Suisun Valley Review #25

SVR Suisun Valley Review the literary magazine of solano community college

25th Anniversary

Editors Richard Barnhart Trung Bui Amanda Key Andrew Killmer Juanita J. Martin Elfie Nelson Katie Patrick

Advisor Michael J. Wyly

Cover Design Elfie Nelson and Richard Barnhart

Contents Poetry Cinderella Redux .................................................................................. M.A. Johnson A Score of Wild Horses .............................................................. Tavarus Blackman Herreid, South Dakota (1901) ..................................................... Red Shuttleworth Fall ...................................................................................... Edythe Haendel Schwartz Denmark ............................................................................................ Donna Rudolph The Smell on the Church Bus ............................................................ Melissa Beery Unheard Symphony ........................................................................... Shawnte Orion Hourglass .................................................................................................. Jeff Whitney Zapad (Valentine) ............................................................................Alan Jude Moore Rain Again ......................................................................................... Gordon Preston Waiting Rooms ..................................................................................Radames Ortiz Bottleneck .......................................................................................... Juanita J. Martin Reading Proust While it Rains ............................................................Ann Privateer If Kubrick Had Been a Dentist ....................................................Shannon Carson Mateo .....................................................................................................Radames Ortiz Thinking of H.D. ........................................................................... Donna Rudolph A San Francisco Love Story ....................................................... Ciara Shuttleworth The Hustle ...........................................................................................Mayia Ogbebor Abstract Expressionism ................................................................... Joseph Milford Backstage............................................................................................ Gordon Preston (Full of Grace) ................................................................................... Jessica Neasbitt La Machine Infernale................................................................................... Tim Kahl To That Home Which May Be ........................................................ Joseph Milford Fine Art ..................................................................................... Cameron Mosbarger Two Minutes in Hell ........................................................................Shannon Carson Field at the Side of the Road/View from the Highway ........... Andrew Killmer Shapes ......................................................................................................Ann Privateer in kansas city ...................................................................................... Iris Appelquist The Black Bitch of Herald, California...................................... Tavarus Blackman let the chorus ring ............................................................................... Iris Appelquist No Amount of Letters and Numbers ..................................... Ciara Shuttleworth A Yellow Blouse and Gunpowder ............................................. Red Shuttleworth Montmartre ............................................................................................... Lyn Lifshin White Elephant .........................................................................................Anonymous A Carrion Sundae ............................................................................... Stephen Morse

3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 13 19 20 21 22 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 37 38 39 40 41 43 44 46 47 49 50 54

Short Fiction Likeness of a Sigh .............................................................................. Lily Anderson Juarez ........................................................................................................ J.A. Goolsby Rust ........................................................................................................ Verless Doran

14 34 51

Visual Arts Iwama Market ..................................................................................Richard Barnhart Untitled #4 .................................................................................................. Erin Allen Fish Walk, Astoria, NY, June 2006......................................................... R.C. Miller Tuff Times ......................................................................................... Francisco Farias Untitled #5 ................................................................................................... Erin Allen Untitled #3 ................................................................................................... Erin Allen Hiking or Fantasy ............................................................................. Francisco Farias All Organic ......................................................................................Richard Barnhart

front

6 12 23 42

48 55

back

SVR: Twenty-four Years in Review (1981-2007)* December 13, Two [vol. 1, 1981] .................................................... Jane Hirshfield “Diego, It is four in the morning” [vol. 2, 1982] ...................................Mary Julia Vigil [vol. 3, 1983] ............................................................................... Tamiko Lynch furnished room [vol. 4, 1984] ............................................................... Judy Warren On this Passage [vol. 5, 1985] .................................................................Jack Millam Elegy [vol. 6, 1986] ......................................................................... Milton Meadows A True Story [vol. 7, 1987] ................................................................... Barry Bauska Nevada Waitress with Careful Eyes [vol. 8, 1988] ....................... Candice Favilla Desert Song #2: Full Moon Canyon [vol. 9, 1989] ...................... Kathleen King Flaw [vol. 10, 1990] ............................................................................... Sharyn Stever Voyeur [vol. 11, 1991] ................................................................... Constance Carter She Silent Sings, Untitled 1, Untitled 2 [vol. 10, 1992] .................Vincent Cornejo and Clifford Cowley The Lapis Hour [vol. 11, 1993] ................................................. William Harryman Guides [vol. 14, 1994] ............................................................................... Brian Riley February 20, 1995 [vol. 15, 1995] .............................. Heather Brittain-Bergstrom January Evening Between Slater’s Court and the Amtrak Station, Davis [vol. 16, 1996]. ...................Rebecca Fransway Revision [vol. 17, 1997] ...................................................... Jessica Barksdale Inclan Afterlife [vol. 18, 1998] ................................................................. Catherine French Out of Sympathy [vol. 19, 2000] .......................................................... Philip L. Hu Men and Motion [vol. 20, 2003] ............................................ Mary Julia Klimenko Wyatt Earp (1909) [vol. 21, 2004] ............................................... Red Shuttleworth Private [vol. 22, 2005] ........................................................................ Taylor Graham What the Elephant Never Forgets [vol. 23, 2006] ........... Charles Harper Webb Martyr [vol. 24, 2007] ............................................................................. Elfie Nelson

*Missing years (1999, 2001 & 2002) indicate years SVR was not published due to class cancellations.

58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

Editorial Statement The Suisun Valley Review was established in 1981 as a way for the students of Solano Community College to learn the art and craft of editing a literary journal while at the same time, putting together their own magazine once a year. Since the first issue was published in 1981, these student editors have collaborated on a total of twenty-five issues of the SVR (as there were three years when the magazine was not published), carefully selecting the contents from new and established writers from across the country. The students are also directly involved with creating the overall design aesthetic and narrative of each issue.

Each spring, all of their hard work and endless creative energy is repaid with a bound collection of prose and poetry, sold and kept as a testament to sleepless nights.

As this is our 25th anniversary issue, you’re invited to see what you may have missed, in a sense, as in this issue we have included a compilation of pieces accepted in years past—one for every previous issue of the magazine. These works were chosen by the several faculty advisors who have overseen the course in years past and are intended to be representative of each unique annual collection. So please enjoy and find out why the Suisun Valley Review is the best literary journal you aren’t reading.

Special Note Concerning Editor Submissions: The annual production of SVR is facilitated by the SCC course English 58. The course description for this class states that any persons interested in submitting creative work to the magazine for consideration, must be allowed to do so. This description applies also to the student editors of that particular year’s issue and it is past practice, to publish editor’s work alongside the submissions of the other contributors. In order to maintain fairness and impartiality, all editor submissions are considered under a pseudonym. Only after a piece has either been accepted/rejected based upon its own merit is it then revealed to whom it belongs. If the piece is accepted, the editor’s real name is used for publication.

Cinderella Redux It’s time to go, but I can’t find my boots or my bra.

The room teeters and tips as I peek under this mess of sleeping man.

There are traces of him on my thighs, on my neck, in the tangles of my hair, and I will smell him as I leave his body in the twist of my sister’s sheets.

I can forget the bra, but not my Payless Suedes.

Not these sassy pull-ons that dazzled the pants off him in the Seven Mile House parking lot.

They stayed on until the room stopped spinning then they were tossed off – somewhere.

We settled into a drunken doze, as Van Morrison skipped the mystic and a fat cat clawed at the screen, wanting in.

I need these boots more than the man because I have danced imaginary hours in these sized eight black beauties.

I’ve escaped controlling mothers and dirty corners in this magical footwear.

I’ve tip-toed and swaggered in temporary clothes and robotic-crowds just to be front row.

These boots design my emotions – they make me, take me far and away, more than this princely lover ever could.

—M.A. Johnson SVR 3

A Score of Wild Horses Over folding earth, upon grasses of the Western plains, across lifeless patches of dusted, dry-bitten land; we run.

Nostrils intermittently flared, gasp-grabbing at bitter breaths, a rush of wind-whipped air floods and expands in ravenous lungs. Muscles taught, tense, pulled tight over ivory-like bone; we gallop in hoards of ebony; ecru; pearl-painted and tawny-spotted coats. Hooves rip and tear at red clay, batter and beat soft mudded sward and clap in hollow metered sonic pops. We weave, hurdle, race, jauntily course virgin paths with youth and vigor; unsaddled; unbridled, unaware of America behind us. —Tavarus Blackman

SVR 4

Herreid, South Dakota (1901) Murder is pooled, greasy mutton fat.

The men from the lumberyard were playing cards for a rabbit’s foot when Hofer gutted Volk, or the other way around.

The records are not clear.

Town Marshal J.L. Miller reported, They was slashin’ ‘n cuttin’ ‘n chokin’ on their spit.

Over elk steaks, the witnesses agreed, A broke pair of legs in the brain leads to very long moments alone.

—Red Shuttleworth

SVR 5

Untitled 4

—Erin Allen

SVR 6

Fall What the waxwing must have seen was distance twinned, cumulonimbus tethered to sky, not glass -the hit, the spin, the fall, the feathers loosed.

In the privet, songbirds gorge on berries. You injure yourself to clashing trills, to the living losing focus, tape yellow ribbon to the glass, gather the fallen bird. I watch you stroke its ivory belly as if it were your child, watch what you cannot withhold. —Edythe Haendel Schwartz

SVR 7

Denmark Standing on a country road fields of rye, brush stroke trees in the distance sturdy five-year-old legs and my navy cotton skirt.

I am a blonde blue bell in clunky shoes walking where my mother longed to see me longed to find her past recaptured on the boxy Brownie camera, circa 1961.

(Oh how she told me of the smells the early mornings pale skied tint of northern landscape deep held textures of this place.)

This farm, this stonehouse barnyard these pigs, these walnut wardrobes The chicken huts the bacon grease the aquavit and beer.

