Eric Fisher Stone
Bacteria fulfill the mystery
of my flesh. I bequeath myself
to meekest inheritors, to mites
loping like planets through darkness,
gnats glinting star-forged wings, clusters
of toads and slender newts, Junebugs
smashing through the jazzy plum
of the night air, sugar ants creeping
in cupboards, olms blind in black water,
amoebas dripping fingers through
raindrop lakes, millipedes prickling
earth’s worm-work, pious crawdads
praying in stock-tank chapels,
microbial angels ticking and gnawing
at the Parthenon’s stylobate,
Lascaux Cave, the pyramids of Giza.
ERIC FISHER STONE is a poet from Fort Worth, Texas, where he graduated from Texas Christian University and works at a PetSmart. He is also an incoming graduate student at Iowa State University’s MFA in Writing and Environment program. His poems have appeared most recently in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Yellow Chair Review, Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry, Uppagus, Third Wednesday, Eunoia Review, New Mexico Review and Turtle Island Quarterly.
Natasha Burge
he was the hinky man
bowlegged and metal-toothed
toenails of a vagabond saint
riptide feral and freaked
we taunted him
we thrilled at him
neighborhood wild man
scuttling out of his house
with the licorice door
and the droop-eye windows
walking higgledy-piggledy
like his legs came out the same hole
and had to bicker each time they
took a step
closer and closer he came toward us
our little table littered with lemons
and cups and napkins and change
he beached himself on our shore
took in our wares
and loosed that grin upon us
lemonade?
a nod
up
down
puppeteer snipped his string
two, please
two?
we stared at that second finger lifted to the sky
clouds spun off the yellow nail bed
the whole earth wobbled on its axis
two cups for the hinky man?
what could he want with two cups?
he was only ever alone
solitude built into the skin of him
loneliness his only virtue
we looked down the street to his house
was that a twitch of curtain in the bug-eyed window?
was there a mrs. higgledy-piggledy?
was there someone to love the hinky man
with his crocodile smile
and driftwood legs?
we gave him two cups
keep the change he said
and turned like a listing ship
and crab walked his way home
NATASHA BURGE divides her time between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain where she and her husband are owned by an unruly herd of rescue animals. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Crack the Spine, Bitterzoet, Luna Station Quarterly, Ink in Thirds, and Tasa’ol. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing and wrestling her first novel into shape.
You know how sometimes you get up for a glass of water in the middle of the night and catch a glimpse of yourself in the bathroom mirror in the dim blue glow of the nightlight and realize you are looking at an alternate universe where everything is almost, but not quite, the same as it is in our world?
Our June issue has a lot of that feeling. There are three stories about ordinary people―a woman who never cries, a television enthusiast, and an insurance claims adjuster―who have extraordinary experiences, and one poem about an extraordinary person who works in that most ordinary of places, a department store. And our sweet-creepy (sweepy?) cover art nails that surreal feeling perfectly.
Yin it online or yang the .pdf.
