Dispossession

For J, with love

Noorulain Noor Dispossession

The south-facing window of your mother’s house opens to a view of your grave. At dawn, after kneeling towards Mecca, she dons her black polyester-blend burka and steps into the narrow sepia-swathed street. At the threshold of the cemetery, she buys day-old rose garlands at a discount from the street-side florist, slips off her leather chappals, tip-toes to you, kisses the epitaph, hangs a garland on each edge of the headstone.

Once home, she sits on the window-seat for hours, prayer beads slipping through her fingers, colliding with each other, her eyes never leaving those roses strung tightly together, wilting in the sun. I think of one rainy season of our childhood in that house - a fort made out of overturned rattan chairs, the blackboard in one corner, our names on it, our hands covered with chalk dust feeling like sandpaper, and your mother sitting underneath the muted skylight, shelled pomegranate seeds slipping through her fingers, landing dully in a chipped ceramic bowl.

She must have sprinkled powdery black salt on them, filled two glasses with milk, spread a dollop of butter on two steaming chapaatis and added a layer of sliced hard-boiled eggs, laid the feast on a plastic tray with painted pink roses on the border, and brought it to us to devour. We must have accepted this bounty with glee, gobbled it all up, gone back to our make-believe lives inside the enclave of toppled chairs.

But I can only remember those small clusters of glossy red seeds escaping her fingers, and the gnawing feeling of fine white sand on mine.

Wes Adamson, photographer and writer. Much of what he writes and photographs about comes from the basic understanding of people and environment, gained through the insight of years of experience attempting to interweave it all into a meaningful life. He presently publishes stories as a guest columnist to Cincinnati Enquirer/Tri-County Press. Mr. Adamson, a new exciting writer, recently had his creative writing accepted for publication by River and South Review and his photography published by Driftwood Press. Many of his Imagination By Moonlight book quotes are at Goodreads.com. His creative writing blog site is http://cadamson.blog. com.

Sherryl Anders is a mental health professional working with people on the edge, who struggle with serious mental illnesses. After a long hiatus to pursue her academic career, however, she has recently returned to her roots in poetry. Previous work has appeared in Lilliput Review.

Aileen Bassis is a poet and visual artist in Jersey City working in book arts, printmaking, photography and installation. Her artwork can be viewed at www.aileenbassis.com. After retiring from teaching art, she began exploring another life as a poet. Her poems are published currently and upcoming in Blue River Review, Untitled with Passengers, Gravel Magazine, River Poets Journal, Spillway, Milo Journal, the Literary Bohemian, Specs Journal, Still Point Arts Quarterly, and others.

Demond Blake is a warehouse associate who has traveled the country working odd jobs and meeting various artists, musicians, and nonconformists living life on the fringes of society. He has published poems and excerpts of his novel Slackass in Inlandia, Dead Flowers, and Sixers Review. He lives in Colton, CA with his wife, his preteen son, and a crazy old dog who acts like a puppy. Slackass is his first novel.

M. Brogan, a native of the Midwest, writes mainly flash fiction and poetry and currently lives in Virginia while studying for a Master’s in international relations.

Melissa Burton, the co-founder and website developer for LitBridge lives in Dallas, TX. She has a M.S. in Human Computer Interaction from Iowa State University (ISU).

Janet Butler lives in Alameda with Fulmi, a lovely Spaniel mix she rescued while living in central Italy. “Searching for Eden” was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2012, “Upheaval” was one of three winning selections in Red Ochre Lit’s 2012 Chapbook Contest. She recently placed, for the fourth year, in the Berkeley Poets annual poetry contest. She is moderator of the monthly Lit Night at Julie’s Coffee & Tea Garden in Alameda, and is a member of the Frank Bette Center for the Arts, where she will teach a poetry course and Italian language class this spring.

Karla Cordero is an MFA student at San Diego State University studying creative writing and poetry under Sandra Alcosser and Illya Kaminsky. She is an associate editor for Poetry International and her work has appeared in the California Journal of Women Writers. In 2013 Cordero helped the San Diego poetry slam team place 4th in the country at the National Poetry Slam in Boston. Her awards include the Sarah B. Marsh-Rebelo Fellowship.

Andrew Davis is a recent MFA graduate of Pine Manor College. His short story “Peter’s Glasses” is forthcoming in The Oddville Press. His short stories “WInd-Up” and “Paper Doll” can be read in The Rain, Party, and Disaster Society and Black Heart Magazine. He lives in Lowell, Massachusetts, where he is working on his first collection of short stories. He can be contacted at davis.andrew19@gmail. com or at https://www.facebook.com/andrew. davis.188478

Jeanine Deibel teaches English and works as an editor. Her work is forthcoming in cream city review, Black Tongue Review, and Whiskey Island, among others. She is the author of the chapbook, IN THE GRAVE (Birds of Lace Press, March 2013). Her second chapbook, Spyre, is forthcoming on Dancing Girl Press in Winter 2014. For more information, visit: jeaninedeibel.weebly.com.