I was happy to inhale it to curtsey to these tall thin frames who smoked and laughed and stroked big dogs and scrubbed potatoes our of doors.

One day I found a baby bird dead under a massive vine scrawny like those women full of premonition.

I watched a sow give birth at night to viscous panting babies and in the morning on the block a dead runt flayed and stinking.

Denmark is mortality.

Bog-men with their ground-down dentures stomachs full of rye and currant-seed.

Female shamans long hair braided knowing all the herb to feed their men.

They say it is a tame place now safe from all but suicide but I have seen the “little� mermaid thrash her tail, and swallow snapshot time. —Donna Rudolph

SVR 8

The Smell on the Church Bus My mom made me have Holly sleep over one Saturday night, and she slept all night on my cat instead, and killed it.

There’s something wrong with your cat, she said, pointing to his stiff body, stiffer than any other dead thing I ever came across, stiffer than dead birds, a bat in the alley, a skeletal fluff of something near the edge of our street, and some squirrels.

I didn’t want to touch him, not because he was dead, but because I could tell his petrified, raised paws tried to push her large body off his and because I knew he had to have smelled her until he died, all his breaths breathing in that smell, until it rubbed off on his fur and he smelled liked her.

I still had to go to church. Everyone knew if I wasn’t there, since my dad was a deacon and also drove the Church Bus. Dad made me sit by Holly that Sunday, as if her killing my cat wasn’t enough.

She hummed a tune I didn’t recognize until I told her she smelled like shit.

—Melissa Beery

SVR 9

Unheard Symphony Eyes closed, I exist only as a vibration in a world of pure sound Pervading the cosmos, finite tones resonate throughout space echoing into infinity Removing the mystery from coincidence frequencies blend and absorb each other harmonizing into universal key Opening my eyes, I will trust in this noise, even if they call it God —Shawnte Orion

SVR 10

Hourglass The grosbeak perched on an apple tree in late afternoon that suddenly takes to flight and leaves an ocean-blue plume attached to a branch, twitching like a finger, must be, if anything, representative of an hourglass breaking; the world sudden and beautiful and fast and everywhere, and is probably strangely akin to that marvelous instant in infancy. When the infant closes his eyes at night for the first time, accepting his small place in this strange world— an old man down the road, heavy hands lightening, graciously giving up his own. —Jeff Whitney

SVR 11

Fish Walk, Astoria, NY, June 2006

—R.C. Miller

SVR 12

Zapad (Valentine) Sounds coming in on the wind.

Indecipherable noises.

The dust of conversations, the history of affairs dragged through the snow on the sole of a jackboot.

You left it there, the heart wandered to a different shore.

Shadows deflected at the border.

I have seen them floating like bottles in the ocean.

I had wanted to be a soldier for you, find your cause and leap to its defense.

Even barricaded in this tiny republic, however hopeless it becomes, not leave it to things signed by kings and queens.

Sounds are coming in on the wind.

The noise of metal and voices dragging through the flapping wings.

Even if the range is insignificant, remember to melt down your ring for me; let all our promises be one last bullet. ( Moscow, 14 February 2005) —Alan Jude Moore

SVR 13

The Likeness of a Sigh I. Thou talk’st of nothing… True, I talk of love.

Romeo Montague was officially stalking her.

“Rosaline,” he panted as he caught up to her. “I live only to die with you.”

She jabbed him in the arm with her fan. “Go away.”

“Please,” said the boy, rubbing the sore spot under his sleeve. “A moment of your time.”

“You’ve had your moment and you’ve said nothing new.” She started walking again, slightly faster. The early summer heat made her daily strolls through Verona slightly less enjoyable. The Montague boy deciding that he was in love with her was more annoying.

Every day, she walked a different route through town, and every day the smallest Montague would find her, no matter the time or place. Yesterday, he found her at the fountain, near dusk. The day before, on the bridge, mid-afternoon. Last week, he’d found her in the woods at twilight. Today, she had awoken especially early and gone out with her lady’s maid to the market. Pounds of meat, sweating cheeses, and stale bread weren’t exciting, but it was better than being locked inside all day.

He jogged around to stand in front of her, his dark brown curls bobbing. Rosaline had no choice but to stop short. Folding her arms and peering around him— which wasn’t difficult, as he stood slightly shorter than she—Mercutio (the cad, she thought) stood leaning against an apple cart, crunching a pippin, a broad smile stamped upon his face.

“Mercutio, show some mercy and stop this,” she called over the top of Romeo’s head.

This only made him smile wider, a sadistic twinkle in his eye. “O, lady. Who am I to get in the way of true love? And of such high quality entertainment?”

She grit her teeth and looked down her nose. “Go home, Romeo,” she said, firmly. “If my brother sees you anywhere near me, you know that you won’t live to see adult height.”

He stepped closer to her, a wistful smile teasing his mouth. “Let Tybalt do to me what he will. I would brave all of the rings of Hell for you.”

“Tybalt could do worse to you than Dante could have imagined.” Her words came out lighter than she’d intended. Romeo moved in closer still, catching the crook of her elbow in his hand.

“Meet me, Rosaline. Meet me alone. Without your lady’s maid staring at me from the wine vendor, without Mercutio looming, without the bustle of the city. In the forest, like before?”

She shook her head and shoved away from him. “I will not fuel our families’ war, little Montague. Do your part and stay away from me.”

Her lady’s maid was starting to creep in closer to them, tearing herself away from the wine vendors. Rosaline began to walk in the opposite direction, towards home. Romeo kept in step with her.

“There is no one who can match your beauty, Rosa.”

“No one calls me that,” she muttered.

“See,” he said, grinning madly. “I have already made positive changes in your life. We’re making progress. Tomorrow, we will work on you saying yes to seeing me.”

She maintained her focus on the road ahead, on the various vendors and foods.

“So, until I agree to meet you, you’re going to continue to follow me?”

“You’re nervous about upsetting your family. I understand that.”

“You obviously don’t,” she snapped. “And you won’t until you’re on the end SVR 14

of Tybalt’s blade.”

He continued as though she hadn’t spoken, walking in front of her. He stopped, taking her hand in both of his. His hands were smaller than hers, soft and pudgy like pastry.

“But I would risk life and limb to be near you and I will spend every day on every calendar until the end of eternity trying to convince you of my love.” He gave her hand a light squeeze and let it drop back to her side.

“Tomorrow,” he said, without question, before turning on his heel and striding away. She watched as he left the market with Mercutio, who gave her a lascivious wink over his shoulder. She always had liked his brother Valentine better. He wasn’t such a stain on society.

II. Prick love for pricking.

Sex was war—a blind attack of spit and flesh. Combined they equaled nothing but breath, sweat, and curses. (Fottere! Sì! Dio!) He fought in favor of her staying. He fought for every proposal of marriage.

He fought in the very name of love. Every frantic thrust was in the name of Eros.

On the opposing side, she fought in favor of flying, of a life without marriage, of the fleeting moment.

He collapsed on her chest, resting his mass of hair on her collarbone. Profile pressed between her breasts, his perfectly straight nose wheezed shallow breaths, sending involuntary chills up her back. His hands wandered across the rise and fall of her hips.

“I live to die only with you,” he hummed into her flesh.

She groaned and closed her eyes. “Don’t ruin this moment, Rometto.”

“Come away with me, Rosaline,” said the boy (boy, she thought, he is a year my senior), propping himself up on his elbows to look at her. His eyes were wide beneath an expanse of long lashes, almost giving him the innocence of a doe. “You will be my queen, wherever we go, and I will be your scepter.”

“Why go anywhere?” she sighed, trying to ignore the hope in those giant eyes.

“When you are already the jester in my court?”

“I am whatever pleases you, my dove, my angel, my goddess.” He kissed the line of her jaw, the beginnings of midday stubble gently ripping at her skin. “I would be the smudge on your mirror if it meant that I could look on you forever.”

“My family would kill you for even speaking my name. You stay longer than is safe, longer than is sane.”

“Marry me, Rosaline,” he said heavily into her ear. “Enough with this feud, with this silly vow of yours to never marry. Throw out both of these flimsy promises and stay with me. I know this friar—” “This feud is not ours to correct.”

“O, but your brother may uphold it. Good Tybalt who will stab blindly at any who dare say an unkind word of the Capulets.”

“And you will be his next victim if you are found here. Go, Romeo. Find your trousers and get back to your family. Benvolio can only keep your barking mad Mercutio at bay for so long.”

“Meet me again?”

“Why?” she asked. “You will only ask me to marry you again.”

“I will ask every day until you say yes.”

“Then, for once, I am thankful for my mortality.”

"Meet me again," he stressed, unmoving from her chest.

"I never meet you, young Montague. You always find me, whether I ask you to or not."

SVR 15

"Then I will find you again," he grinned, smashing his mouth into hers before hopping up to find his clothes. "You are more nymph than angel, aren't you? Always running."

"And you are more bloodhound than boy. Now, go, or I will grow a brain and lock myself away from you.”

III. On, Lusty Gentlemen.

Mercutio had no use for her, something he had made no secret when their paths would cross. No doubt descended from gladiators, Mercutio was tall and quarrelsome. It was assumed that he was roguishly handsome by the amount of girls that followed him around like a twittering, eye-batting plague (in spite of him ignoring them to a suspicious degree). If you caught him with his mouth shut (which was rare, to say the absolute least), he had the good looks of a provider, a warrior. But his mouth was foul (something that Rosaline could have looked past or even enjoyed, if he knew discernment) and always moving. It wasn’t only that he seemed infatuated with his own voice, but also that he was afraid of what would happen in a silence. Romeo found him jovial, whereas Rosaline found his endless ramblings and needless vulgarity to be offensive.

“He should be locked away with the rest of the lunatics,” she’d once said, watching Mercutio prance away from them in the town square, with a laughing Benvolio in tow.

