California

By CRALAN KELDER
During this past visit to California, I visited a friend who has been incarcerated since 1985 – for 25 years. In prison, he isn’t allowed to physically handle money, so when we take a break from walking laps around the visiting room and get in line by the vending machines to treat ourselves to hot drinks, he has to stay behind a red line with 
OUT OF BOUNDS painted in large all cap red letters. I pull out my ziploc bag of quarters and dollar bills and am at a bit of loss for ordering our hot drinks because a code is required on the keypad, so my friend leans forward with a wry grin, saying “*#JE-as in Echo-3” in rapid succession. I insert the coins and punch in these digits-which magically produce him a hazelnut coffee with whipped milk and extra sweetener. He laughs with pleasure and says, “I feel like I am the leader of a very small country.”

 

Cralan Kelder is the author of Give Some Word. His work has recently appeared in Zen Monster, Poetry Salzberg Review, and VLAK, among other publications. Kelder currently edits the literary magazines Full Metal Poem and Retort. He lives in Amsterdam with the evolutionary biologist Toby Kiers and their children.

[Purchase your copy of Issue 02 here.]

California

Related Posts

an image of train tracks, seen through a window. reflection is faintly seen

Addis Ababa Beté

ABIGAIL MENGESHA
Steel kicks in this belly. // Girls with threadbare braids / weave between motor beasts and cement bags. // Tin roofs give way to glass columns. / Stretching as if to pet the clouds. // In the corners: cafés. // Where macchiatos are served / with a side of newspapers.

Image of a mirror reflecting another mirror.

February 2023 Poetry Feature

ZUZANNA GINCZANKA
I’m searching my thoughts for a man’s lips, to bind his arms in a braid, / When in the stifling sleeplessness of a second a sob breaks out— / —and now purse your lips and coolly, firmly condemn me: here you have my nights—bare, shelled like peas.