We have raindrops in our fur, pollen in our snout, and a Simon & Garfunkel song in our heart. Better still, seven extraordinary caterpillars have laid their eggs on the leaves of our eleventy-sixth issue. Through the magic of spring, each one can hatch inside your brain and flutter over the fields of your imagination on glittering butterfly wings. Cover art by Anja.
Karen J. Weyant
Learn early. At those fourth-grade slumber parties,
pretend to fall asleep when your friends start playing
Bloody Mary in the upstairs bathroom. Ignore
their chants of her name, their screams, their stories.
You don’t want to even imagine what they believed
they may have seen. Later, when you start driving,
check your backseat before you climb into the driver’s seat.
It also wouldn’t hurt to check under your car.
If you end up parking (which you shouldn’t do)
with your boyfriend and you both hear scratching,
a raspy scrap across the roof or the side of the car,
don’t open the door, even if you feel a tug on the handle.
Drive to safety. Turn on the radio. The news
about the escaped prisoner will be all you need to know.
And never, ever pick up a hitchhiker, even if it’s raining
or it’s cold. Even if she looks innocent and sad,
and that dress she is wearing is way too thin.
Even if, she, in the headlights, looks a little like you.
KAREN J. WEYANT‘s speculative poems have appeared in Caesura, Cold Mountain Review, Devilfish Review, Eye to the Telescope, Gingerbred Lit, and Strange Horizons. She lives and writes in northern Pennsylvania.
Michael Dylan Welch
near the end
of the spooky story
her raised eyebrow
school trip—
the zoo gorilla
masturbating
poetry conference—
an opinion
from outer space
tractor beam malfunction—
a turquoise mountain lake
hovers above us
red pines—
our pup tent squashed
in the giant footprint
MICHAEL DYLAN WELCH has been writing poetry since he was a child, and never got over it. He lives with his wife and two children in Sammamish, Washington, where he’s president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword, curator of SoulFood Poetry Night, and served two terms as Redmond poet laureate. He’s founder and president of the Tanka Society of America, founder of National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com), and proprietor of www.graceguts.com, devoted mostly to poetry. His poems and essays have appeared in hundreds of publications in more than twenty languages. Michael also enjoys travel, photography, books, racquetball, and skiing.