Cooper Shea

Ages ago, when I was a kid and my grandfather got
bored with watching me, he’d say —
“Come on! We’re going
drinking with the Indians!”
Equipped with a 30-pack, we’d go to a guy named
Frankie Youngbear’s
green slab-
house so they could drink and play euchre.
“Indians,” he’d say “are
just like us but they were the land’s first people,
Kid.”
looking at them like a student looks at a
musty history textbook, I
never thought they were that different.
Only thing that stuck out was that we were
pale and they looked kinda sunburnt.
Quality booze was
rare for my grandfather, but
sometimes, they’d get a real nice bottle of
Teeling, this Irish whiskey that he loved. They could
usually drink it dry over two games, my grandfather
viciously condemning the government and what they did to the natives.
We’d leave when it started to get dark. The old man not
exactly walking straight from Frankie’s house, still
yelling that he was sorry about Wounded Knee and myself
zig-zagging with him back to our own, separate life.

COOPER SHEA is a poet from Iowa. He is a recent graduate from the University of Northern Iowa and contributed to the literary magazines Inner Weather, Periphery, and Sun and Sandstone. He’s just…he’s trying, man.

John Grey

Something’s moving through old town,
a shadow, a shape,
a humming sound.
 
Some people see,
others hear,
some sense it like the breeze.
 
If they’re not thinking,
it’s the default in the brain,
not feeling,
it takes over the heart.
 
You can tell by the eyes,
blank as brick walls,
if that something’s moved in.
 
Or an ashen look on the face,
a double shake of the head,
if it’s being resisted.
 
But that something is patient
and insistent.
Eventually,
everyone succumbs.
 
Avoid old town
is my advice.
Unless, of course,
you’re so weary
of piloting your own life,
you’re willing for this other
to take the wheel.

JOHN GREY is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Harpur Palate, and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review and North Dakota Quarterly.

Ilina Gjurovska

have you ever wondered
whose job it is
to determine the distance
between street lights?
have you ever wondered
how much darkness
is ok?

ILINA GJUROVSKA is a 22-year-old Australian university student, currently based in Tübingen, Germany. Her work has previously been published in The Ibis Head Review and she hopes to continue to connect with people all around the world through her writing. Love will make the world a better place. She posts more of her poetry and short stories on https://pensandparcels.weebly.com/about.html.