“He’s harmless,” Romeo said with a frown. Serious looks make him painfully hard to resist, she thought. If only he meant the feeling behind them. He could set his mouth into a frown and say a strong word, but, inside, he was still just a giddy child, chasing dreams.

“He’s raving! Have you ever considered that he’s possessed?”

“By what?” Romeo’s frown left and he broke into that dazzling smile. “Saint Nicholas? Bacchus? He is of good humor.”

Rosaline stayed silent. She knew better than to try to provoke the boy. Mercutio was one who jested to wound. She could not abide him, even if his blood ran similar to hers.

IV. Come, and crush a cup of wine..

Rosaline and Tybalt entered their uncle’s home. Dinner always followed dancing, if it was served at all. Drinks took priority. Everyone was deep into their cups as Rosaline scanned the room for the first time, and Tybalt immediately tried to catch up, a cup of wine spilled into his mouth hastily.

“Cousins!” greeted Valentine. They were only distantly cousins, although she tended to accept Valentine as family with more ease than she did his brother, the dreaded Mercutio.

Whereas his brother’s smile was roguish and bawdy, Valentine’s was reserved, close lipped, and sincere. He clasped hands with Tybalt.

“Valentine,” Tybalt said to his old sparring partner. “welcome home, sir! We thought you’d left us for good. Where have you been hiding?”

“I am a married man now, sir. My life is consumed by Silvia.”

“What light is light,” mumbled Tybalt into his cup.

Valentine looked down at Rosaline and bowed his head to her. “And good that it were; the little bud has blossomed into a rose. Rosaline, you are a vision.”

She smiled and thanked him quietly, her eyes scanning the room. It was a blur of drunken dancers. She snapped her fan open to keep the sweaty air from settling on her skin.

“Yes, indeed, indeed,” muttered Tybalt. “And the youngest Montague has cast

SVR 16

his eye on her.”

“And yet you have allowed him to keep his eyes? Why, Tybalt, could it be that you’ve grown up while I was in exile?”

Rosaline snorted behind her fan. “Hardly.”

“The boy is master of the slip,” grumbled Tybalt through his clenched teeth.

“When I find him, I will set him straight.”

“Does he do this with all of your suitors?” asked Valentine in a mock whisper, smile widening.

“If only he would. I do not intend to marry.”

“A waste,” he said gently. “that no man will ever have such a flower to come home to.”

“I couldn’t help but notice, Valentine,” began Tybalt loudly. He set his empty cup down on a table and steepled his hands, his fingertips turning white. “that your brother has chosen the side of the Montagues.”

Valentine’s face fell into its hardened lines. “Mercutio is young and stupid. He has gone against our father’s wishes.”

“And yet there has been no effort set against him?”

“What effort would you suggest?” said Valentine. Rosaline knew that it was a direct challenge. It must have been hours since Tybalt had drawn his sword to threaten someone. Two cups of wine in and his palms must have been itching for an unprovoked fight.

She caught a glimpse of brown curls and sighed. How could she not have anticipated Romeo finding his way here? A party was the perfect opportunity to follow her and feel adventurous for being in mixed Capulet company. He must have snuck in—with Mercutio, no doubt.

She excused herself from her brother and Valentine with a bob of her head and followed the hint of curls sneaking around the edges of the hall. Once she found him, he would fawn on her, steal her a cup of the best wine, feed her pieces of bread drenched in sweet oil. He would call her Rosa, even though she always tried to stave off the nickname.

The hall was full of people, all drunkenly swaying to the music being played, laughing boisterously, clapping each other on the back. The invitation had listed only close family, but Rosaline recognized nearly no one as she darted through the throng.

She’d lost sight of Romeo. No sign of Mercutio or Benvolio. Her uncle’s home was full of dark corners for young lovers to sneak into. Romeo would try to convince her to lift her skirts to him and she would remind him of how ridiculous an idea it was, how irresponsible. By the time she told him how risky, how dangerous it would be for the youngest Montague to be caught with the Capulet rose, the baby sister of the King of Cats, he would have her pressed against the wall, his mouth holding hers captive, her heart racing in her chest.

She skirted the edge of the crowd, peeking in the dark corners for any sign of Romeo. A flash of brown curls caught her eye from across the room. Her feet moved her faster towards him.

And then, she stopped.

There, leaned against the rich, red folds of the curtains leading into the foyer, Romeo was smiling at the youngest of the Capulet cousins, the young lady of the house. He towered over her. One of his arms wrapped around her waist, one hand folded in hers, as though in prayer.

There was a moment, just then, when the clocks all stopped, when Rosaline’s lungs stopped expanding. Romeo and the littlest Capulet were a moving picture, something that was automatically too perfect. If Rosaline remembered correctly,

SVR 17

Juliet was nearly fourteen, the age when a dreamer like Romeo was ideal. At fourteen, his schemes and theatrics would come off as passion and worldliness. Juliet was quiet and unassuming; Romeo was determined to convince everyone to play a part in his epic love stories.

They swayed softly, even though the music in the hall beat a courante. Somewhat fitting, Rosaline supposed, as it was a courtship dance.

The pair leaned closer together, blending at the mouth. Juliet’s hand, so slender and pale when compared to Romeo’s swarthy complexion, slid up the boy’s neck. Her delicate little nails tangled gently in his hair, mindlessly twirling a lock around her finger. His hand held her by the small of her back, taking up most of the space he found there.

Suddenly, Rosaline couldn’t help but feel very old.

—Lily Anderson

SVR 18

Rain Again For me, rain was a run of luck gone bad, closing the evening windows called Saturday nights of my youth.

I grew long hair and rode that black sheep of a motorcycle, smoldering Summa Cum Laude.

And along the way, lived a sense of direction only a boulevard could give.

Let it rain, I thought, the rushing drops habituated on the concrete, on the asphalt, where someone might have snug the silver glistening spokes, or the smeared ink lyrics of LA Times on the slick drive, to hear the rolling gallop of the clutch and the aging heart, finally beginning their damp, rhythmic commute. —Gordon Preston

SVR 19

Waiting Rooms They talk of days after the war of the days before Those disembodied days that once danced in the sun Others talk of sisters in Virginia trading recipes of delicious cakes Solitary baking at dawn till gathering birds fly off in a swarm swoop

Still others talk of grandchildren Of their faces chubby and rosy, faces like cherubs Their eyes are nebulae, are birthing of themselves And I sit among the blinded, the youngest of them all No walking cane or skin grappling with gravity In my late twenties, my eyes are wild with ash One with shrieks inside it, the other smothered in soot I wish I were in another place Where raging sunlight is graceful The words of books, glimmering in just the right angle Instead madly I wait, in the scented dark of waiting rooms Hoping one day the music of my eyes bloom —Radames Ortiz

SVR 20

Bottleneck Sleek. . . . smooth. . . . wet cylindrical offering, enticing, with liquid joy, pain and escape, in opulent shades of red and white, that dash across the tongue.

Lips long for the nectar you possess.

Your nape intoxicates.

You unleash your poison, sweet aroma, bold, uninhibited.

Like a train, I will ride the high until the sun rises again.

No restraints, no pretending; just cool moments of discovery, until you are gone, empty.

I reach for you.

You slipped away.

Now I am gone— empty.

—Juanita J. Martin

SVR 21

Reading Proust While it Rains a season of formality with unpredictability showers, it pours, breaks the day in two, delicacy drenches the news paper, dreams blown away. get ready to shear it off am unpredictable cliff, hang on to what’s known stay put, believe the unbelievable, otherwise, you might fall. unmask your marrow, and so, think about music not yet written, by noon the bananas have developed speckles, look indigestible. try reasoning with tropical heat that wilts your frailty to oblivion, you long for food, to stretch, to cavort with your mind’s appetite, you try reading Proust, adventure with words, when will it stop, you eat a cold peach, by dinner you’re sure the rain will continue.

—Ann Privateer

SVR 22

Tuff Times

窶認rancisco Farias

SVR 23

If Kubrick Had Been a Dentist River dam astride damn river treading a mouth dreading adrift spreading admiring the pits in seat in tooth in stomach. Roiling and cool. Greenblue latex stretched a dam across to keep the pooling. Elsewhere, pink and white.

Teeth hovering isolated four marching lonely in a row. A hollow. A cheek. Apart and aching now with tiny ropes flanking the contacts. Needle and fat tongue. Lolling and searching and catching. Between blue flashing made white with light held against and sadly. It is snowing. This is good for you. —Shannon Carson

SVR 24

Mateo They pronounced your death on voicemail They took your children away They fed you syringes filled with angry junk Curled spoons you heated On wintry midnights They shackled you to backyard porches They broke you under an ellipsis of stars They sold you to the calculus of need

They dragged you through filthy ditches They branded you They shamed you They swelled your veins into a network of slums Your eyes once crimson and brilliant Like gilded narcotics Your smiles once twisted and meandering Like wild foliage Only to become weights of whelps Hung heavy on your face

They flogged you with silence So you could scream for them They pointed with pride To the alleys you haunted for them They put dime bags in your hands So you could long for them What from the neighborhood where they’ve made you What from the world they’ve coaxed from you What angers them Making them resentful, vicious What panics them Into seizures of woozy clouds Today they shout curses at you But I only hear your long, retreating Breath So ashamed, so beautiful, so lost Your burdened voice Clashing against blunt shingles of the night —Radames Ortiz

SVR 25

Thinking of H.D. 1. A camelia bud, tight fisted petal-packed and round as Ariadne's ball of journeying yarn.

All its roads lead to blooming if the bush is tended well.

2. Some women don't like faded flowers.

I've often preferred them; the curious angles they dry toward ways their colors darken, intensify.

Blooming flowers dizzy me; sliding down their wide openings I lose clear sight.

