Poetry by Kara Dorris
Excerpt from My Highway of Sure Things
Excerpt from My Highway of Sure Things
Yesterday, I found the lizards
behind my house doing it again.
“An offense to justice” honoring
a hydrangea bush I killed
last summer with a happy love.
On the back porch in hunter green
plastic containers, full of
Miracle Grow & shame,
sit open-mouth replacements.
Of course for the ground’s sake,
for the sad goldfish I buried underneath
in the toxic memory of bedazzle beads,
I wanted to wait a full year to announce
recovery, to absorb the French fry bits
& salt & blackberry fingers I used
to kill Fish.
But the lizards only have eyes
for each other & don’t believe in stories
with tragic heroes or closing actions.
Fiction by Laura Miller
Excerpt from "Perspective"
My appointment was on the first floor, room 109. The door wasn’t closed, so I stepped inside. It was a recycled space, used by traveling artists, private instructors, psychotherapists. Light from one undressed window freckled the podium and the whiskey bottle beside it. In the corner, a woman perched atop a yoga ball rattled the ice in her Styrofoam cup. She stood and extended a bony hand.
“I’m Dolly,” she said, wobbling a little in her heels. She grabbed my hand and pumped it hard before stepping behind the podium. “Let’s get started, shall we?” Dolly squinted through her rimless frames, tortoise-shell detail on the temple. “Usually we do this with two people,” she said. “But whatever gets your ghost.”
“No, actually,” I said and stepped closer to the podium so not to raise my voice. “I just have a few questions.”
Dolly slouched a little and reached toward me. She curled a lock of my hair around her manicured finger. “Aren’t you a sweet little thing,” she said and released the tress. “Go for it, honey pie.”
I pulled out a notebook from my coat pocket and tried not to notice as Dolly rolled her eyes. “For starters, your credentials…”
Dolly tapped the whiskey bottle with the tip of her purple heel. She puckered her lips as if slurping the answer from the air. Her fingers curled around the edge of the podium. “Pumpkin face, let me tell you about my credentials. My grandfather is an alcoholic. My brother shoots meth in his arm. My mother has been schizophrenic for 10 years. And my ex-husband works on Wall Street. I know a thing or two about dealing with assholes.”
“I see,” I said and knew immediately that it was the wrong thing to say. Dolly stepped out from behind the podium and teetered toward me like some prehistoric bird. She bent at her waist to meet me eye-level.
“Lover, what’s your name?”
“Bella,” I told her, reeling from the finger that moved toward my jaw line.
“Bella, I’m a busy woman. I run sixteen of these joints. Thirty-two people work under me, and I have twelve more appointments today. You want to tell me why you’re here?”
“Well, I came with my mother, but I just don’t understand what exactly it is that you do,” I said and plunged my hand in my coat pocket. My fingernails found the crystal and scratched at its surface.
Dolly stood upright and looked down at me. Her glasses slipped to the end of her nose. “I’ll tell you exactly what I do, sugar plum. I give perspective. People come to me because someone in their life has a twisted point of view. Sometimes people can’t see what’s right in front of them. You get me, Bella? It might be a close friend, a coworker, a boss. Most often, though, it’s a family member. How about that mother of yours. Could she use some perspective?”
Poetry by Nate Logan
Excerpt from "Booty Call Sonnet #32" (for Adam)
Where is the discussion of booty
in the Environmental Prose class?
We're out here pretending
to be graduate students in botany,
while booty flies in the lights
above Tucson. Orange blossoms
get busy in the boats of our nasal canals—
how can we care about plants
at a time like this? The weekend
before the assignment is due,
I'll write about the miles of cacti
and the dry heat. But tonight.
Tonight is not too hot for love.
Tonight is right for dry humping.
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