Claire Farley is currently a master’s student in the Literatures of Modernity program at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario. A long-standing belief in connection to place and a love of poetry has led her to an interest in the poetics of space; she loves reading and writing out-of-doors.

George Michelsen Foy has published 12 novels a couple of non-fiction books. His latest is novel is METTLE, with Univ. Press of New England. He has written for Harper’s, Rolling Stone et al. He teaches fiction at NYU and his flash fiction has been published by Atticus Review, Superstition Review, Journal of Microliterature, among others. He lives in New England and NY.

Sarah Kilch Gaffney lives in central Maine with her husband and daughter. She holds a B.A. from Knox College and works for the Maine Conservation Corps.

Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California based photographer with an interest in urban minimalism. His work is forthcoming in Streetlight Magazine and Suisun Valley Review. Contact information and more examples of his work can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ thomasmichaelart/

Tom Holmes is the editor of Redactions: Poetry, Poetics, & Prose and the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Cave, which won The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013 and will be released in 2014. His writings about wine, poetry book reviews, and poetry can be found at his blog, The Line Break: http://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/.

Nashae Jones has had her fiction appear in Blackberry, American Athenaeum, and 101 Words magazines, among others. She is currently a graduate student, writer, and reviewer.

Rick Kempa lives in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where he teaches at Western Wyoming College. His work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Conte Online, Confrontation, The Healing Muse, and Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose About Alzheimer’s Disease (Kent State, 2009).

Matthew Kirshman lives in Seattle, Washington with his wife and two daughters. Before becoming an English teacher, he had a varied career-- telephone repairman, bartender, and cook, to name a few. Writing since the early 1980s, his publication credits include: Charter Oak Poets, Dirigible: Journal of Language Arts, Helix, Indefinite Space, Key Satch(el), Phoebe: The George Mason Review, posthumous papers (NothingNew Press), Vangarde Magazine, Xenarts.com, and Z-Composition.

Steve Klepetar teaches literature and writing at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His latest collections include Speaking to the Field Mice, from Sweatshoppe Publications, Blue Season, a chapbook collaboration with Joseph Lisowski, from mgv2>publishing, and My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto from Flutter Press.

Roland Leach has three collections of poetry, the latest, My Father’s Pigs published by Picaro Press. He is currently the Poetry Editor at the University of Western Australia for Westerly, and is proprietor of Sunline Press, which has published seventeen collections of poetry by Australian poets. rleach@plc.wa.edu.au

Richard Luftig is a former professor of educational psychology and special education at Miami University in Ohio now residing in Pomona, CA. He is a recipient of the Cincinnati Post-Corbett Foundation Award for Literature and a semifinalist for the Emily Dickinson Society Award. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals in the

United States and internationally in Japan, Canada, Australia, Europe, Thailand, Hong Kong and India. One of his published poems was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Poetry Prize.

Atreyu Luna works in the fields of social services and education. He lives with a talkative kitty in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Brian J. McVety is an English teacher at Reading Memorial High School in Reading, MA where he is inspired by his students daily. He lives in Beverly, MA with his favorite person in the world, his wife, Elizabeth. He has not published any fiction before.

Bob Meszaros taught English at Hamden High School in Hamden, Connecticut for thirty-two years. He retired from high school teaching in June of 1999. During the 70s and 80s his poems appeared in a number of literary journals, such as En Passant and Voices International. In the year 2000 he began teaching part time at Quinnipiac University, and he began once again to submit his work for publication. His poems have subsequently appeared in The Connecticut Review, Main Street Rag, Tar River Poetry, Concho River Review, Northwind, Innisfree, and other literary journals.

Katharine Monger holds a B.A. in creative writing from The University of Iowa and is currently pursuing an M.A. in Composition and Rhetoric from The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is nonfiction editor of cream city review.

Katherine Neale, a native Memphian consumed with wanderlust who plans traipsing across Europe for a bit after she earns her Master’s in Education. She then plans on hunkering down to teach. She tends to write about the process of writing itself and the recycling of language.

