The Big Windows Review, Issue 18, Winter 2020

THE BIG WINDOWS REVIEW Issue 18 | Winter 2020

The Big Windows Review is a publication of the Writing Center at Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. We publish poems and short (500 words or less) prose.

This issue was edited by Kathrine Snow and Tom Zimmerman.

Design and digital images by Tom Zimmerman.

The works herein have been chosen for their literary and artistic merit and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Washtenaw Community College, its Board of Trustees, its administration, or its faculty, staff, or students.

Copyright © 2020 the individual authors and artists.

The Big Windows Review Website: thebigwindowsreview.com Email: thebigwindowsreview@gmail.com Editor: Tom Zimmerman Assistant Editor: Kathrine Snow

  ◼⬧ ❖ ⬧  ◆ ⚫⧫◼  ⧫ ⧫◼ ◼⧫  ⧫ ⬧⧫◼ ◆◼⧫ ⚫⚫  ◼◼      ◆⚫⬧ ⬧ ◼ ⬧⧫   ⬧  ⚫⬧⬧ ⬧ ⬧ ⬧⬧◆ ⬧ ⧫  ⧫◼ ◼  ◼  ◼⬧◼ ◼ ⧫⚫ ⬧    ◼ ⬧ ◼ ❖  ◼ ⬧◼  ⧫ ⚫⧫ ◼ ⧫⬧⧫ ⧫ ◼  ◼ ⧫ ◼⬧⬧⚫ ⚫⧫ ⧫ ◼ ◼⬧  ⬧⧫◼ ◆◼⧫ ⚫ ⚫ ⧫⬧   ◆⬧⧫⬧ ⧫⬧ ◼⬧⧫⧫◼  ⧫⬧  ◆⚫⧫ ⬧⧫ 2  ⬧⧫◆◼⧫⬧

▪ THE BIG WINDOWS REVIEW ▪ Issue 18 | Winter 2020 Edited by Kathrine Snow and Tom Zimmerman

Contents Simon Perchik Cynthia Pitman Mark Trechock Doug Hoekstra Erren Kelly Jack Berning Kurt Luchs Robert Okaji Disha Trivedi Rae Rozman Layla Lenhardt Kevin Coons Cameron Morse Jeffrey Hermann Andrew Shields Mandira Pattnaik Katherine C. Frye Mary Shanley Ace Boggess John Grey Darren C. Demaree Robert Wexelblatt Devon Gallant Roger Singer Pat Snyder Hurley Gerard Sarnat William Doreski Rob Plath

Five Poems Entangled Calving The Continental Coffeehouse Poem #442 Thaw First Sight Lying in Bed, I Think of Breakfast a marriage vow The Sweetness Before Little J. Co-Sleeping IKEA My Daughter Creates a Taxonomy of Every Little Thing The News Expropriate No Gods bleached blonde beehive Advice for Attending a Whitesnake Concert It Came to Me in a Dream Three Poems Surprising Consequences of Our Revolution Lido delle Sirene Nightly Faith Letters and Numbers Rooster in the Night #2 A Damp Spot exercise

Contributors

4 7 8 9 10 11 13 14 15 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 25 26 28 29 30 32 33 35 36 37 38 40 41

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▪ SIMON PERCHIK ▪ Five Poems * Side by side a planet that has no star you wander for years which means remorse has taken hold the way this dried love note never lets go its warmth though the afternoon becomes a place for constellations, is wobbling as silence and the end –where else can it hide is more forgiving than a period left where a well-meaning sentence gave all it had and for the first time a darkness was falling from above bird-like, spreading out as far away around and around, over and over again. * Gradually, you can tell from its silence this fence was building a bridge though it’s the rust spreading out that makes it so –you think it’s plankton and how hurried was the river when each afternoon still reaches out

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becomes a sea again, heating the sun with the same shadow that leans against this iron gate lets its great weight open the Earth though nothing is left in your arms is held anymore –you think it’s raining as if that’s all there is in the water that could help you breathe without leaning over. * You clam though it’s the sea falling away lets this rake threaten it yet go free taking you along, knows all about going off disguised as a night that reeks from salt to keep from sinking –you reach for the bottom the way your casket disappeared with a candle made from paper –it was an old love note in pencil, with nothing on the back then folded over and over to fit into your hands as moonlight –even now this long, wood handle ties you dead to water –you hear the splash giving up, lying down, at last what it wanted. * This paint is wet though when you weep it flakes –the wall knows close is too close, starts to turn away which means

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it’s breaking open for steam, somehow a few sparks and after that your tears will cool, at last a hilltop lake, far off still making its final descent as a second sky –two skies and what you breathe in are the pieces broken off those stars that would become the sea and never dry let you witness each wave slowly going off alone from your eyes that have forgotten how. * Upside down, as if this cup was once a blossom would overflow with the tears mourners fill then row ashore –it’s empty, close to the grass though her grave is still damp from this hillside washing over it scraping from these headstones a lighthouse for each wooden boat pulled from the sea –you heard a trumpet when the cup capsized is done, put down its sound as if there was nothing to lower that wasn’t crushed on these rocks still trying to lift, one after another.

