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Vo l . 9 N o . 1
Karen Vande Bossche
I’ve Smoked I’ve smoked and it hasn’t done it. Didn’t bring you or even me back to myself. So I’m sitting and thinking what comes next. The wine. I got some in the bottom, very bottom, of a bottle and I could squeeze some out of the box in the fridge. House wine. House whine. Walking out with a tumbler, not stem, all those broke, to see the babies. They have stems. Little pea sized tomatoes, sassy fat blousy basil, those jolly green peppers that I’ll never eat except maybe after the wine, if there’s enough in the box, black box of house wine, black house it won’t bring you or even me back to myself this time.
Scratchboard Trees
Melinda Maier
Kersten Christianson
The Longest Night Inviting the poet Haines to the solstice party invoked questioning. Would he prefer beef tenderloin, or halibut? Jim Beam or Jameson? Would he feel sociable enough to perch on the couch with merry strangers, joy ablaze by twinkle lights and cabernet? Or in the midst of chatter, would he drift outside, alone, to stand on the nighttime stoop, to search the onyx sky for the waning gibbous
Lost Thoughts
Sheary Clough Suiter
moon? To search for the hushed owl always calling his name?