Issue 05 Poetry

Meditation on a Ficus Tree

By DENISE DUHAMEL

 

mermaid legs/ whiskers/ open mouth/ callipygian bark/
semen sap/ elbow fold/ knees/ arms stretched above a head/
torso swung upside down/ hair sweeping the ground/
breasts/ cave turned inside out/ toes holding on/
eye socket/ palm/ thumb/ twisting veins/ freckle/ bellybutton/
vulva/ ghost fetus/ nose/ nipple/ thigh/ petrified cloud

Meditation on a Ficus Tree
Read more...

August

By ALEXEI TSVETKOV

 

apples went brown and sizzled on the ground
the instant they touched it and the vain promise
of autumn stayed just that the august was
interminable and the vet was blunt
a month at best he said and that was not
a promise so we farmed the ailing dog
out to the in-laws and just left him there

August
Read more...

Untitled

By GIAMPIERO NERI

 

My father’s bookcase was divided by nationalities of the authors. “The French ones,” my mother would say with some solemnity, indicating the most considerable sector, and perhaps the one most congenial to her. Then came the Russians, preferred by my father.

The bookcase, pride of the family, occupied a room in our apartment, on the second floor of the building on via Volta in Erba.

Untitled
Read more...

Untitled

By GIAMPIERO NERI

 

Of the few walks we took together, my father and I, I recall well the one to the Torretta. Having loaded our backpacks with food, which consisted of bread and bresaola, we took off at a good clip.

The Torretta, a medieval tower probably for observation, was tumbledown then, and has now vanished.

Untitled
Read more...

Piss Pot Comparisons

By CRALAN KELDER

 

choose your own adventure,

in Scenario one, you step out of your office, crossing the unremarkable hall into the Men’s Toilet, taking in the little hieroglyph of the stick figure with pants on the door. This is exercise, a break from computering.

Piss Pot Comparisons
Read more...