Noorulain Noor is a clinical researcher at Stanford University and the poetry editor of Papercuts. Papercuts is a publication of Desi Writers’ Lounge, an online writing community for emerging South Asian writers, run entirely on a voluntary basis. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in ARDOR literary magazine, The Bangalore Review, Clapboard House, Blue Lake Review, aaduna, and other publications. Raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Noorulain now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she leads poetry workshops, blogs, and writes on the broad themes of identity, multiculturalism, and the immigrant experience. Blog: http://gollgappay. blogspot.com/ Papercuts Magazine: http:// desiwriterslounge.net/papercuts/

John Reinhart lives in the Weird, between now and never, driving an ancient Mercedes fueled by used vegetable oil, collecting and protecting the discarded treasures in gutters, and whistling combinations of every tune he knows. He is a onetime beginner yo-yo champion, a state fiddle and guitar champion, a high school English teacher, a tinkerer, and certifiable eccentric. His poetry has recently been published in Poetry Nook Magazine, Vocabula Review, Dirty Chai Magazine, and Black Heart Magazine.

John Rieder lives in San Diego and teaches composition and literature at Southwestern College in nearby Chula Vista. He was educated at the University of Illinois and UC San Diego. He is also the bassist for the avant-noise duo Secret Fun Club.

Cynthia Ring’s work has appeared in And/Or Magazine, Contemporary American Voices, and the Susquehanna University Apprentice Writer, among others. Her poetry springs directly from her unconscious mind. She currently lives in Nashville.

Dana Roskey has been working in Ethiopia for ten years, building schools and libraries. Before that, she was a teacher in Minneapolis, a poet, and playwright. She has produced several plays in the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and published in small local journals.

Robyn Ryle started life in one small town and ended up in another just down the river. She teaches sociology to college students when she’s not writing and has stories in CALYX Journal, Stymie Magazine, Bartleby Snopes, and WhiskeyPaper, among others. You can find her on Twitter, @RobynRyle.

Laura Jean Schneider has traveled all around the United States but prefers big, wide-open spaces and likes to photograph the details she finds within them. Laura Jean currently lives in New Mexico with her husband Sam, seven horses, a Jersey cow, a cat, five chickens, and four dogs. She has a BA from Smith College and is currently pursuing her MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

J. Howard Shannon, a writer and US Army Infantry Officer with over 25 years in the military. He served two tours in Afghanistan—the first in 2005 with 3rd Group Special Forces and again in 2008 with the New York Army National Guard. He currently volunteers as an Assistant Instructor with Horses For Heroes—Cowboy Up! New Mexico Inc., a wellness and skill set restructuring program for OIF and OEF combat veterans. He the author of the short stories “The Jump”—BookPress May 1998 and “Red Flowers”— forthcoming from The War Writer’s Campaign.

Melissa Watkins Starr holds an M.A. in English from ODU. A former news reporter, she writes poetry and fiction and works as a freelance writer/ editor.

Kelly Grace Thomas, poet, educator and Pushcart Prize nominee is in love with all things literary. Her works has been published in The Emerson Review, aaduna, Aries Journal and many other publications. Thomas also works as a food writer for the Edible Skinny, a blog focused on foodie education and appreciation. She also recently completed her debut novel, The Travis Bannister Conflict. She currently lives in Venice Beach, California where she coaches an award-winning youth slam poetry team.

Jonathan Treece was born in Baltimore, and now resides in western Maryland with his fiancé. He has been published in Expressions and Backbone Mountain Review.

H. C. Turk is a self-taught writer, sound artist, and visual artist living in Florida. His fiction has been published by Villard, Tor, The Chicago Review, Streetcake, the Newer York, Gadfly, and Farther Stars Than These. His sound pieces and visual art have appeared on numerous web-sites and radio programs.

Sarah Ann Winn lives in Fairfax, Virginia. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, Nassau Review, Portland Review, and Two Thirds North among others. Visit her at http:// bluebirdwords.com or follow her @blueaisling on Twitter.

Jeffrey Winter recently finished his undergraduate degree in English at University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is a married father of two whose work has been published in Pif Magazine, Denver Syntax and Blackheart Magazine.

FEATURING

WES ADAMSON / SHERRYL ANDERS / AILEEN BASSIS / ERICKA BECKS DEMOND BLAKE / M. BROGAN / MELISSA BURTON / JANET BUTLER / KARLA CORDERO ANDREW DAVIS / JEANINE DEIBEL / CLAIRE FARLEY / GEORGE MICHELSEN FOY SARAH KILCH GAFFNEY / THOMAS GILLASPY / TOM HOLMES / NASHAE JONES RICK KEMPA / MATTHEW KIRSHMAN / STEVE KLEPETAR / ROLAND LEACH RICHARD LUFTIG /ATREYU LUNA / BRIAN MCVETY / BOB MESZAROS KATHARINE MONGER / KATHERINE NEALE / NOORULAIN NOOR / JOHN REINHART JOHN RIEDER / CYNTHIA RING / DANA ROSKEY / ROBYN RYLE LAURA JEAN SCHNEIDER / J. HOWARD SHANNON / MELISSA WATKINS STARR KELLY GRACE THOMAS / JONATHAN TREECE / H.C. TURK / SARAH ANN WINN JEFFREY WINTER