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▪ CYNTHIA PITMAN ▪ Entangled Wild briars surround me, wielding their thorn-barbed wire, a weapon that threatens to keep me captive.

My hands claw at the sharpened spikes, but my hands can’t help me.

They can only bleed from the scratches and gouges torn into my skin and refuse to go into battle again.

A razor-sharp scythe would help— arming me equally, giving me a chance to make a break from this bristly prison and—finally!—taste the sharp-sweet syrup of my stolen blackberries.

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â–Ş MARK TRECHOCK â–Ş Calving Saw Arne at the barber shop Waiting his turn, seemed To be nodding off, his Old truck magazine slipped Off his lap. He woke up.

Calving, he said, midnight, three o'clock, six, And here he was sleeping Downtown like a vagrant. He shook his head, rubbed his eyes.

I asked him, could he tell if He could pick out the cows That were likely soon to drop, So a guy would know To stay and help if birthing was hard.

Arne gave me that look, like City boys have no brains, And said, well, when you see That extra pair of legs dangling down, You're getting close.

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▪ DOUG HOEKSTRA ▪ The Continental Long narrow room with black corners Tucked away, mind and heart get by Hipster cowpoke sipping a tall boy While paging through a handmade zine Reading about what used to be obscene The stamp on my hand a sharpie C Or minimalist derriere Nothing has changed in this world The President is still corrupt The nolonger kids are still alright DeKalb, Palatine, and River Grove Thirsty Whale and Haymaker punch Fast, faster, and fastest we sped Cascading from verse to verse Dancing with the crowd, three sets Sleeveless tees and skinny black pants Not unlike the jeans I chose to wear On this smoke laden night A complete accident of time Sweating hard underneath the lights There are bars like this everywhere The moon and the Martian plains Turn me on like a lite brite, babe Overdrive and distortion come The bands are still good The stage is still high Outrage and empathy ring Bass, guitars, and drums we sing Loud enough to hope—in love 9

â–Ş ERREN KELLY â–Ş Coffeehouse Poem #442 a tall girl walks in her long legs are all the sunshine i need on a grey afternoon her legs are as long as the jazz solos i listen to on old school records she would be a perfect jazz tune one that takes it time and never rushes so that the listener can appreciate the vibe the groove, as red as her hair

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▪ JACK BERNING ▪ Thaw Father told me about the meat of a mastodon— the Siberian winter kept it fresh all these years.

I slept in the freezer with the meat.

I liked the cold & couldn’t move.

Father brought a redhead in a yellow dress a tulip in her teeth to thaw me out.

A man has a choice.

Remembered in me a pretty boy reading a book in the park— I told father I cared for him.

Father was a peak.

Mountain boys know up top, the snow stays put.

Down here, heavy yellow night dumps flurry after flurry. This snow cannot escape spring.

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Too early in May, the woods tease their little flowers.

I smell the thaw of river.

His breath a furnace to my neck.

Father— it’s just too warm here—

               yellow night dumps flurry after flurry. This snow cannot escape spring.

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▪ KURT LUCHS ▪ First Sight Love at first sight is such a cliché you thought until it happened to you, an invisible wave passing through every particle of you like a ghost playing a pinball machine, instantly realigning your being, re-magnetizing you to a new true north.

If she were an iron filing she’d be clinging to you already.

You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last.

It happened to Dante the moment he laid eyes on Beatrice and he immediately did the only sensible thing— begin composing an epic poem about the nine circles of hell.

Your fate, it seems, is kinder and less grand— merely to toss and turn all night with thoughts of her, then to rise in the morning somehow magically refreshed.

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â–Ş ROBERT OKAJI â–Ş Lying in Bed, I Think of Breakfast The moon smiles and I lie here thinking of the simple breakfasts I would cook for us: sticky rice with scrambled eggs and sauteed peppers, or toasted boule with bacon jam and a side of sliced peaches. And coffee.

