Issue 02 Poetry

The Net

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By DANIEL TOBIN
Translated loosely from a lost Akkadian tablet
discovered among the ruins of Kush. 
God of the first waters, Ea, listen,
You who parsed chaos with a net from the day:
Unfasten your knots, let the swells replenish
From subtlest channels, from the seams of flesh.
The galaxies circuit in their bright delay.
The least wind tempts me with what might have been.

The Sting in the Tail

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTA
Wearing loose clothes, light cottons,
you sit and fan yourself with a newspaper
supplement, a glass of tepid
fennel-flavoured sherbet by your side. 

Death in an Art Deco House

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTA
Fortysomething, slight of build,
he lived next door with his parents
in an Art Deco house with garden to match
and tall trees that came up to my third floor flat
from where I could touch their leaves. Squirrels
ran up and down them all day, squeaking. 

Parasitical

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By DANIEL TOBIN
Despite having no lungs and unable to breathe, the second
head displays signs of independent consciousness….  

The first fiction is
I’m talking to you at all,
the more amorphous
of my own Janus head, the god
alive and compassing
what has gone and what
is coming, though
which is which is
hard to say. Did I say
my own? I meant ours, my
sister twin, the comelier

Land Rush

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By STEPHEN HAVEN
Each evening my half-coon hound dog buries her snout
In her foul dish then comes up singing, moans, complains
About her condition, until I hook her up, let her shit
And piss among the graves—who’s watching, anyway?—
The groundskeepers all home by then, their evening shows
Just flickering, the trees along the forested edge
Leaning as always toward distant centuries.

Frond

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By DANIEL TOBIN
It could be on a card, tucked away somewhere buried
In a drawer under tools, the keys to doors
Left long behind, folded like a phone number
Into the black book of forgotten friends—the name

How to Jump From a Building into a Dumpster

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By HOLLIE HARDY
Come home from a Tupperware party.

Look out across the lake and imagine the feel of your tongue
against the truth.

Prevent the neighbor’s dog from barking.

Try to find the unselfconsciously erotic person hiding within. 

While Our Father Was Hunting Rocks

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By ELIZABETH HAZEN
Mountains rise beyond the Laundromat
like ochre waves about to crash; our father,
armed with tools and pack, tracks the rocks
without a map. Here, the Laundromat is all
in a strip of vacancies; for miles, nothing
but dirt, dust, outcrop, sky. Our mother gives 

How To Perform a Tracheotomy

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By HOLLIE HARDY
The first thing you need to know is that the tracheotomy  is an act of desperation and/or violence that should only be  committed when there is no other option.

SOME CIRCUMSTANCES WHEN IT MIGHT BE NECESSARY TO PERFORM A TRACHEOTOMY: 

Function of Water

November 1, 2011 Issue 02, Issue 02 Poetry, Poetry

By NATHANIEL PERRY
On rainy days the place seems smaller,
acres still ringed and shrouded by trees,
but the sky is closer, like something landing.
I know you’d like to ask me—please 