As for buds I've known them little until now; cut flowers don't need tending. —Donna Rudolph

SVR 26

A San Francisco Love Story She has no alibi for her laughter as his fingers trace circles around her grimy knees and he tries to memorize her blue eyes that have made boys think of sex since the fifth grade he makes her bed in hopes she’ll let him sleep in it again as she places half a joint under a red devil head she claims Hemingway’s ghost inhabited on Easter when Jesus stayed buried under the weight of her sins she tells him the fly on the wall is an ex-lover doesn’t say she wants to ride bareback across the Mojave Desert her voice twisting his name into the Joshua trees Leaving sun-bleached coyote bones nowhere to hide

—Ciara Shuttleworth

SVR 27

The Hustle I can’t hustle the streets, bullets with name tags and dirty police.

I can’t hustle my body.

Not because it’s sacred holiness, but because the work is mindless.

I hustle with my pen against white paper, until it bleeds black or blue ink.

I hustle to think, and create a masterpiece.

So my son may inherit a dynasty.

I hustle for sanity, I hustle to breathe, I hustle to live, I hustle to be more than a single black mother.

I hustle with ink.

—Mayia Ogbebor

SVR 28

Abstract Expressionism I was holding tight onto one of Pollock’s droplets Hellbent for the threadbare splatter of self To anoint the canvas I was brilliant I was at the right Tome in the plentiful time in the effervescent There in mid-creation not the painter nor the painting I was purified energy of intent I was physics and pigment Hurtling towards a new paradigm a purpose in impact Exciting to find the self in that moment before explosion Eidolon gone eschaton, rogue wave take me down into The known medium I gladly sacrifice myself in the act Of the dervish avatar creatrix arête and the purest deed Hurled hurtling towards the top of the basilica of possibles To spit forth for that glorious nanosecond before capture Of canvas renders you but an expression - before then You were the true kinesis of adamant passion briefly Aviating the negative space before leaving the artifice the evidence —Joseph Milford

SVR 29

Backstage The actress drops her entire costume In plain view, while A protesting moon reflects.

Both soak in warm silky mineral water.

Then leap across the room to the sink, Shave everything up, as Salmon spawn upstream, and Lonely eyes ascend the balcony.

All in a grip of travel, Where the sky is a naked Standing ovation. —Gordon Preston

SVR 30

(Full of Grace) I have seen the virgins on bloodied knees Bead by bead, prayer by prayer, inching their way over the rough hewn stone of the square.

Hems in tatters, skin stripped bare like the hopes and dreams they leave behind.

They make their pilgrimage to you, Oh Blessed Mother!

(Queen of them all/Virgin Mother/child bride) They come to you to keep promises others forced them to make; (In my thoughts and in my words) To pay for sins both imagined and real (In what I have done and in what I have failed to do) They ask you, ever virgin Silent and steely, watching another cobblestone courtyard awash in a river of blood and tears.

They implore you, blessed mother, Still silent, unyielding Aglow in the rapture of their adoration and pain.

They beg you, queen of all that is chaste and holy Righteous, on high to forgive them their sins (especially those committed upon them – for surely the fault is theirs, sayeth the world) and protect them (from themselves) Bless them (for surely they will need it) Guide them (the world ravenously awaits) as the daughters you never had.

Love them That they might learn to love each other (and, one day, even themselves). —Jessica Neasbitt

SVR 31

La Machine Infernale I am a machine with emotions, parked at the gates of hell where I have come alive to plow the fertile fields of hatred.

You are witness to my wrath at Wall Street, 1920, the Stern Gang’s sabotaged truce in Haifa, witness at Algiers, Saigon, the ton of TNT slammed into the Marine barracks in Beiruit.

I am your ride into oblivion. I am damage to your morale and panic in the street.

See the hot red blood smeared across the lanes.

Listen to how I’ve serenaded these cities with my short concerts of dynamite: Belfast and the boys of the IRA, Colombo’s Tamil campaign, the soft targets of voters in Johannesberg, Lima’s flattened Beverly Hills.

And what about Nairobi, Karachi, New Delhi?

And one more – Oklahoma City.

I am the poor man’s air force, my friend.

BOOM – we are traveling together inside your last heartbeat, dreaming of our tangled remains. The infinite is humming like it does when you are lost along the levee road driving through the Delta in the middle of summer, everything outside of you erupting into the heat.

Look at how the leaves on the trees resemble eyes, judging you for the conflict you unknowingly bring to them, you who were designed for joy like I was, my friend.

I was a shiny metal container built so that my driver could transcend the ordinary wallpaper of the world by eclipsing the mind. Bliss.

As profound and serene as the last few days of sky.

—Tim Kahl

SVR 32

To That Home Which May Be The met physicists would have you believe That what has never been kissed, touched, or tasted Cannot be missed - skip your stones across the abyss And never hear them sink. The gyroscope you try To find your footing upon has spun the wheel of fortune And now you are the hanged man. They will tell you The world has been fully explored, its blistered suffocating Heights and crushing fathomed depths, yet you are sure You have been nowhere until you have been inside her.

You have traveled through every poem and treatise, Every theorem and canticle, every lyric and decibel, Yet no sweet sound soothes the thanatopsis like her Voice at night. You wake with nothing next to you, A cool sweat on you bare shoulders, midwinter Outside the window at your headboard. That which Has never been known at your side as your breath Finds rhythm in hers and haunts the hardwood floors And lingers, lithe out the door into the woods Across the hoarfrost and under the fences and over The sycamore tops its eternal whisper, the vesper Upon contrail never to be captured. Could longing Be measured in the length of her legs, in the crook Of her beckoning finger, in the curl of her tongue, In the seductive scent never been known but only imagined?

Many would have you believe that this one never kissed, Never known, never touched should not, could not Be missed, but they are wrong. The palpable absence Becomes the drug that drives you to madness - in this You find you have built the home of her already, in you The wind-reaped cabin atop a stern crag, its door ajar. —Joseph Milford

SVR 33

Juarez The difficult part of loneliness is the friends you keep. I traveled to El Paso for another wedding, another sick reminder of my loneliness, and the years gone by so fast. I skipped out on the rehearsal dinner; took a cab to the border. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, maybe nothing, maybe something bigger than myself, bigger than all the years, all the days; all the nothing involved in those days and years. I crossed the border and walked the back roads of Juarez as if I lived there, as if I belonged on those cabbage streets filled with cramped bodegas packed ten deep with prostitutes and junkies stuck on rough cut cocaine shipped up from the basin of the Pacaya’s in Guatemala, or maybe up from the coast near the volcanic field of Mascota.

I found a cantina that smelled like a diaper rash, and there I sat with my legs crossed staring at the sickness on the stage before me. The platform--not much more than a malfunction of 2x4’s--sat in a corner under house lights for an art show unlike any art I happened upon before. Mexicans all around me jumped and hollered hopped-up on mescaline and tequila. Chewing tobacco dripped from their lips making puddles in the dirt floor. Tourists stood about hovering foot-to-foot, cringing, covering mouths to hide wide smiles. Giddy cell phone chatter swept to the rafters, husky voices describing the inhumane attraction to friends in New York and Tokyo.

My table sat at the center of the place, and I was engulfed by the white glow of black lights; hay strands floating and bright in the turn of a color-mix machine.

The sharp sound of billiards came from the opposite corner where a man, filthy and American, propped his foot upon a broken fold-down chair as he worked his left hand around the bulge in his pants. A white-bearded man in a golf shirt stood at the foot of the stage with his pants to his knees, his fist jabbing with the rock of his hips; back and forth, and he screamed out, “Momma said you didn’t do it!”

“Mr. Jackson,” she whispered into my ear, “Aqui,” her accent dripped across my senses, the touch of her breasts warm against my shoulder. She slid a plate onto the table, a buffet of intoxicants.

“Mi hermano say,” she stumbled, “tuyo… una vez… you like?” From the plate she picked a syringe filled with a polluted brown liquid. Drops fell from the tip leaving a creeping trail. She took my right arm and worked a frayed rope around my bicep pulling tight.

“Gentle,” she said, moving her tongue around the word as she slipped the needle through my skin. I couldn’t feel it, it didn’t faze me, but then I felt the rush; the cold wind. I leaned my head back, closed my eyes to the profane attraction. The rush was pure bringing me to sweat. I became stiff with the confusion of my senses.

“Aqui,” the woman put a muddy glass to my lips and I drank, mouth parched from an evening of firsts. Her arm brushed the uneasy lump in my pants. She noticed my growth and ran two fingers across the head. She pinched me slow and soft with a synthetic semblance of love. She crawled under the table and she was not dreaming. This was her reality, her known universe. She unzipped me and I was exposed to the hot air, and the dirt, and the Mexican bubble gum stuck to the table boards, and then she took me into her mouth, warm and moist, toothy. Heroin bum -rushed through my system like a low-level punk in a mosh pit. My eyes flashed open and I caught sight of the sickness all around me. I breathed deep taking it all in, and I could smell only a hint of Palm Olive and horse shit.

The woman on stage was blonde and Brazilian. She brandished a braided whip, a cheap prop, three dollars American on every Juarez street corner. She hid a heavy limp with an ascetic saunter, yelling out in Portuguese, sin dripping from the curve of her body, vagina bald and loose, her ass stretched and torn. Her breasts SVR 34

were large and cheese spotted. Her companion, named Julio, muscles large and cumbersome, flicked his head, tossing back a long mane of hair that fell against his shoulders. Julio brayed, not like a donkey, but because he was a donkey. I found my way to the donkey show.

I watched as the Brazilian nudist shook her ass in Julio’s snout. She turned and slipped her fingers down Julio’s neck and then further down and across his stomach. She crouched beside the nervous beast, and reached underneath to grasp him there. She rubbed him slowly until he grew thick and long. She took him into her mouth. I watched her head bob with bestiality. I watched as she switched positions like it was Sunday and church was at noon. I watched her bend over ready to take it from behind. On cue the donkey mounted. Blood ran down her leg from a hoof scratch.