Always coffee, black and bitter. But circumstance dictates other courses, other time zones, and you wake in your city as I walk in mine, an early shopper plundering the store's vegetable bins, wandering the aisles in search of a bargain and that special ingredient missing from my tired, inconsolable days.

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â–Ş DISHA TRIVEDI â–Ş a marriage vow look across the bridge where once, two lovers jumped, hand in hand for the sheer and simple joy of it. the water was not deep. daylight had snuck up on them: night was for people bent on secrecy; their mission was celebration. he jumped and she fell; unevenly they went, billiard balls, and bowling pins, dancing in the air one after the other till the whoop and splash 15

rent the water like so many unsent letters, ready to accept a simple correspondence. love makes it easy to risk drowning. for two moments, maybe three, the people who have gathered here today watch and wait, and then two heads emerge, sodden. their mouths know only the shape of laughter.

           billiard balls, and bowling pins,

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â–Ş RAE ROZMAN â–Ş The Sweetness Before Morning stillness.

Her pulse beats in her neck like hummingbird wings outside the window they drink water with crystals of sugar swirling into my coffee her lipstick marks the rim of my mug eyes alight with moss and dew.

This is what love tastes like.

This is the sweetness before.

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â–Ş LAYLA LENHARDT â–Ş Little J. I remember un-peeling you like a clementine under a full moon at the Jersey shore. You were topless in a beach house kitchen and it hurt harder than all the skinned knees of my childhood.

We fed each other pocked strawberries, but I never digested them, they were better stuck between my teeth. My fingers were in your mouth, my mouth was on your chest. We were silver and white, a spider web on a queen sized bed.

Later, I was in a bathtub, watching my hair float in curls around me like a noose. Your name was a spell I cast to make myself remember that all the demons under my bed were silenced when I was under you.

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▪ KEVIN COONS ▪ Co-Sleeping we painted an oak tree and hung it above the bed our first november, co-sleeping now tiny fingers lie between us in sudden shifts grasping at nothing and falling backlistless lateral roots baby boy, this baby boy, my baby boy I can’t see his dreaming without seeing you how you tore your body, your fire and flesh to make shelter you turn to face me now, in bloom full-lipped, ripe as an avocado I can see through your shirt drops of milk on your breasts I know my body is useless, even as sacrifice, but still I want to learn how to offer it as worship 19

▪ CAMERON MORSE ▪ IKEA Some movies are endlessly quotable like The Princess Bride or Groundhog Day. Some references are so ingrained I can’t recall where they come from. In the showroom, I babble to my wife and son. Describe a checkered lampshade as retro. A moment later, I hear the word retro echoed back to me in a stranger’s language. In passing, I hear it again, my word: minimalistic. I feel powerful, a puppet master; a maker of persons, I name my son Theodore and a first cousin names her son the same.

I name my daughter Naomi, sit back and wait.

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▪ JEFFREY HERMANN ▪ My Daughter Creates a Taxonomy of Every Little Thing Birds or rabbits is not a simple question but we have to choose, likewise windows or doors, the moon or the stars. That’s the game What’s essential, what belongs to you more than the other? Letters or numbers yellow or blue, trees or grass?

It’s a surprise and a relief to reduce the world as if it’s too much Because after all it is I take pinecones over seashells blue over yellow, bees over butterflies; now a god of logic now a god of instinct You take brush over comb windows over doors sky over sea And when we’re done halving the beautiful world you ask me for tea with sugar and honey And all the birds come flying back 21

â–Ş ANDREW SHIELDS â–Ş The News i.m. Erik H. I woke up this morning and got the email with the news.

I had a cup of coffee, read a poem by Paul Celan, and ate corn flakes.

My wife and I got the kids off to school.

She took a shower and went to work.

I went to my dentist appointment to get my teeth cleaned.

I went to my haircut appointment.

I did an errand at the bank and bought a few things for lunch.

I went home and had a shave and a shower.

I prepared a poem for teaching next term.

I made my younger daughter's favorite chicken-mustard sauce for lunch.

She came home and we ate spaghetti with the sauce.

I had a cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate.

I watched "The Daily Show" with Daniel Radcliffe as the guest.

I wrote a shopping list and drove to the supermarket.

I stopped on the way at the car wash.

It was like going to the underworld and coming out to sunlight again.

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▪ MANDIRA PATTNAIK ▪ Expropriate She heard footsteps on the terrace. A man poking his walking stick on the terracotta burnt-red tiles? She could be wrong though. She was wrong. Maybe.

