Michael Mingo

When I get to the front
a man in red trunks
barks out commands: cross
your ankles, fold your arms,
keep your head raised,
don’t wait
for your friends
halfway down.

In third grade, hanging on
the jungle gym, we spread rumors
about the descent. We whispered
as if they were ghost stories:

David said his brother said
you come out like a veteran
crash test dummy. Keith heard
they gave hundred-dollar bills
to employees who tested it.

Cannonball Loop
is a Great American Rite-of-Passage.
Damn the safety regulations
and the laws of physics, we build
what shouldn’t, but must, exist:
mine cart thrill rides, canyon tightropes,

waterslides with loop-de-loops.
I can’t pass that up, despite
the scraped elbows and contusions.
Just think of the stories, the effort
put into this contraption.

Cold water runs past my legs.
I can see the escape hatch from here.

MICHAEL MINGO is an undergraduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, majoring in creative writing. His work has previously appeared in “The [Bergen] Record,” and he originally hails from Vernon Township, New Jersey.

Brent DeLanoy

She approves
of my filthy
language,

of pop-tart lunches
and fogged car windows.

She pays for the cotton candy —
insists on a fresh cloud from the bowl.

The kid in the booth,
blue stripe on his paper hat,
blinded by carnival lights,
gets it for her.

BRENT DELANOY received his MFA from New Mexico State University in 2006. His work has appeared in several journals in print and online and his novella, “Benediction,” won the A.E. Coppard Prize in 2008. He currently teaches at Hartwick College in upstate New York.

Andrew Collard

The ancient spacemen rode vibrations.
They were born with beards,

suckling desperately in the fore-
shadow of sports, and sudden death.

Crossing T’s on mis-marked constellations
they knocked our heads,

the grace of their tango staining
our faulty parachutes.

They maimed us one by one
as we knelt in the TV light for cover.

But the kettle sleeps, sometimes.

My hands relearn the softness of cats
and my mouth, the dry

shock of molars on gravel.

Each conception, though, when the sun
reclothes their sexmaps,

I feel the echoed thump
of spacefeet on butter.

ANDREW COLLARD lives in Madison Heights, MI, and attends Oakland University. Recent work can be found online at Word Riot and Ex Fic.