The woman at my knees slipped a hand between my legs, and deep, underneath me, and she found that spot that becomes more sensitive in pleasure. She fingered the puckered rim, rubbed it softly. It took only a moment to fill her mouth with seed. I slumped with the release, so tired, so scared. What the fuck? It was all I could think. A flash occurred. A Japanese man stood over me with a camera. He said something incoherent.

“Did you get that,” I asked, “did you get all of that you sorry piece of shit?”

He smiled and showed the digital shot to his companion, a short Jap in short shorts.

I stood up, and zipped my pants over my fading erection. The prostitute grabbed me, pulled my pants back down. I tried to scramble away, but again she took the length of me in her hand and gave it a series of rapid pumps. I began another slow rise as she thrust a finger deep into my rectum. I threw my head back unsure if it felt good, “Get off!” I yelled, “get out! Please,” the prostitute shoved her tongue up my cavity. I didn’t want it to feel good, to be something fresh, and new, “this was all a bad idea! I’m so sorry, please stop. Don’t do it anymore,” I tried to walk away, but the drug made me gummy, the torrent of pleasure giving me weakness in the effort.

I collapsed in a heap upon the dirt floor. I was never much of a fighter.

“Meho,” the prostitute whispered as she fingered me softly, “tired, come.”

Two large Mexicans grabbed me by the legs, manhandled me across the smoky bar, ass open, and running, collecting dirt, and debris. The Mexicans took me to a dark room, tossed me onto a feather mattress. I lay there for a moment catching stars in the window. The world seemed forever. The distance so great. My mother was out there somewhere watching this. Maybe she was floating on that cloud I spotted, the one slipping past the crescent in the sky. Maybe she was kicked back with the remote in hand watching my first fuck in Hi-Def, switching back to the Knicks game for updates.

The prostitute crawled on top of me and I got my first full look at her in the moonlight. She was older, her skin dry, her breasts loose and pale. Her teeth like grape Pop-Rocks from the discount store. Her hair was beautiful, dark and seductive, her body thick and tough. She smelled of baby oil, and spiced fish. She mounted me and gently slid herself along my length. My chest heaved. I wiped at my face, and then I reached up and drew a finger across her left nipple. She lowered her face towards mine so that I could taste her while she moved with a slow and easy groove.

“Hold me,” I whispered.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and snuggled me tightly. Her breasts felt light against my chin, and I found comfort there. Again, my seed spilled into this woman and we lay together damp, and torn. She brushed her fingers through my hair, and I could see the grief in her eyes. Sometimes good people do bad things. ***

SVR 35

Morning came fast. Sunlight crept in through the broken window. My eyes throbbed like Master of Puppets on vinyl. Something vibrated next to my ear. There was a tune playing with the vibration, but it wasn’t Metallica, it was something off the Madcap Laughs.

“What,” I answered. The cell phone smelled of feces.

“What the fuck, man? Where are you?”

“Across the border,” I said.

“Still?”

“Still.”

“Get a cab and get the fuck over here. You’ve got one hour! Jesus, Jared! Are you going insane?”

“I think so. Paul, please. I’ll hurry,” I shut the phone and leaned back on the filthy mattress. I gave the new day a good stretch as sounds crept in from the window, children laughing, an errant howl of a dog, the deep bray of Julio in the distance. I stood up, and fumbled with my clothing. I looked about the room. Snake skins hung from the ceiling, casks of old beer held up a life-sized portrait of Julio; eyes full of sarcasm.

I checked my back pocket for my wallet. It was still there. I fumbled through it. My credit cards were accounted for. The hundred-dollar bill sat rigid in its correct place. I checked my shirt pocket. Only two of the four fifties were missing. I shook my head wondering why. I opened the door and walked back through the cantina.

One of the large Mexicans from the night before lounged at the bar; eyes halfclosed. I tossed him a fifty.

“Tequila,” I said. The Mexican poured me a double. “El Paso? Drive? Me?” I pointed north, as if I knew where north was. The burly Mexican nodded slowly. He passed me a glass plate with three thick lines of white powder. I snorted them one after the other. The drip in my throat made me sick. The Mexican called out to someone in another room. The second large Mexican stepped out from a hidden door then walked outside, and I followed.

The wind was cool and comforting, the morning bright, and galactic. I looked to my left and found Julio grazing in a wooden pen. I felt an odd desire to give the beast a friendly pat, some sort of kind gesture. I stood there for a minute confused by the emotion of it all. The burly Mexican gave the horn a push and I jumped in with a thought of relief that the sticky prostitute from the night before finished grazing before I stepped outside.

I waited thirty-years for the right girl to come along; the last twelve as an adult, and alone, in an apartment littered with empty Starbucks cups, sacks of McDonalds stuffed with sacks from Burger King, the smell of it all lingering in the air around me. I had too many friends, and they had too many weddings; too many days of faux-happiness, hallway conversations about other people’s love, and other people’s plane tickets to completion, and pleasure. As with everything, in time, loneliness evolves, and then you find yourself in Mexico with a finger in your ass. I tried to shake the night off, put it all behind me, but I knew it would be one of those things that populates in the brain forever; maybe at dinner with grandma, maybe in Europe sitting on a bench older than my country, or when I meet the right girl I waited for so long.

Some things just don’t go away.

—J. A. Goolsby

SVR 36

Fine Art One Evening I saw a woman Lick a painting And then buy it Ten thousand dollars Tasted Like a Rembrandt She said I was so stunned That when no one was looking I too Tried this I walked up to the same painting And before the curator Could take it off the wall I stuck out my tongue And licked My taste buds Recoiled And the flavor of lead Stayed in my mouth For weeks I guess We just don’t have the same taste In fine art —Cameron Mosbarger

SVR 37

Two Minutes in Hell There echoes in that room of the belly wishes gone belly gone echoes of wishes gone wrong. Too much pink and wounded whelk and blood. That seminal fluid. Milk of our bones to wring us out till there's no more left and what then. In that hollow a house perhaps a mountain perhaps some time unfurling backward. The opacity of milksap and blood. Warring factions. What must it be for those to whom proof of life is not disaster. —Shannon Carson

SVR 38

Field at the Side of the Road/View from the Highway Tents and tarps woven together to make mansions over molehills among the tulle reeds on the edge of society, surrounded by cop cars parked in the mud; they’ve got ‘em lined up single-file, walkin’ – hands to the back chin to the chest – when the bulldozer at the edge starts up and moves, and one from the middle stops and turns: what the fuck! Hey, that’s my stuff! and now more of them are stopping and looking but before anyone can yell anything else the first one gets rapped good and hard on the back of the head with a flashlight so he’s on his knees and makin’ a lot of noise shakin’ his head about – jerked to his feet by both arms and told his stuff is on city property not to resist again, then shoved back into line, now completely moving again towards the squad cars.

Two officers walk side by side away from the cars and the line, headed for a lone single-room tent near the edge of the field bordering the highway.

—Andrew Killmer

SVR 39

Shapes Shapes turn in a moonless night small, ebony curls, miniature black birds at play heard before seen after a beam ignites their sheen, then dissolves to gray shapes in a moonless night, big, elongations moving noiseless like flight forming before life was lit into shapes on a moonless night —Ann Privateer

SVR 40

in kansas city bukowski called me up on the telephone last night, drunk and pissed off, lonely, trying to convince me to come over just for a little while. you know, for a few hours. for an old rake, he can be very seductivei made it across the tracks, to his side of town, where i do not go by myself anymore. after the fifth of cheap bourbon and a collected 32 cigarettes: 17 of mine and 15 of his, he asked if I would say hello from him to you. i said sure thing, toughguy. and felt his eyes on me as i walked into the kitchen. —Iris Appelquist

SVR 41

Untitled 5

—Erin Allen

SVR 42

The Black Bitch of Herald, California They smiled when he killed the widow under the awning at the front porch of the cabin; It was the bulbous figure, the red-bellied hourglass and the long-limbed blackness of her silhouette that gave her away; A think cob of spindled web, stuck to a splintered, jutting wooden truss, glistened with shining sparkles of sun and refracted light, twinkling like star dust amidst the tiny drops of dawn’s morning dew; Gathering to himself a river rock, from the bare blanketed flower bed, he thrust his arm upward, shot-putting the stone into the black, dangling maiden, shaking the wooden truss, loosening chips of aged burgundy paint; “See if that bitch bites anyone else,” he boasted, with an emptyhearted, unflinching, ill-metered drawl: he spoke with the confident rightousness of a Sunday preacher, but with a cold, emotionless, murderous tone; She fell from her nest to the flowerless bed of rocks, where he firestamped her twisted body, and though ‘White Power’ was etched on his back in prison ink, today he beamed with pride for his rife and justified hatred.

—Tavarus Blackman

SVR 43

let the chorus ring fuck the World. real real real hard. nevermind foreplay and flowers- the World does not need you to buy it dinner before giving It up. the World is waiting to be fucked by somebody finally competent to the task. fucked in a room that smells of brewed coffee and someone having cooked something with garlic and pepper not too long beforehand, with a cigarette burning in the ashtray, the radio playing, with the lights on, with its socks on. fuck the World and inspire it to fuck back a little bit more, for a little bit longer. the World is waiting in the kitchen, in the parlor, it waiting at the corner of 37th and troost, waiting bangladesh, in paris france, waiting in saigon, in alberquerque, waiting in kansas city, in antigua; waiting on the bed made of bottle caps and broken glass or made of 5 grand in fine european linen. the World is waiting, having bathed and shaved and put makeup on its’ face, waiting for it. the World calls out your name longingly… go on—fuck the World—its got It coming. fuck the World as hard as you would you best friend’s drunk mother. fuck the World with the same kind of absurd passion it takes to fuck a stranger. fuck the World and purposefully forget to leave it your new cell number.