She huddled her kids to the warm bedroom nestled between the spiraling wooden staircase and the archaic attic, and waited. The kids lay on either side of her—their home on this Greek island was snug like their mother’s lap. Within minutes their combined rhythmic exhalations lulled the kids to sleep.

With ears attuned to each rustle of the dry Sal leaves in the garden, each cry of the mourning cricket and each groan of defeated waves hitting the shore, she lay stiff and ready.

This started two weeks ago when her sailor husband left. The neighbors saw his wagon pull out at dawn. Mrs. Grace of the Elementary School down the bend insisted she saw two forms buckled in the front seat—one of whose head lolled.

But her eyesight was failing. Over tea and cookies that afternoon, the missus told her that the sailor was gone to Scandinavia.

Before leaving, Mrs. Grace had waved to the kids emerging from their log house in the nook of the dried Magnolia that split into three at the base. The kids were playing hide-and-seek.

She unspooled canned images from that day. The night before, and until the dawn, seemed to rush in her mind—hazy and indistinct, but the evening stood out—like an aftermath. She remembered watching sunset sitting immobile on the cane chair, the grass of the lawn like velvet at her feet. Darkness descended from the rock faces and slithered down—down—down to the distant ocean. Between gusts of moist sea-winds, she evaluated the broad stretch of the ocean bathed in ephemeral light. Half invisible fishing trawlers swayed in the grayness. Nothing seemed amiss.

Down to her right, between the dark mass of the low dunes and the white 23

sands, dominating the whole view, were colossal trees, heavy and dense, full of the brutal force of nature left to itself. Left to oneself natural instincts are always brutal.

The monotonous hollow whisper of the crashing waves had sounded feebler and feebler as she had slipped into a battle-weary sleep.

Would she keep the log house? She knew that is where her children hid, night after night, to escape their mother’s cries, waiting for their father to collapse in a drunken heap. Hard solid wood—would fetch a decent price. She couldn’t always be wrong—like he thought.

No! She wasn’t wrong. He was.

She’d have to do something about the walking stick too—his father’s—which he used on her back. She would plant it upright near the creeper; let the Devil’s Ivy expropriate the stick. Like she would—his money, the children, this house—while the waves gnawed away the sailor and his wagon at the bottom of the cliff.

⧫  ⧫⬧⧫⬧ ◼ ⧫ ⧫   ◼ ◼  ⬧ ⚫◼ ⬧⧫ ◼ ⧫ ⧫⧫⧫ ◆◼⧫ ⧫⚫⬧  ◆⚫   ◼ ⧫◆  ⬧ ◼    24 ◆⚫  ⬧ ⧫ ⧫

â–Ş KATHERINE C. FRYE â–Ş No Gods when i press my forehead to the ground, i hear Rushing. there is no Wind. there is no Water. in the dirt, i feel Sunlight on my back. i hear the Earth: she is Breathing. and beneath her, i hear my son: Laughing. when I rise, I heard Rushing. the Night is Dark. the earth is stone. my son is Stone. there is blood in my ears, and beyond them, Silence.

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▪ MARY SHANLEY ▪ bleached blonde beehive a short order cook makes small talk with the waitress while waiting for exactly the right moment to flip two eggs over easy and serve 'em up with bacon to his favorite lady customer who sings along with the jukebox as she taps out rhythms on the table at the back booth where she sits every morning in her gold sequin dress looking like she could have been one of the Motown singers I used to watch on t.v. every afternoon and dream of the day that dick clark would be introducing me as the latest sensation to hit the pop charts and all across America kids would run home from school to watch me going through the motions of an elaborately choreographed routine as I lip synch a stack of finger poppin’ tunes 26

kinda like the ones that lady in the back booth keeps playing every morning.

I listen to her singing while ringing up checks in my hot pink lipstick and bleached blonde beehive I’m the hottest cashier this burg ever saw and by the time Christmas rolls around I’ll probably have enough money to make the final payment on that '66 mustang I bought from my brother joey for half of what it’s worth.

          where she sits every morning in her gold sequin dress looking

27

▪ ACE BOGGESS ▪ Advice for Attending a Whitesnake Concert It’s been thirty years, but I assure you you’ll require an energy center to control wizened muscles of your neck, shoulders, back. There’s no loud music without movement, no power chords that won’t leave you feeling powerless from aging. Your ears—they’ll hum in quiet after, playing dull, familiar songs that buzz as though from feedback, amplifiers. Know, too, your experience will be prurient— lyrics not discreet, stage patter not polite in the modern sense of respecting one for more than urges.

