she lay shattered as a promise
from one lover to another
insisting, “i’ll stay sober
this week.”

an envelope opened,
bearing rejection or simply
news from chicago,

i finished unpacking,
found your old fedora,
the jazz here is passable,
miss you,
love, carter.

she pondered who moved
whom,
the only ontology
suited for sunday.

in nomine patris,
mass via radio,
sounding to the bathroom floor.

from one lover to another,
that old promise,
shattered, insisting,
wishing she were
alone. 

The Drinking Poem: Part One
Brentoni Gainer-Salim 

The blinking lights met my fragile morning eyes with a slap. My roommate was already awake. I could see his slow, deliberate hand movements on the other side of the pale, off-white curtain that separated us. He was doing it again… Every morning since I arrived he had played his hand games. Perhaps this was to exercise his frail old fingers…perhaps to provide a brief escape from the immense boredom. Rock to paper…paper to scissors…rock to rock…again and again. It was a limited pastime in many ways. You’re obligated to choose one of three options. There are only three possible results. Win. Lose. Draw. I once asked him in jest which hand he favored. “The left is heaven and the right is hell”, he said as if it were a matter of fact. These things were absurd, but my mind had been opened quite a bit since I first crossed the threshold of Gateway Hospital in North Central Los Angeles.

You tend to listen a lot more to peoples’ words when you’re stuck in a bed, unable to do otherwise. I knew I’d go crazy if I wasn’t cleared to leave within the week. As this thought brewed frantically in my cloudy head, transmitting chaotic shivers to my dormant limbs, I heard an unsettling noise from opposite the curtain that could have as easily been disgust or terror as joy. “How’s your morning captain?” I shouted at the curtain. “I won” it returned exuberantly yet feebly. The man had just beaten himself in rocks, paper, scissors. Just as I was about to stupidly offer my congratulations; I heard a rabid rustling from opposite the curtain. This was soon accompanied by a loud vocal retching. And then, as if these weren’t dire signs enough, one of the machines charged with the task of keeping the man alive began a concerned, pulsating beep. My intuition quickly digested the implications of these sounds. The old man was dying. But as the nurses stormed the room in busloads, I suddenly knew that none of it mattered. It didn’t matter that he was a born again Catholic Christian, or that he once shot and killed a seagull because of the way it was eyeing his breakfast. It no longer mattered that he was planning to contribute his body to science upon his passing or that he had compromised his marriage by sleeping with many of his wife’s best friends. None of it mattered, I thought, because it doesn’t all add up the way most people think it does. There are so many things that do themselves up incredibly tight at one point in life, only to become undone with equal vigor later. All of these things cancel each other out at one point or another. There is simply insufficient evidence in either direction. But that’s how it goes. You get a handful of choices that define your being, and before long, it’s set in slabs of silver, for better or worse. And by the end, you’ve won, you’ve lost, or you’ve drawn. All that mattered was that the old man had gone out with a win. Left over right…heaven over hell…and that was his final thought. He had burned out happily and gloriously in his way. He had died playing rocks, paper, scissors with himself in a hospital bed in Los Angeles. 

Lights Near and Distant
Alexander D. Farris 

Contently and continuously streamed the breeze through the driver side window
Unweaving gelled, combed hair of a morning that now seemed so distant.
He shrugged off the disorder of his comb-over and began to gaze forward.
Motoring into the city limits
Staring in amazement at the skyline illumining the blank black canvas of the sky
He continued to drive with unsettled direction, yet settled intuition.
Considering the possibilities of what seemed to be a million shining lights.
Each light leading to a new window
Each window holding something different inside.
He retreated from his hardened motor mindset
And reflected on the beauty.

Entranced by the seemingly celestial appearance of his plight
Listening to the squeals of a shift toward light speed
Hypnotizing himself into the future He suddenly relapsed from his dreamlike daze
Only to see two lights brighter than any on which he had previously been fixated.

Known/Unknown (Online Exclusive!)
Madhur Lamsal

An eye, a dream, a vision 
All in vain
A breath, a drama, a life 
All in vain,
A goal, a destiny, a try 
All in vain,
Now, tears are my friend

A beauty, a myth, a bond
All are pain,
A magic, a throb, a love
All were in hope of gain,
A you, a me, a society
All are pain,

A story, a sorrow, a support 
A hope, An Attempt, A result 
All were in hope of gain
But now all doors are closed 

That’s all an illusion of life 
Tears does not hurt anymore 
Heart does not feel anything anymore,
Here I left ruins of my being as corpse.

She (Online Exclusive!)
Kathleen Perry

Beautiful she strikes
A hand in the face
At the existence of her soul
A fragile state
Standing alone
Her face to the ground
Chaffed by the wind
Afraid to make as much as a sound
Seeking illusions to hide
The truth behind
Pushed down once
She will never seek once more
That mountaintop
A gentle spirit to find
To bring to a place
Where she can climb
Once again

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