SVR 44

you know you want to. the World knows you want to. you know that the World knows you want to. the World knows that you know that the World knows that you know you want to. it is only a matter of time. —Iris Appelquist

SVR 45

No Amount of Letters and Numbers No amount of letters and numbers can do it I can’t give you the sway of the muni lines or the fog carving treble into stacks, foundation for dreams of rolling and if I stopped smoking and if I stopped listening and if I stopped here

aunt Kathy says morning’s coming soon and Kathy’s living on the street by choice and Kathy says we’d better keep moving cause Adam and Wiley are out serenading with poems and drums for change or trinkets like lucky 13 on a plastic skull and Kathy’s dialogue never ends and I believe it all and Kathy says I’m bust going crazy in the right place at the right time and if they let me bleed into the ocean and maybe the right song can still make me cry and maybe we all hear the door creaking back on dirty hinges from time to time —Ciara Shuttleworth

SVR 46

A Yellow Blouse and Gunpowder A blood-flecked drifter arrives at a desert outpost. The darkness is heavy with oak doors.

A widow flings salt at a mirror.

A grape-colored owl exhales against a barn window. The girl with princess-pale breasts hums a ballad for a Geronimo moon.

In the black saloon, the priest drinks the sweet blood of Jesus beneath a painting of an appaloosa.

It is the hour of brooding angels.

The drifter breaks open a bale of fresh-cut alfalfa, sets out a worn bedroll. A mad horse plunges through a graveyard. —Red Shuttleworth

SVR 47

Untitled 3

—Erin Allen

SVR 48

Montmartre Haven’t you wanted, sometimes, to walk into some painting, start a new life? The quiet blues of Monet would soothe but I don’t know how long I’d want to stay there. Today I’m in the mood for something more lively, say Lautrec’s Demimonde. I want that glitter, heavy sequin nights.

You take the yellow sunshine for tonight. I want the club scene that takes you out all night. Come on, wouldn’t you, just for a night or two? Gaslights and absinthe, even the queasy night after dawn. Wouldn’t you like to walk into Montmartre where everything you did or imagined doing was de rigueur, pre-Aids with the drinkers and artists and whores. Don’t be so P.C., so righteous you’d tell me you haven’t imagined this? Give me the Circus Fernando, streets where getting stoned was easy and dancing girls kick high.

It’s just the other side of the canvas, the thug life, a little lust. It was good enough for Van Gogh and Lautrec, Picasso. Can’t you hear Satie on the Piano? You won’t be able to miss Toulouse, bulbous lips, drool. Could you turn down a night where glee and strangeness is wide open? Think of Bob Dylan leaving Hibbing. A little Decadence can’t hurt. I want the swirl of cloth under changing colored lights, nothing square, nothing safe, want to can can thru Paris, parting animal nights, knees you can’t wait to taste flashing.

—Lyn Lifshin

SVR 49

White Elephant A child never knows The distant of a tree until Skin breaks; or art on a wall is Measured by the—space—between wooden rods.

Could there be a bird the boy reaches Towards. Slightly he moves his head, beyond the leaves, to see his favorites: An elephant, panda, or shark, To encourage hands further, on already highest bough, Can’t see the black trunk.

Modernity in its post is aware, in example, Simkin’s The Wishing Welephant, a Flint buried in wax, sighing smoke, Lies on the hump f the white elephant.

Strangled in pearls, which he can’t see, ‘Cause of his bladed tusks.

His legs huddle on a Cracked shell that’s even sweating.

Beneath he can’t see his reflection, Not in the ripples, Only coins.

—Anonymous (Notes: Greg Craola Simkins is the contemporary painter of The Wishing Elephant, presented in his expose, The Well, 17 March 2008. <sleepstodream.blogspot.com/2008/03/greg-simkinswell.html>)

SVR 50

Rust Down off the Old Porterfield Highway, just passed the Lumberyard, there’s a dirt road that leads up to the Rock Quarry. The road is hard to get up, and it’s mostly dump trucks that take it, but if you’ve got a four wheel drive, or if you walk, you can up it without too much trouble. It was a good place to go when you were a kid, real dark and mysterious. When you got to the top, there was this big, black lake of water beneath you, maybe a hundred feet down. People used to dump cars off into the water. Cars that were stolen, or reported stolen, or maybe cars that somebody had used to commit some crime and didn’t want it found. We used to sit up there and throw rocks down into the water. It was a good thing to do, when you were a kid.

There was this girl who lived in a little trailer pretty close to the quarry.

She was eleven or twelve. Her name was Allison. That’s about all I’m going to say about her name, and actually, that isn’t her name. Her real name is in my mind.

And it is a real name, just like she was a real person. As real as anything. As real as those old cars that still rust and disintegrate into the black water below. I guess she was retarded, or had Down’s Syndrome, or was a Mongoloid child or something like that. Nobody really knew what was wrong with her. Nobody really cared. She was one of those people who lived on the outskirts of town, one of those people who lived in a place that most people never cared to visit. She was a big girl, for her age, clumsy and awkward, and you would see her shuffling along the side of the highway, going to and coming from places that no one cared to know about. She went up to the quarry sometimes, but only when no one else was there.

I guess we got tired of throwing rocks off into the water. I guess that was what started it. And it started out as a joke. Just a bunch of stupid, boys bored out of their minds, caught in the stoic lethargy of a summer afternoon. I think it was Billy that said it first. Said we ought to scare Allison. (But he called her by her name. Allison is not her name.) Wouldn’t hurt nothing, he said. Just a little fun.

Everybody likes a good scare. So we followed her up there one Thursday afternoon.

There was me, Billy, Jimbo and Ellis. Ellis was carrying a big bag of those Reece’s mini cups we were going to eat later. When we got to the top, we saw her sitting cross-legged at the edge of the precipice, staring down into the black water beneath.

She must have heard us coming, because she got up clumsily and faced us. She was surprised, but she didn’t look scared. She had a face like a little child’s, like a baby’s really, and the expressions that washed across it were always innocent.

“Hello.” She said, somewhat sheepishly. When she spoke, she sounded kind of like a female version of Elmer Fudd. Kind of like a baby.

“Hey Allison,” Billy said. (Have I told you that is not her name?) “What you doing up here?”

“Nothing.” She said. “Just sitting up here. Looking at the water.”

Billy came up beside her. She watched him, with kind of an amazed look on her face, like a baby watching a mobile above a crib. He looked over the edge.

She turned to watch him.

“Be careful.” She said. “You might fall.”

“I ain’t gonna fall.” Billy said. “We come up here all the time.” He looked back at me and Jimbo and Ellis. He winked. She saw this and laughed. She put her hand over her mouth. She thought it was funny. He looked at her. “You know,” he said, “There was a train that went off into this water fifty years ago.” He started to tell her the story of this train. But he told it to her like she was a toddler.

He made all the sound effects and everything. We couldn’t keep from laughing.

And she was laughing at him and laughing at us laughing at her and her eyes never SVR 51

left his. When he finished, he said, “You know, they never did get that train out of there. And you can still see it if you look hard enough.”

“You can?” She asked, astounded.

“Yep.” Billy said. “Come here and I’ll show you.” He held his hand out to her. She took it. He brought her closer to the edge. She walked to him, watching her feet. “Now, you have to look straight down. It’s right beneath it. The sun is just right so you ought to be able to see it under the water.” She inched closer.

“That’s it.” She got right to the edge. “Now look down.”

She did, and Billy pushed her, but then grabbed her so she wouldn’t fall off. Like people do to little kids at the pool. But she screamed when he did it. And when he pulled her back, she didn’t cry, but she had this look on her face like the world had been pulled out from under her. And we laughed and laughed, and then she started to cry. Great big tears falling out of her eyes. Her nose running with snot.

Billy started telling her that we were sorry. Asked her if she wanted some candy. He took the bag of Reece’s from Ellis and dangled it before her, shook the contents loudly. When she saw it, she stopped crying, she started reaching for it, just like a little baby. Billy took it away from her.

“How about if we work a trade?” He asked.

“A trade?” She asked, her eyes never leaving the gold and brown and black bag.

“Yeah.” Billy said, and he winked at us again. “We’ll let you have this whole bag, but first you’ve got to give us something.”

She stuck her hands in her pockets. Searched them. She pulled out a little white rabbit’s foot. It was all scuffed and the keychain was broken. “I’ll give you this for it.” She said, holding it out to us.

“I don’t think that’ll do.” Billy said.

She searched her pockets again. She said, “I don’t have nothing else.”

“I think you do.” He said, and he laughed a little.

She laughed too. “What?” She asked, holding her empty hands out, shrugging her shoulders.

“Show us your tits.” He said.

She stopped laughing. She crossed her arms over her chest. “No.” She said, but she said it like a toddler says it. “Momma said never.”

“It’ll be alright.” He said. “We won’t tell your momma. We won’t tell nobody, right boys?” He turned to us. We all nodded.

“Momma said never.” She repeated.

Billy opened the bag. Pulled one of the cups out. Unwrapped the foil.

Held it out to her. “Looks good, don’t it?” He rolled it between his fingers. He put it on his tongue. Rolled it around. Then squashed it between his teeth, peanut butter oozing out between them. She stared at him, hypnotized.

“You won’t tell nobody?” She asked.

“Nope. We sure won’t. You can trust us.” His words were glued together with peanut butter and chocolate.

She looked around. She looked down at herself. She took her hands away. And then, she pulled her shirt up quickly, and then put it back down. But it was long enough for us to get a glimpse of the round lumps of flesh there, the soft, pink nipples. Then she stepped toward Billy and grabbed the bag from him and sat back down, digging into the plastic with anxious fingers.