Expect the guitarist to thrust with his instrument.

Plan on lust. Your body will try its best to get away.

We won’t call that dancing; it’s more a fervor, as if religious, that has you atremble, at its mercy from old bones out. Try to enjoy it, even if its day has passed, the band, society in its 1980s phase.

Try, too, not to pay attention to the hair, remember it. Focus on not falling after you stand on the seat of a folding metal chair— weary fists warring with empty space, wide hips swaying. It’s okay to feel relieved you’re still alive.

28

▪ JOHN GREY ▪ It Came to Me in a Dream Wedged between one page and the next were eight hours of sleep and who knows how many of dreams.

I woke to my head on the pillow, words everywhere like gnats.

I grabbed at them but most darted off or disintegrated.

Before I pulled back the sheets, all that I had were a few syllables and even they were fighting my grip, trying to escape.

By the time, I got them to the computer keyboard, all I had in my possession were the odd sound, one or two letters and a punctuation mark.

You might think I’d feel defeated.

But really, on a good day that’s all it takes.

29

▪ DARREN C. DEMAREE ▪ amend/amends/amendments #22 skulls don’t blink our history blinds just that way the strength of our bones works just that way the organs split processing america every single, damn time

amend/amends/amendments #23 the mouth surrounds the delinquent apple we should be a nation of delinquent apples our parades should choke the snake we loosed before we remembered gardens

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amend/amends/amendments #24 your body is will be i can promise you personally definitely will be cleaned before your shadow is tucked away or put on display don’t slow down

          31

▪ ROBERT WEXELBLATT ▪ Surprising Consequences of Our Revolution Like all objects, the object of our revolution was unknowable-in-itself, accessible only through its secondary qualities, its taste, color, odor, texture. Like all revolutionaries, our revolutionary vanguard failed to understand that the object of their sacrifices was unknowable. On the contrary, they passionately believed in the glorious end, not just the taste, color, odor, and texture of the revolution. As we massed on the hills overlooking the spread-eagled capital—literally on the precipice of victory—our leaders smiled at one another. They could smell and touch and taste their final triumph. And it came swiftly, too.

Bottilini, the immensely prolific court composer, died penniless in a gutter at the age of forty-two. In his last appeal to the new Ministry of Culture he had written: “So I mastered the composition of the string septet. So I wrote over four hundred of the things. Look, I admit the string septet happened to be favored by the Ancien Régime, but is that my fault? Couldn't you people use a few string septets too?”

The celebrated orator Halbschwacher fell silent. He had been the scourge of the Royalists who had not dared to imprison him for fear that he would convert the other prisoners, the guards, that his eloquence would captivate the very locks.

Now that thunderous voice was heard no more. He retired to a cottage on what had once been his country estate, took up bee-keeping and knocking together wooden tables and rush-bottomed chairs. In response to an attempt by the Minister of Propaganda to recruit him, he replied, “What's there for me to say?

You want slogans. Slogans are vulgar. Without the cognoscenti of the Court my talent for invective is obsolete. Best wishes.”

The revolutionaries now had an inkling that all the consequences of their victory might well have been unknowable and they hastened to fill this intolerable creeping vacuum with ugly apartment blocks, agricultural collectives, hydroelectric dams, steel mills, nuclear reactors, wind tunnels, and rocket engines with enough thrust to launch the Royal Museum into solar orbit. The achievements of their frenzy were amazing. But what of their object, their original goal? Faint traces of its taste, color, odor, and texture may still be discerned from time to time in the swirling, multicolored effluents fouling our rivers.

32

▪ DEVON GALLANT ▪ Lido delle Sirene Somewhere, in the quaint, crafted gloss of patterned ceramiche, fried fish, and lemon gelato, you lose yourself: submit, surrender to the sun, the rocky cliffs, the coastal villages... surrender to the pebble-strewn beaches that burn your soles and test your balance... surrender to the salty brine of the ocean as it rests on your lips... in the corner of your eyes... surrender to it all, forgetting that you ever have to go back.

Forgetting that this is not reality but only a brief and fleeting dream along the strange curves of life’s winding course.

And isn’t life as beautiful and nauseating as the serpentine roads along the Amalfi Coast?

Isn’t life as immeasurably sublime and untouchably majestic as those cliffs that jut up around you?

As unforeseeable as the horizon of that sea?

And yet, one day, you do wake up— the current of your inner tide sweeping you back into its swell— and you find yourself left with only the memories of lemons.

