    It’s really her wish that has granted me new stamina.
    She blames herself for the accident, daydreaming at the wheel,
    her thoughts perhaps growing amorphous as the amoeba
    I read about for class. We took strange shapes in those last days,
    held on to the nucleus of our common pasts, and in the wheelchair,
    pushed down hospital corridors, I offered her what she must
    have thought was a false smile. Cheer up, I said,
    I‘m going to walk again.

    As always, she promised she’d take me to a Yankees game.
    Then, it wasn’t long before I was placed on a ventilator,
    taken off, pronounced as brain dead. So here we are.
    The Mets are down by three. Jeter up at bat.
    The crowd cheers. My sister is talking to me as if I’m still there,
    which I am. It’s just that I’m form malleable to memory,
    or as I like to think of it–the density of the holes inside a soft pretzel.
    Jeter hits a homer over the stands and the ball whizzes through me.
    Everybody is going crazy looking for it. It just didn’t disappear.
    Nothing does.

    Tonight these same fans will search under their sheets,
    their beds, making sure their partners are still there,
    the pseudopod-like movements, the simple-cell love,
    the fear of not catching something
    that can always go through you.
    ——————————————————————————————————
    Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. His most recent work has been pubbed in Literary Tonic, Why Vandalism? Bent Pin Quaterly, and FourPaperLetters.

  5. Steven Purkey
    PISSING TWO STREAMS

    pissing two streams
    symbolic if shit
    i’m fat and flabby
    the beer is catching up to me
    like the girl i just fucked
    lying in my bed naked
    she’s generous with her flesh
    let me fuck her hard
    as her face tightened and
    her body writhed

    she’s catching up to me
    catching on
    she knows the way i am
    i’m so predictable she says
    she doesn’t know of my sex
    but she wants to
    that’s what first intrigued her
    she’s jealous of what she doesn’t know
    and is afraid to find out of

    discomfort, i don’t know which
    way to go
    pain both ways
    and i don’t know where the happiness is
    i once felt it
    before i started writing shit like this

    i piss two streams faster and harder
    i piss two streams like the’re both alive
    and both matter equally
    i piss two streams like there’s no tomorrow
    and of course there isn’t
    i piss two streams and then I pass out
    because i can’t take it anymore
    ————————————————————————————————-
    Steven Purkey just got out of his third rehab and is now working on the new issue of his zine, Modus Operandi. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

  6. Sergio Ortiz

    TO THE HUARANGO TREE: A DESTROYED ECOSYSTEM

    Charcoal and sand devour our cities—poachers pay no attention
    to the resting places of our ancestors, a spring of light
    with its fierce harvest of pomegranate, grapes, and huarango.
    Demons blow until there is nothing but the dark. Our lives
    are broken lamps hung on the shadows of missing trees. It was
    in the substance of the bones we ground and ate like a war.

    ———————————————————-

    INCARNATION

    This is the red marshland,
    where a bird’s broken

    thirst sprouts
    like cactus: salty,
    tired, and sad.

    A few goats
    rummage through
    the weeds

    while an ox chews
    on the day’s dream.

    This is the ground
    where I was born obstinate
    like a fungus.

    Fear
    and suffocation sleep
    below a dead line.
    —————————————————————————————————–
    Ortiz has a B.A. in English literature from Inter-American University, and a M.A. in philosophy from World University. His poems have been published, or are forthcoming in: The Acento Review, Poesia, The Driftwood Review, Words-Myth, The Taj Mahal Review, and other journals and anthologies. His chapbook, At the Tail End of Dusk (2009), was published by Flutter Press.

  7. William D. Hicks

  8. A PERCEPTION

    Words
    Start days
    End nights
    Fill in blanks
    Between other words
    Sometimes inspire
    Sometimes hurt
    Not
    Who we are
    Describe
    Who we look like
    Clothes don’t make man
    Neither do words
    It’s a perception

    ——————————————

    BAD HABITS

    You spend
    The first half
    Of your life
    Accumulating
    The habits
    You spend the
    Last half
    Of your life
    Trying to
    Give up.
    Thank you Dad.
    ——————————————————————————————————-
    William D. Hicks is a writer who lives in Chicago, Illinois by himself (any
    offers?). Contrary to popular belief, he is not related to the semi-famous
    comedian Bill Hicks (though he’s just as funny in his own right).
    Hicks will someday publish his memoirs, but most likely they will be
    about Bill Hicks’ life.

  9. Harry Calhoun

    THE DOG AND THE NEW MORNING

    My dog curls in a ball
    in his bed at the foot
    of my bed like a coiled spring

    90 pounds of black Labrador
    that will unfurl at daybreak
    and fly before me to the deck

    where he stops and sits
    and unwinds and sniffs
    the new day, unwinds and examines

    the compact backyard meaning
    of each new morning
    like a fist remembering a hand

    with its fingers splayed
    seen before, but this day displayed
    alien and new, fresh dew

    and perhaps light icy frost
    mingling with mud on the paws
    anticipated. Last night as we slept

    we ran together, paws swatting air,
    little midnight yelps,
    through the mud

    and through the memories
    ——————————————————————————————————-
    Harry Calhoun’s articles, literary essays, book reviews and poems have been published in magazines including Writer’s Digest and The National Enquirer. Recently, his online chapbook Dogwalking Poems and his trade paperback, I knew Bukowski like you knew a rare leaf, were published. The latter is now available from Trace Publications and on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online booksellers. He has had recent publications in Chiron Review, Still Crazy, SNReview, Orange Room Review, Bird’s Eye review, Abbey, Monongahela Review and many others. Recently, he was one of 12 poets invited to LiteraryMary’s anthology, Outstanding Men of the Small Press.

    (But he doesn’t take himself that seriously, fortunately, otherwise we’d be smothered in his hideous ego.)