Grab a popsicle and chill out for a spell with our 113th issue. Includes a Bob Dylan concert, an unusual teacup, beach fun, stone fruit, meat-sack meditation, a ouija board, and colorful monocular felines. So, you know, all the necessary ingredients for a rockin’ summer party.
Olivia Hajioff
We exist, you and I,
in body bags.
Stretchy, but a perfect fit.
And when we lie quietly, what do we feel?
Not an arm or a leg
But a buzz, an ache, an itch.
Try it.
And the rest?
Blank space.
Pricks of light in a dark city.
But choose a point in the numbness
and suddenly it will come alive:
The tip of your nose,
The heel of your hand.
Once unfelt, they now belong.
And you will be brought back to earth
in the knowing.
OLIVIA HAJIOFF, a Fulbright scholar, first published a story at age nine. It was televised as a children’s ballet for the British television show, Freetime. Since then she has written for the British Fulbright magazine, HIV Now project and various musical magazines. Olivia’s poetry has appeared on philosopher William B. Irvine’s website, Ginosko Literary Journal, Better Than Starbucks, The Shambhala Times and the Front Porch Review. She is the 2020 Grand Choice Winner of the Laura Riding Jackson Poetry competition. By profession, Olivia is a concert violinist, teacher, member of the Virginia Arts Commission Touring Artists and the Marcolivia Duo.
Frank William Finney
Lipstick smudges
on a funhouse mirror.
Starfish twitching
on the shore at low tide.
FRANK WILLIAM FINNEY is a New England poet whose work has appeared widely in small press journals and anthologies including Hedge Apple, Poor Yorick: The Poet’s Mask, Tofu Ink Arts Press and Workers Write! He is a former lecturer in literature at Thammasat University in Thailand where he taught for twenty-five years. His collection The Folding of the Wings is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.