Lemons as large and mysterious as the moon, herself.

Lemons you never tasted but will, one day.

33

A promise you make to yourself, a vow you make to the moon.

Amalfi 2017

 ⚫⚫ ◼ ◼ ⧫  ❑◆◼⧫ ⧫ ⚫⬧⬧ ⧫⧫ ◼   ⬧  ◼ ⚫◼ ⚫⧫◆ ⚫⬧ ◆⬧ ⚫⬧◆⧫ ⬧◆◼⧫ ⧫ ⬧◆◼ ⧫  ⚫⬧ ⧫ ⬧⧫⚫ ❖ ⚫⚫⬧⬧◆◼ ⧫ ⧫  ⚫⬧⧫◼ ⬧⧫⧫ ◆◼ ◆  ⬧⚫⬧ ◼ ⧫⬧⧫ ◆ ⚫◼ ⬧◆◼⧫ ⧫ ⬧⚫⧫ ◼  ⧫ ◼⬧ ⧫ ⬧⧫⬧ ◼ ◆ ⚫ ⬧◼ ⧫ ◼  ◆  ⬧⬧◆◼ ⧫ ⧫ ⚫⚫ ⧫◼ ⧫⧫ ◆ ❖ ❖ ⧫  ⧫◼ ⧫⧫ ⧫⬧ ⬧ ◼⧫ ⚫⧫◆⧫ ◼⚫   ◼ ⚫ ⧫◼ ⚫◼ ⧫ ⬧⧫◼  ◆❖⬧  ⚫⬧ ◼◼ ◆⬧◼  ⬧◼⧫ ⚫ ⬧ ◆⧫◆⚫ ◼ ◼ ◆⬧⧫◼⬧ ⧫ ⬧◼⧫◼ ⬧ ⚫◼ ⧫ ⚫ ⬧⧫⬧◼⧫ ⚫ ⬧ ⬧◆⚫ ⬧◆⚫ ◼ ◆◼⧫ ◆⚫ ⬧⧫⬧ ⧫⬧ ⚫⬧ ⧫⧫ ◆⧫ ◆ ◆◼ ◆⬧ ◆◼ ⬧⚫ ⬧ ⧫ 34 ◼  ⧫ ⧫ ⬧

â–Ş ROGER SINGER â–Ş Nightly Faith Every evening he gazed up at evening stars whispering collected words he was fond of and if clouds blocked his view he continued to speak knowing the stars were still there

35

▪ PAT SNYDER HURLEY ▪ Letters and Numbers Down the side of page one in his gray softback journal he squeezed the letters R G B then across from each, like notes on a staff, an inscrutable series of zeroes and ones that reflected some unknowable pattern lodged in his astronomer’s brain— maybe Red Green Blue to color in the Fibonacci spiral he printed on his business cards when the cancer returned or nonsensical numbers for the Black Belt Sudoku puzzle he still pushed through with his morning oatmeal or in the final days a single haunting code pulsing through leaf and cosmos that he had begun to write himself into and then all those blank pages left for me.

36

▪ GERARD SARNAT ▪ Rooster in the Night No. 2 The shallows in earnest, candles sputter, burn molecules might fuel extra hours not to be.

Ears ring, cheeks turn pink imagining my love imagine me.

She chants the song of her soul these forty-nine days I sit with the urn, cry stars into her ashen sky.

The valley of shadows disorders time as I fumble prayer beads.

My thumbs sense a scuffle to take earthly leave, hurtle away on cinnamon and blue bardo wings.

Funneled through dusk’s gray cocoon melee, untethered, a radiant silk moth dawns past mourning’s crow.

37

▪ WILLIAM DORESKI ▪ A Damp Spot A damp spot in the forest.

Mist rises and clots the pine-tops, erasing distance that enables my sense of simple geography.

You never worry about your grip on the planet, and ignore me when I worry that gravity will fail on my daily walk and set me adrift in shades of gray lacking innuendo.

You rake wet leaves into piles shaped like extinct animals.

When I help you drag tarp-loads into the woods I feel funereal.

Bored and exhausted by yard work, I visit that damp spot and breathe the mist, absorbing as much of it as my slack old lungs can swallow.

If I were still a man among men I’d lie in that muck and expect to sink deeply enough to anchor my body where it belongs.

You’d never bother searching for my papery little remains, but would collect my insurance and rake away your modest grief.

38

More rain coming. I’ll cover the firewood I split this morning, then slip indoors for a sip of the six-dollar vodka hidden behind a bag of cat litter where it almost never tempts me to pour it all over myself and pretend I’ve gone up in flames.

