Slow Melt

/

Zebulon Huset

Some mornings we arch
with no keystone.

The day’s cockles
have gone to the birds—
last week’s flax seed.

Caught in the entropy of snowmen
our forts had to melt.

They televised the frigid revolt—
an attrition of ratings
wore down network support
and it wasn’t renewed
for a full second season.

The partisans started a webcomic
and no one was beheaded.

Winter flowers bow to the frost.

Every revolution returns us here.

The Old Man of the Lake
is sometimes
just called Bob.

The unseen narrator
has passed out
and now the lost pigeons
can’t find their spiked roosts.

So, someone else start the séance.
I must talk to Mel Blanc about my childhood.
Not, all of it—only
the words, the actions
the point. You know—
all that terrestrial slapstick.

 
Zebulon-Portrait-Acquifer.JPG

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer living in San Diego. His writing has recently appeared in The Southern Review, Roanoke Review, Louisville Review, Fence, Rosebud, Meridian, North American Review, Cortland Review, Portland Review, Texas Review and Fjords Review among others. He publishes a writing prompt blog Notebooking Daily with its print companion Notebooking Periodically and is the editor of the fledgling journal Coastal Shelf.

Loved to Madness

/

For her students she had called forth the universe of fictional characters dwelling inside her, channeling their words and passions into live performances. She became Emma Bovary, liberated from a dull life and marriage. She became Thomas Hardy’s tragic beauty, Eustacia Vye, whose exotic, dark-haired looks she fancied herself sharing. Here in the classroom she lived more truly than anywhere else, conjuring up every scene down to the smell of smoke from the wild Egdon Heath.

Read More

Letter to John Upon Returning to Hilton Head

/

Bridget Gage-Dixon

Time seems to have stalled here, Spanish moss still reaches down from branches, the saltwater is still warm against my skin, and all the houses continue to stubbornly disguise themselves. As I peddle the thin paths cut through the trees, I become the girl I was so long ago, the one too long ignored, willing to break her body against the sharp edges of a forbidden boy. This hardly helps.

I ride these paths now following my own fourteen year old. Her spine curves cleanly beneath skin that shines with beads of salty water. She is stronger than I was, does not seem susceptible to boys whose breath is a brilliant mix of Michelob and Marlboros. She hasn’t yet sidled herself up against a boy eager to consume her innocence, hasn’t eagerly offered it up.

I’ve wondered often where you are now, if time has tempered your radiance. If, like me, your waist has thickened, if your spirit’s grown the thin shield the years have constructed over mine. You were the boy I warn my daughter about, all desire, using language like a lasso, your will an alluring noose I willingly slid myself into.

 
poetry pic.jpg

Bridget Gage-Dixon has had a life-long love affair with poetry that began with rewriting nursery rhymes and fairytales. She progressed to having her poems included in Poet Lore, Inkwell, The Cortland Review, and several other journals. She lives in New Jersey where she teaches and dotes on her grandchildren. 

Two Poems by Lilah Clay

/

Thirty-two. Skip. Because the spent heads of sunflowers are downturned in mourning. Skip. Because I fall and nearly break my leg on an idea that must defeat me.

Thirty-two. Skip. Because sometimes a name is a landmine, and to speak it is to step on one. And to write it down is to give it an hour that will not burn.

Read More