Sara Krueger

I float the back channels in the swampish heat,
past the leavings of one town and then another,
keeping my peepers peeled and my mask tugged tight.

Every few miles I shore up and scan the trees,
fingering the blade I rescued
from Gummy’s hog farm.
My work boots sink into the muck
as I root around for something squirrely.

The search is so much harder now after the change.
But, Gummy needs the meat — —
bloody and almost beating.
Her book tells us these things.

She’d got no teeth left in her head,
Gummy didn’t,
when I found her.
Her eyes had gone too from many months of basement living.
She keeps me at this life,
Gummy does,
and she makes me fancy
that it ain’t just the metal men out there
rustling along in the dark.

SARA KRUEGER received her B.A. in Film from Columbia College Chicago. She has directed several short films. Her written work has appeared in Menacing Hedge and Devilfish Review. She has attended artist residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Ragdale Foundation. Sara lives in Chicago with her husband Garrett, her cat Lando, and her dog Luna.

B.A. Varghese

The Whopper box, like a tomb,
had a picture of one neat green lettuce lying
on one slice of succulent red tomato, probably
grown in the sea side of Sicily, resting
upon browned meat enclosed in a bun of wheat
and sesame seeds. I opened the box, took a hold
of my palatable poison, and bit down. I didn’t chew
much and I swallowed chunks whole. Any
other way of going would have been too messy
or at least require more on my part. This
was slow and painless. This would take years.
Methodical. Mouth-watering.
After the stake fries and Coke, that went
down like embalming fluid, I smiled
and just waited and waited for the end.

B. A. VARGHESE graduated from Polytechnic University (New York) in 1993 and has been working in the Information Technology field ever since. Inspired to explore his artistic side, he has earned a B.A. in English from the University of South Florida and is currently in the process of working toward an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. His works have appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Apalachee Review, Rose Red Review, and other literary journals. (www.bavarghese.com)

Jennifer Martelli

The snake is strung with drops of poison, gold
amber rosary beads,
ending with his golden eye.

*

Alabaster day, the town square blurred
by the heat of the fire
under a pot. Dust when they dragged her out.

*

They used my pot to boil the pitch, my knife to slice
the pillows for the eider down feathers, my chair
from the kitchen. My chocolate. My cigarettes.

*

His throat is dry, which means
his whole body is dry, even the venom.
Pitchy pine tar stings both tips of his tongue.

*

The ancient well in the middle of town
keeps the ground shady and damp. Probably there are coins down at the bottom.
The snake coils next to the cool stones.

*

The newsreel is black and white and captioned
collaborateur. No one in the film notices the snake by the well:   the snake
can barely be seen, doesn’t look gold.

*

The snake has cervical eyes that try to close.
That day, there are many round things: the well, the girl’s mouth
when the tar poured down, a sticky mantilla of webs.

*

He can feel the yelling and someone crying so hard
under his white jacob’s ladder belly.
The feathers wafting down were not birds.

*

A snake is like a god, exiled.
Its Jacob’s Ladder belly is soft and white and feels
everything we fear.

*

What hurt most was the woman
who held my chin up
so the feathers would stick to my face.

JENNIFER MARTELLI was born and raised in Massachusetts, and graduated from Boston University and The Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers. She’s taught high school English as well as women’s literature at Emerson College in Boston. Her work has appeared in the following publications: Tar River Review, Bop Dead City, burntdistrict, Melancholy Hyperbole. She was a recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry and recently received a Pushcart Nomination. Her chapbook, “Apostrophe,” was published in 2010 by BigTable Publishing Company. You can read more of her work at jennifermartelli.com. She lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.