                   39 

▪ ROB PLATH ▪ exercise as i lie in bed sweating my monsters run thru the night w/ my peace in their teeth

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▪ CONTRIBUTORS ▪ Jack Berning is a writer and graduate student at Colorado State University, pursuing an MFA in poetry. He currently lives alone in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Ace Boggess is author of four books of poetry, most recently I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So (Unsolicited Press, 2018). His writing appears in Notre Dame Review, Rhino, Rattle, and other journals.

Kevin Coons's fiction and poetry has been featured previously in Grey Sparrow, Forge Magazine, Black-Listed Poetry Review, and several other online zines.

Darren C. Demaree's poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear, in numerous magazines/journals, including Hotel Amerika, Diode, North American Review, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire (June 2019, Harpoon Books). He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry and currently lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and children.

William Doreski's work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall.

Katherine C. Frye, currently a theater student at Utah Valley University, began writing in the third grade with a series of ghost stories all titled, “The Shark-Alligator” (none of which contained a single mark of punctuation, which Katherine adamantly defended as an “artistic choice” so as not to receive low marks.) She has been recently published in the literary magazine All the Sins with a short story called "Millie and the Wendigo."

Devon Gallant is the author of four collections of poetry: The Day After, the flower dress and other lines, His Inner Season, and S(tars) & M(agnets). His work has been featured in Vallum, Carousel, Bitterzoet Magazine, Misunderstandings Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the publisher of Cactus Press [cactuspress.wordpress.com] and the host of Accent Open Mic [accentseriesmontreal.wordpress.com]. He resides in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Dunes Review, Poetry East, and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Qwerty, Thin Air, Dalhousie Review, and failbetter.

Jeffrey Hermann's work has appeared in Hobart, Pank Magazine, Juked, Houseguest Magazine, and other publications. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018 by Juked.

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Doug Hoekstra is a Chicago-bred, Nashville-based writer. His first book, Bothering the Co ffee Drinkers, appeared on the Canopic Publishing (TN) imprint in April 2006 and earned an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) for Best Short Fiction (Bronze Medal). Other stories and poems of his have appeared in numerous online and print literary journals; a second book of prose, The Tenth Inning, was released independently in 2015, and a book of poetry, Unopened, was released in 2019.

Pat Snyder Hurley is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Columbus, Ohio, who has been published in literary journals including Pudding Magazine, Poydras Review, Snapdragon, and the Passager Journal, as well as the chapbook Hard to Swallow (NightBallet Press, 2018). You can find her online at pathurleypoet.com Erren Kelly is a two-time Pushcart-nominated poet from Boston who has been been writing for 28 years and has over 300 publications in print and online in such publications as Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine (online), Ceremony, Cacti Fur, Bitterzoet, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, and Poetry Salzburg. Erren has also been published in anthologies such as Fertile Ground and Beyond The Frontier. Work can also be seen on YouTube under the "Gallery Cabaret" links.

Layla Lenhardt is Editor in Chief of 1932 Quarterly. She has been most recently published in Poetry Quarterly, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Opiate, The Charleston Anvil, and Scars.

Her forthcoming poetry book, These Ghosts are Mine, is due for publication this fall. She currently resides in Indianapolis.

Kurt Luchs has poems published or forthcoming in Into the Void, Right Hand Pointing, Antiphon, and The Sun Magazine. He placed second for the 2019 Fischer Poetry Prize and won the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. He has written humor for The New Yorker, The Onion, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as writing comedy for television and radio. His books include a humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny) (2017 Sagging Meniscus Press), and a poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other (2019 Finishing Line Press). More of his work, both poetry and humor, is at kurtluchs.com.

Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing Program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review, and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press's 2018 Best Book Award. His three subsequent collections are Father Me Again (Spartan Press, 2018), Coming Home with Cancer (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), and Terminal Destination (Spartan Press, 2019). He lives with his pregnant wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he manages Inklings'

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FOURTH FRIDAYS READING SERIES with Eve Brackenbury and serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.

Robert Okaji lives in Indiana. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Kissing Dynamite, Clementine Unbound, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere.

Mandira Pattnaik writes flash and poetry. She is humbled to have her work published by The Times of India, FewerThan500, 101words, Runcible Spoon, Lunate Fiction (forthcoming), (Mac)ro(mic), and Eclectica Magazine. She loves to travel and embroiders to keep busy.

Simon Perchik's poetry has appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, and elsewhere.

