C. G. Thompson

for Ethan

The cloud dreamed of being a magician, but already was,
gliding on invisible currents across a performance
of sky. Faces turned toward it, self-selected audience,
curious what filigreed cumulus had up its sleeve.
A magic wand was implied, as was sleight of hand,
dexterity spread through fluffs and folds – voila!
Illusionist, its changes proved too subtle to follow,
until they became a fait accompli, water vapor quicker
than the mind, transforming from battleship to rabbit
to seahorse, wind acting as a nimble assistant.
Cloud then disappeared, creating its own smoke,
no mirrors required, the show over before anyone knew,
entertainer skipping a curtain call, time fleeting.

C. G. THOMPSON is a winner of the North Carolina State University Poetry Contest and a three-time finalist for the James Applewhite Poetry Prize. In 2017, two of her poems appeared in downtown Winston-Salem, NC, as part of Poetry in Plain Sight. She also was a runner-up for the 2017 Barry Hannah Prize in Fiction. Her poems and short stories have appeared or are upcoming in North Carolina Literary Review, Yalobusha Review, Prime Number Magazine, Fictive Dream, Redheaded Stepchild, and Boston Literary Magazine, among others.

Matthew Byrne

I commissioned my artist friend to paint
a starlit evening on our nursery ceiling.
He struggled at first, pacing the room,
obsessively scaling his ladder. The job
was beneath him, but he needed the money.
Something had to be done, so I burned
his obscure punk cds into my computer,
so he could listen to his music randomly
shuffling and without interruption.
He finished the very next day, but instead
of the tranquil twilight I envisioned, I got
a maelstrom brewing around a moon more
menacing than an axe-wielding lunatic.
I paid up, made the nursery our bedroom,
and my wife and I have never slept better.

MATTHEW BYRNE‘s poems have been published in known and obscure journals. He won the Sow’s Ear Chapbook award in 2013 and was included in the Heather-McHugh-edited 2007 Best American Poetry anthology. He sells insurance for a living in Chicago, Illinois.