I guess it was the sight of those nipples. The flesh. We were fourteen.

None of us had ever seen the real thing before. We had seen pictures, but they were nothing like that brief flash of soft tissue there atop the quarry that day. Billy

SVR 52

grabbed her first, and then Jimbo came to help. The bag of Reece’s fell to the ground, the little pieces rolled out to the edge and then down into the black water beneath. Billy and Jimbo dragged her away from the edge. Tore at her clothes. And she screamed, and Billy put his hand over her mouth. Then Ellis joined in. And me? Well, I want to tell you that I did the right thing. That I tried to help her. And that I tried to stop it. And if I couldn’t stop it, that I ran from that place. Ran to get help. Ran to find someone who could stop it. I want to tell you that.

If I told you that, would you believe me?

I told myself later that it wasn’t a big deal. That things happen to people all the time. Hell, my cousin used to take me down to the basement and rub his dick all over my belly, but I got over it. Things happen to people, you know? The world doesn’t just stop when things happen. When he was eight, Billy saw his own daddy shoot himself in the head. Happened right in front of him, but he got on with his life. Things happen to people all the time and they just put them places where they won’t have to look at them anymore. You roll them off the edge of some quarry down into the black water below. You let the water and time eat away at them, pull the molecules of that thing apart. Sure, it takes a long time, but at least you don’t have to look at it anymore.

But Allison, I guess she figured it was too much, or maybe she didn’t understand how it works. You’re supposed to just take that one thing and throw it in. That one part of yourself that is tainted, that you don’t want to look at anymore, then you get on with your life. But she put the whole thing in. She jumped into the water two months later. Slipped down into the icy blackness of it and never came back up. The county dragged the quarry to try to find her, but it was too deep, so they had to drain it. It took weeks. Every day the water inched lower and lower to the bottom. The whole town turned out to see it. And it was a thing to see. Down there at the bottom, in the mud and rocks, old cars everywhere, rusted and decomposing, hundreds of them scattered all over the place, like the aftermath of some great, bloody battle, and somewhere down there, in the midst of all of them, lay Allison. (But that is not her name.)

Now, the quarry is full again, and here I stand on the edge of it again, twenty years later. This is my confession, and I will take it with me to the bottom, and maybe they will drain the thing again, and maybe they won’t. Maybe after they found her nobody wants to know what’s at the bottom anymore. Maybe they will just let it be. Maybe no one will care. But that does not matter. I cannot call her Allison anymore.

—Verless Doran

SVR 53

A Carrion Sundae at the top of the pole wings out heads jutted beaks sharper than broken glass Claws twisted through the rabbits shoulders The coyote has the base and the feet of the rabbit in needle sharp teeth there is a A red smile of redemption With a crow on top. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Stephen Morse

SVR 54

Hiking or Fantasy

窶認rancisco Farias

SVR 55

SVR 56

SVR 25th Anniversary

Twenty-four Years in Review

Dedicated to Quinton Duval

SVR 57

—volume 1, 1981— December 13, Two I. Outside the window the latticework & tangled vines shine in he afternoon sun.

Shallowing, the year slips: to yellow grasses, And the pomegranates, split & sweet, like scattered on the ground.

II. The bracelet you gave me, world, lies too largely tonight on my wrist; voices and landscapes cling like dry leaves, and the hour is still, still-a quarter century, dreaming, the yellow moonrise, the winnowing heart.

—Jane Hirshfield

SVR 58

—volume 2, 1982—

Diego, It is four in the morning. At this hour bones of children in the graveyard become flutes for the devil. Even the wind is afraid--it pushes against our window-wants in. You are still dreaming--words of your mother--brown hills--running barefoot across fields--always coming home. I trace the outline of your nipple--with my tongue--explore the humid jungle of your body. I don't want the sun to rise--let it stay like this--your arms keep us here--safe. Even the clouds hesitate to shift--the rooster in the courtyard feels it and for a moment listens to his own echo. If I could hold something in my heart for the times when you are gone--I would hold this moment--between the rhythms of our breathing--between darkness and light--the sun coming--spilling over hills in our dream.

Love, Frida

—Mary Julia

SVR 59

—volume 3, 1983— Vigil Drugged by rain I lay motionless a sand dune with only the wind of my breath to stir the air.

Outside, the sky weeps from faceless clouds.

I think of small birds growing round like balls of moss on tree branches silent, patient as rock they wait for the tears to end while I in my dry oasis wait for them to begin.

—Tamiko Lynch

SVR 60

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;volume 4, 1984â&#x20AC;&#x201D; furnished room i lost the girl with the young skin wanting left her behind in the furnished room with black-out curtains a drawer full of letters some scratchy recordings by jonah jones she could still be looking out the window at all those lights or lying back on the narrow bed wanting him she might be at the vanity robe open brushing her hair lamp light behind her the picture of him still taped to the mirror and covered with lipstick kisses or maybe she's smoking a cigarette and the smoke is rising like a screen between them and the lamp is off and the sirens have started and she's sitting alone in this new kind of darkness â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Judy Warren

SVR 61

—volume 5, 1985— On This Passage on glass we glide down mountain pass jack knife truck belly down nothing but ice only the faint sound of chains clanking against the road as if a winter witch awaits our arrival. the flint of my palms the sticks of my fingers grip the wheel tight and we spin like constellations turning sideways as we plane onto wet asphalt washing aside our memories of today coasting into this warm town. on this dry land in this old motel the furniture brings me back ten years when lamps were angels and darkness was forever a time when sleep was tiresome but tonight as i toss and turn in cold sleep i see the picture of a man belly down next to diesel in grip with snow as he lay like thunder fired from life face down in the icy bank with the thick of storm in his fist on that passage in the same afternoon as his life ran down that fevered summit like rain like us in this town asleep in white sheets like early snow quietly don’t breath— the lights will slowly melt..

—Jack Millam

SVR 62

—volume 6, 1986— Elegy The dewy stars open one sudden gorgeous bloom falling bodies like flowers waft up

their souls the grasses lie down in endless dark —Milton Meadows

SVR 63

—volume 7, 1987— A True Story . . . and after you left Daddy didn’t say a single word he just walked over to the coffee table and he picked up an ashtray and he heaved it right through the middle of the front window and it was snowing like crazy outside and the wind blew in through the hole and nobody said a thing and Momma just watched the snow coming in and sticking like powdered sugar to the inside of the glass and then Mickey started to get the giggles and she couldn’t stop herself but Momma and Daddy just stared at the hole and the snow and you were driving somewhere South with your head in the clouds or a lump in your throat and we never knew which and you never came back —Barry Bauska

SVR 64

—volume 8, 1988— Nevada Waitress with Careful Eyes Three loaves of bread, six dozen eggs, the coastline sinks away. She measures closure daily, counts the quarters left in greasy plates upon formica gray tables. Scotch broom, sage beside the blacktop, form and time near Simpson Pass wash down to nothing.

Like the victim of a flood she watches from her window the fallible shore. Advancing, receding, the rock by which men calculate speed of things that pass. She listens to the breakers rolling up across the desert. Now an osprey dips behind the kitchen, tugs her eye. Twelve feet away two bitches root the garbage pail, dugs floating over sand. A white scrap blows towards the window, washes her into the room. She believes herself untouched— the immaculate blouse. And marks her way with cups in a row along the counter. Listen. She pretends to pour over some carpeted salon before that driver out from Blessington rolls in, slaps the counter, wants to know what is for breakfast, slaps again, wants to mess her up real good. She lets him.

—Candice Favilla

SVR 65

—volume 9, 1989— Desert Song #2: Full Moon Canyon With your index finger the woman writes your name in red dirt.

She erases letters with her palm.

She stands, pulls a cap low over her eyes, and peers upcanyon, west toward spires red and orange, leaning into morning.

She lurches on cheese and crackers couch a flat rock beside a grainery the stone walls so regular, built more than a thousand years ago.

She turns her mind from you toward the canyon, east and west.

Along the creek, green valley floor must have been corn land. She squints.

A good view in both directions. Enemies, she thinks, and wants such perspective on you.

Late afternoon she camps, beneath cottonwoods.

The stream murmurs in voices of Anasazi heard but never quite understood the secrets of walls and bones held in this canyon by the pressure of years.

But when the full moon shines between canyon walls she dances naked and alone, the old song her feet trace the steps of women gone she forgets your name, your face, as the canyon clothes her in shadow.

—Kathleen King

SVR 66

—volume 10, 1990— Flaw Even the earthworms are beside themselves with desire. And the mockingbird, pursued by the cat, is never quite satisfied with its squawking. When the cat sleeps fat-belly under the fig tree, like those hands of yours—absurd, all summer, the garden, impatient blooms.

Your hands grow inside me. Grotesque in the garden loam. Hands tangling toward the center where a tulip lifts unexpected, the only red cup beside the tiger lily with sage.

Hands larger than the tulip’s center and still the marriage fails. Hands determined as the yard-long beans’ floundering along the wire next to sunflowers tall as pink hollyhocks and lemon cucumber vines.

Hands, slick river sludge, they try to hold the garden against its daily persuasions.

Your hands predictable to me now.

—Sharyn Stever

SVR 67

—volume 11, 1991— Voyeur At night I hear voices fighting.

Always after midnight they yell and swear and threaten.

The men across the alley are lovers, but at night it seems they hate each other.

The woman next door cries “Shut up!” into the darkness. But they don’t.

I wanted to say that too, but then they would know I was listening. I can’t help but listen.

It’s two o’clock in the morning; there are not other sounds to catch my attention. The traffic on the street, cries of cats in the alley are background noises I don’t really hear anymore.

These men are loud and angry. I want to know why they are fighting. I want to know why I listen instead of closing the window.

—Constance Carter

SVR 68

—volume 12, 1992— She Silent Sings She silent sings the melody of reed-flute and calliope, The sweet discordant harmony, The symphony in me.