Cynthia Pitman is a retired English teacher with poetry published in Amethyst Review, Vita Brevis, Leaves of Ink, Ekphrastic, Postcard Poems and Prose, Right Hand Pointing, Literary Yard, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Three Line Poetry, Third Wednesday (finalist, One Sentence Poem Contest), and others. Her book, The White Room, is forthcoming.

Rob Plath is a writer from New York. he is most known for his monster collection A BELLYFUL OF ANARCHY (epic rites press 2009). His newest collection is MY SOUL IS A BROKEN DOWN VALISE (epic rites press 2019). You can see more of his work at robplath.com Rae Rozman is a middle school counselor in Austin, Texas. Her poetry often explores themes of queer love (romantic and platonic), brain injury, and education and has been published in several literary magazines. You can find her on Instagram @mistress_of_mnemosyne for poetry, books, and pictures of her rescue bunnies.

Gerard Sarnat is a physician who’s built and staffed current homeless and ex-prisoner clinics as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently Gerry is devoting energy/ resources to deal with global warming. Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for a handful of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published in academic-related journals (University Chicago, Stanford, Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Pomona, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, University of San Francisco) plus national (Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, American Journal Of Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Free State Review, Poetry Circle, Poets And War, Cliterature, Qommunicate, Texas Review, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review and The New York Times) and international publications including Review Berlin. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids, five grandsons with a sixth incubating.

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Mary Shanley is a poet/storyteller, living with her wife in New York City. She has had a book of poetry, Hobo Code Poems, published by Vox Pop, Brooklyn. She self-published, through her imprint, Side Street Press, two books of poetry and one book of short stories. She is a frequent contributor to online journals. She was the Featured Poet on WBAI radio, NYC, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland. His collection of poems Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong was published by Eyewear in 2015. His band Human Shields released the album Somebody's Hometown in 2015 and the EP Défense de jouer in 2016.

Dr. Roger Singer has been in private practice for 38 years in upstate New York. He has four children, Abigail, Caleb, Andrew and Philip and seven grandchildren. Dr. Singer has served on multiple committees for the American Chiropractic Association, lecturing at colleges in the United States, Canada and Australia, and has authored over fifty articles for his profession and served as a medical technician during the Vietnam era. Dr. Singer has over 1,050 poems published on the internet, magazines and in books and is a Pushcart Award Nominee.

Mark Trechock published his first poem in 1974. He put poetry aside from 1995 to 2015 after more than 20 years as a community organizing. He lives in Dickinson, North Dakota. His work is soon to appear in Triggerfish, Visitant, SBLAAM, and Sweet Tree Review.

Disha Trivedi is a scientist-in-training. She currently divides her time between Scotland, New Zealand, and her native California. She has been previously published in The Women’s Issue, an anthology curated by The Harvard Advocate.

Robert Wexelblatt is a professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published five fiction collections; two books of essays; two short novels; a book of poems; stories, essays, and poems in a variety of journals, and a novel awarded the Indie Book Awards first prize for fiction. Two collections, one of Chinese, the other of nonChinese, stories, are forthcoming.

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☺ ◼◼ ⬧  ⧫ ◼ ◆⧫ ⬧⧫◆◼⧫ ⧫  ⚫ ⧫⧫ ◼❖⬧⧫ ◆⬧◆◼ ◼  ◼ ⧫   ◆◼⧫⚫ ⚫❖⬧ ⚫ ◼ ◼ ⧫ ⚫⚫◼⬧ ⚫  ⬧⬧ ⬧ ◆⧫  ◆ ⬧  ⧫ ⬧⧫ ◼⧫⚫  ❖ ⬧⧫ ⧫ ⧫  ◼ ⧫   ◼⬧⚫⧫ ⬧⬧   ⬧ ⧫◼ ⬧ ◼ ⧫  ❖ ◼  ⧫⧫⚫ ◼ ⧫ ◆ ◼⚫⬧❖◼ ◼⬧⬧ ⧫◼ ◼ ⧫ ⬧ ◼ ⧫ ◆ ❖◆⬧⚫ ◼     ◼ ⚫⬧⧫ ⧫ ❖  ◼ ⬧❖⚫ ⧫ ◼ ⚫◼ ◼⬧◼   ⬧ ⬧ ❖     ⬧◆⚫ ⧫   ◼ ◼◆◆⬧  ◼⬧◆◼⚫⬧ ◼⚫◆◼ 

THE BIG WINDOWS REVIEW Issue 18 | Winter 2020