Poetry by Nate Logan
"Booty Call Sonnet #14"
How much booty is too much booty?
Philosophers debating this question
say the unexamined booty is not
worth tapping. Poets either get
no booty, or say booty is a metaphor
for a beautiful man or woman
who has zero interest in poets.
In a world where booty, etc.
Can we know booty w/out its opposite, etc.
A good booty is hard to find, etc.
I'm looking for a feather-haired woman
with a knowledge of Chat Roulette.
Even on the Internet I'm sure--
the booty, it don't stop girl.
Fiction by Jessica Tomblin
from The Hostess, "The Painter" chapter
The man smiled at her as if he had a secret, and walked out the front door. Kate ran back to the table and picked up the black checkbook from it first, in order to begin busing and cleaning it for the next couple. As she lifted the book toward her, something fell out. At first she thought it was the check, but then she saw the tent of green. Lainey watched the color go out of Kate’s face, and Kate didn’t have much color to begin with; her white blond hair, in this moment, made her look somewhat like an albino. She threw the book back on the table and walked toward the door with a force that made her appear ghost-like, as if she were floating along at a rapid pace across the concrete floors toward the sidewalk. She held the door open with one arm so that the couple sitting next to the entrance, in the place we called the nook, could clearly see her.
The man, still on the street and walking steadily towards the maroon-colored Lincoln parked at the end of the block, turned with a slight jump at the sound of Kate’s voice.
“Excuse me, is there a problem?” She yelled after him.
“He stood there speechless for a moment before responding by shaking his head side to side as if to indicate that, no there was no problem, and then, not being able to help himself, felt the sides of his mouth turn up slightly on each side so that he was now silently standing there smirking at this ghostly figure standing in the door way.
“A dollar?” she said with no inflection so it sounded more a statement than a question, and so, the man stood again in silence until Kate grew tired of their staring contest and realizing the man had not, as she had hoped in the back of her mind, accidentally forgotten a bill or placed a dollar down, confusing it for a twenty, or even a ten, but had purposefully left her only the dollar tip, on his ninety-dollar tab.
Kate slammed the door and walked back to the table where the dollar lay on the floor beside the chair, still pushed out from where the man had been sitting. She picked it up and headed for the back bar, where Rocky sat drinking Jack and Cokes, oblivious to the scene that has just occurred at the front of house.
“This" she said, "is bullshit."
Poetry by Chris Beard
from "Love Abstract with Flood and Secrets"
There are thirty three holes in the sky
flying west, thirty three blackbirds
I see through to the source of rain,
and she wants birds to just be birds,
the sky to remain intact,
a pocket sealed with sun.
There are twenty five jars
where she keeps my hair,
where the curls wrap around
the bending light forever.
There are numberless hours spent damaging
the asphalt, our whole lives lived in a car,
enduring summer’s drag, drinking
like it is medicine to cure our heavy blood.
There are three years of storms back home
waited out in the basement with a bucket and oar,
water filling the window wells as we pretended to sleep
through the swell, burst, and flood, the disaster growing beneath us
as we floated up through the swampy mud.
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