—Vincent Cornejo

Untitled 1 The heaving sigh of night Whispers ever softly In the arms of morning —Clifford Cowley

Untitled 2 The apple tree blossom Quivers with delight From the bee’s soft caress —Clifford Cowley

SVR 69

—volume 13, 1993— The Lapis Hour outside glass there is movement, succulent sway of vernal grass in evening winds, delicate roots hold firm the earth, dark soil in which i grow a small plant with white flowers now blooming in this sill: day descends again and the moon not yet full, ocean salt swirls in wind, waves of fog rise from ocean: i open my window to night’s deep silence, a vague sense of pause, an opening in my chest where pulsing muscle is exposed, a missed beat in recognition of cool air: sweet salt-tinged vernal grass waves in winds, intoxicating scent of white flowers, sacramental balm for invisible wounds —William Harryman

SVR 70

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;volume 14, 1994â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Guides She sounds like molten lava on a rain covered road a hundred years ago or maybe closer to a foghorn deep, deeply into the night moaning not crying but whimpering in fear blindfolded by a viscous current her beauteous hands tied numb to rocks and she stands alone waiting for the strong grip of morning to take and crush her jaw in love to sing one final time tumbling over the smooth fatal rocks to the ocean below playing among the dazzled fish like molten lava on a rain covered road. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Brian Riley

SVR 71

—volume 15, 1995— February 20, 1995 Stayed home read Raymond Carver poetry drank California Chablis from a plastic cup sat under pruned peach trees in the wicker chair my husband’s brother gave us two years ago. then last summer it began to unravel stiff straw sticking out like witch’s hair scratching my bare legs We leave it out in the rain thinking it’s safe under the trees like me today.

—Heather Brittain-Bergstrom

SVR 72

—volume 16, 1996— January Evening between Slater’s Court and the Amtrak Station, Davis Slivers of olive leaves like tadpoles imposed in sparkling stones, and rain-panned, the glow from the gold lamps and the one ruby lamp that marks the crossing place for trains. A blonde man walks on the pink tiles and down the path behind the veil of trees, breathing, into the hobo camp.

Damp silence, archways, stuccostone.

Air as cool as the deep, deep blue that fades to cirrocumulus north. Oh, my love.

Behold the moment’s wealth.

A single cat flashes.

Bicycle spins the rainshine.

—Rebecca Fransway

SVR 73

—volume 17, 1997— Revision In my dream, I have the chance to raise my sisters all over again.

They have just been born, backward, the youngest a curly-headed toddler; my middle sister an infant in my arms.

I am intent on doing things right.

I’ve told my mother that it will all be different.

I imagine our recreated lives without sugar, without violence, perfect enough so that Rebecca will not develop diabetes and die again at twenty-six.

This time, Sarah will be loved.

In fact, she is smiling up at me, a cuddly, different child.

I am going to do it all better, but then I think, this is not mine to do better.

These are not my children, and what about me?

Don’t I deserve the happiness I couldn’t pull out of the earlier life?

But I have not left the earlier life, so I tie on my hat, hold the babies next to my body, and head back to Oklahoma alone, without my mother, without my father who has left us in the dream, too our family came from long ago, as if I could write our lives into an entirely different story.

—Jessica Barksdale Inclan

SVR 74

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;volume 18, 1998â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Afterlife for May Wirth The woman rides a white horse.

The horse canters steadily around the ring, a given in the equations they make.

When she backflips off the horse's crescent rump, she and the horse know she will always return.

From the side, perhaps, to a handstand or to splits, then one leg across the horse's withers, hanging to skim the circle's edge.

The woman is drunk with the circles they travel and when she somersaults, at the height of the spin, seconds dilate, and she stays suspended, apprehending her arc, the arch of that horse's white neck, and the ring enclosing them.

The lights turn the rosined back and her hands orange. She holds them up, two lit gloves.

They have always been this color. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Catherine French

SVR 75

—volume 19, 2000— Out of Sympathy for Van Dang, 23, who recently lost her mother “Complications . . .,” the doctor said, in that antiseptic, physician’s tone, as if only the goldfish had bellied-up.

I wish I could bring your mother back.

I would place her in your house six months earlier, when she turned 54.

The exultation of laughter and music flowed like food: bowl after bowl of wheat noodles, uncut to symbolize life, five of giant Soe Tao peaches stacked like a pyramid, all the color of California sunsets, brilliant and fiery. She wore her traditional Chinese Chih Pao dress, eyed the peaches, the room, her friends.

Her faint, delicate smile, a mere crack of the lips— The one that mouthed “thank you, my little girl.”

Remember your mother this way, always.

Remember how she glowed, red and divine.

—Philip L. Hu

SVR 76

—volume 20, 2003— Men and Motion The woman knows About motion and being poor She walks the railroad tracks town Knows the poor people’s street Where getting hit by a train is less likely Than the slap of stares or eyes that see right through The agreement is to leave her alone as long as she Minds her own business, walks to town out of sight She is the stone mother the woman mother, the rent poor Job poor, man poor, grocery money poor woman Walking to town keeping her head up, wearing her best blouse Groceries means finding a man on the way The only, kind of shopping she can afford, has to afford Like the old man she sees every day Walking the ditch alongside the tracks Believes if he stops walking his heart Will stop beating, his lungs will quit breathing The woman believes in the slow song of hips Legs opening as long as a bend in the river There is no question as to whether or not She will survive she is tangible and covert As rainbow trout in a shady pool Knows the only language in his country Explains her as a chant of bad words While he spins on her dream What he groans through the spokes of her hair As midnight wheels darkness, a railroad car to hell She rides, she moves, she makes him believe He’ll never go this way again.

—Mary Julia Klimenko

SVR 77

—volume 21, 2004— Wyatt Earp (1909) The Mojave rattlers are terrified, leave the bald man to crawl his copper holes.

He lists his occupation as Mining Dynamo the winter of ‘09. “A man of sixty-one should not have to kill for Wells & Fargo,” but he shovels one more grave in the weeds for a debtor to float on sand. Sadie huffs, helps Earp lug a fluid-dripping body from their Packard’s back seat, nags that the brass trim is tarnished.

At midnight it rains like ten men pissing.

Sadie slips into an unbutton-me-quick chaos dress, but Earp is not in the mood. “Why,” she asks, are we always one step from heaven?”

—Red Shuttleworth

SVR 78

—volume 22, 2005— Private I left the expurgated lines in the motel trash.

Those passages that wouldn’t fit in a poem, that itched until I scratched them out.

Lines like “a closure/ pressure building, then released” and “the moon gave chase.”

A page of maverick phrases.

And I wonder what the woman who comes in uniform will think, shoving her heaped cart trailing soiled sheets and dingy towels?

Will she look for a tip under the bed? an almost-empty bottle of cologne some traveler left? a dollar bill that slipped behind the door?

Will she find those lost lines In the basket and take them home?

Will they sing to her a poem in the dark?

—Taylor Graham

SVR 79

—volume 23, 2006— What the Elephant Never Forgets for Tyke, shot dead in Honolulu Mama, whose milk fed her for six months, whose great shadow sheltered her first seven years.

The Matriarch, whose trunk could lift a flower or a fallen tree.

Papa: ten feet tall, glands in his face oozing black musth.

The jungle where she played, the river where she swam, the dust she bathed in to block insects and sun.

The soft touching of trunks with which friends greeted friends.

Thirty different trumpets and calls.

Soft water plants, sweet bark and leaves she ate—200 pounds a day.

The way she toppled trees to get their fruit, and dug spicy roots up with her tusks.

The male's hard thrusts; her calf pulling at her teats.

The soft pads on her feet that let her run silently.

Her joints' smooth motion; her easy, ambling stride.

Her supple skin, inch-and-a-half thick, sensitive as a human's cheek.

Ashok, who fed her bamboo, dates, and sugar cane, who stroked her head and calmed her after she was caught.

The fun of learning the language of his commands.

The soft limbs of her riders.

The crowd's applause as she stood on her hind feet—as she wrapped those pretty riders with her trunk, and lifted them onto her back, spangles aflame.

The night-time quiet of the zoo where she was sent when she grew too old for tricks: nothing to do but grind hard hay and ignore the gripes of doddering cell-mates Tilly and Jumbette.

The pokes, prods, curses of her keeper after-hours, when no other human saw.

The music of his screams, his sudden knowledge of insufficiency.

His bones popping underneath her feet before she rambled through panicked Hawaiian streets.

Shit on aging gracefully, knowing her place. Shit on masters. Shit on their guns.

—Charles Harper Webb

SVR 80

—volume 24, 2007— Martyr Tastes like copper the way the entrails spout like that tastes like worlds and faces of lies like the way you think I know how the story goes. I have understood it in passing, in nothing parts of grey matter. You're in the middle, and you're choked that way, this image that sticks in your mind, so I can know the way you screamed Screaming, the exact pitch of it the perfect rattle Bleeding the way that tells of no wound, I can still feel the cuts that were never there. I can press my ear against that crook where your halves meet and come away with blood, but no pulse. Thorns stick in your hair, matted, with indistinguishable colors shining between branches Branches, symbolizing higher ground with white, crooked brows

I know how the story goes. Strung up on display, life ebbing in drips and drags, and you like to say, or would have to say, that the time elapsed and death came strolling, but metal dug in to cave the holy shell, and destiny became too strong even for your eternal grace. The note says you died to let me live, but where do your true colors lie?

Because I don't think you're Jesus and there isn't any room for your portrait.

—Elfie Nelson

SVR 81

The Suisun Valley Review accepts manuscripts in poetry, prose and fiction from January through March each year. Submissions should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Suisun Valley Review

English Department Solano Community College 4000 Suisun Valley Road Fairfield, CA 94535