Category: # Issue 40

It was me. it was: me,walking out of a barbershop.it was: me,my hair a little too short. my handsin my pockets;this leather jacketI wore quite a lot at the time. leaves on the pavementscuttling with a light breezelike frightened crabs. a storm coming – the river, a grey creaturewith somewhat ruffled fur. it was: me, […]

Wired Spaces Conversations across telephone wiresTangling words & feelingsNothing but cat’s play—But my cat frolics over tangled strings;I don’t. Hanging on such talksTwists my insidesMy feelings aching from being laid outOn a procrastinated bed Wired spaces are such narrow connections Redialing,Through straighter wireChanges some But only retracting it allReturns me to the self I wasBefore […]

Hemming, Hemming The pointed wavelets of the seapaper cut the starless skypull silver from the moon’s own beamsand thread themselveslike needleshemming, hemming, any gleams.   Bio Annette Marie Smith is a freelance journalist, author, artist, and poet. She’s the founder and curator of the international feminist project, Facing Feminism. Her articles have appeared in print […]

Dissection of an Owl Pellet Upon examination, we have foundthe owl swallowed the mouse whole. Here, the spine still connects to the skull,and the ribs surround an emptiness so small it is difficult to imagine lungs or heart, butwe know they were there at some point. My daughter draws a skeletal diagram—she stands the rodent […]

What They Said In Sweetgum County They were the old men sitting in a dimly lit room wrapped in a girdle of smoke, filling ashtrays emptied by other people. They sat drinking their big label beer. It was a breezy, sunny day outside. They were the old women gathered in the kitchen, drying dishes by […]

Fickle F I always find you in the basement, FFeasting on crooked shadows.Your hooked spine floats above your feet,spinning frantically in framed heat A forest dance.A fire song. Sweat finds fortitude on your brow,you wear must like perfume. Fraud, Feeble, Foul,Freak, Flirt, Failure. Failure.Failure.Failure. Each fistful of words a spiked clubswinging for my ribs.You open […]

  Bio df parizeau is a Pushcart nominated, Scottish/French-Canadian editor/writer, who still has his wisdom teeth. Their work can be found in: Funicular Magazine, Chapter House Journal, perhappened mag, Rejection Letters, and Daybreaking Zine amongst others. Twitter: @belowtheeaves Website: dfparizeau.com

Tabletop Musing Tracing the grain of a tabletop andstools lost in their past while recon-structing their time and imaginingthe angle of the saw cut and how old and how big and whether fel-led after a full life or that it was itstime because they needed to build this table and these stools just thentracing the […]

The Rough, Violet Stone Life is too short for accord.Bestow to me, please,the heretic’s hectic direction,the rapt and the agitatedcompulsions of the outcast.For if he walks long enough alonethe pariah’s heart will ever ignite to fervid purposelike fire discovered by an exiled progenitor. Grant to me the ardent discernment of the lost— the faith that […]

Smokers 1. Tie, mango, train – three words with no apparent connection. The nurse tells me to remember them for later. I want to do well. These people have caused me a lot of trouble—four CAT scans, two biopsies, and a confirmation from the Mayo Clinic:  I don’t have lung cancer. But what about dementia, […]