By Laurie Rosenblatt

Featured Art: Composition with Black and Gray by Claude Ronald Bentley

In the straight-backed chair
for hours for hours after
a drug-stilled night for hours
after dream-hungry sleep she sits
in the straight-backed chair
unmoving for night
after night after leaning spent
against the steel surface
of sleep after staying by habit
on the right side of the bed
as if as if—

although some time does go missing

as if an owl passed like a ghost
its wing-beats deepening the silence
before the milkweed
from that half-dreaming
streams away.

And because the skin knows
after the brain does
and the reptile brain knows
after the self
the arm believes and reaches palm held out flat
seeking that other skin
and animal comfort.

Because the palm is capable
because a limb if lost may still feel
and because it feels may find grass-itch,
wind-brush, the love-mad path of fingers,
and pain. Because this is so

the palm believes
and finds the ghost it seeks
but the streaming milkweed
is carried away by the sun
that leaps onto the bed
and sinks its claws in.

Then dream-hungry she sits
on the straight-backed chair a
figure in gray and black.

By Sandy Gingras

Featured Art: by Pierre Châtel-Innocenti

Pull up any rug, there’s a hole.
An easy chair sits on a trap door, which leads to
a slide. I am still surprised, after all these years,
how many tunnels are in my house.

In the basement, which is under the place
you would consider the basement, is
what I call “the secret room.” But all my rooms
are really secret rooms. It has a large
colored map on the wall, a folding table under
a fluorescent light, a red couch.

I go down there to find
a way to slip something into my dreams or to
block my escape routes. I am a spy, don’t
you know? I don’t look like a spy, and I’m paid
nothing for my work, but I do it anyway.
I was called, as they say, to duty.

Under my clothes, I’m naked.
Within my ID card is another identity.
I can change at will. I have a machine
that scrambles my words into code,
a pill I can bite to shift my mood,
a certification to never sleep.

Now I must run.
Even though there is no such thing as a
hiding spot in this house. Even if I put on
my invisible suit. Even if I cover my face
so I can’t see myself.
In the bathroom cupboard is a shelf that lifts
to reveal a chute which looks like it’s for laundry,
but it isn’t. I can’t hear when I hit bottom.

By T. J. Sandella

Featured art by Vrouw aan kaptafel

Though they’re meant to be our protagonists,
we detest these teenagers
who fall for the same tricks and traps
in every film
and because they keep coming back
dumber and hotter
decade after decade
with their perky breasts and discernible abs
and the way they throw themselves mercilessly
against one another
in backseats and on twin beds
and because they smoke cigarettes
and slug soda and beer
and because dialysis and diabetes
will never creep like Freddy
into their dreams.
Because they’re always in love
and loneliness is as unimaginable
as feigning sleep
so the person next to you
will stop kissing your neck
though you still care for her
and he’s still beautiful
or maybe you don’t
and maybe he’s not
or maybe the workday has emptied you
of desire for anything
but seven hours of silence
and maybe these are the words you say
that can’t be forgiven. Curse the children
for not knowing
that if you live long enough
life is mostly washing dishes
and may they suffer
for not believing
that young love dies
when the first person
goes to college
and meets a sorority girl
who can put her legs behind her head
or the backup point guard with the bulging
biceps. Twelve bucks is a bargain
to see these brainless babes
pierced by pitchforks, their chiseled flanks flayed
and hung from hooks. It’s because
their failures will never grind them
into something so small
that they’ll go to a theater alone,
buy some popcorn, and sit in the glow
of another slasher reboot, trying to distract themselves
from their disappointing lives.

By David Gullette

Featured Art: Reading by James McNeill Whistler

Half asleep he saw clearly his own failures
and by the light of that hideous clarity
made a poem hard sleek and simple.

As he strung the words out from the bobbin
of his waking mind still half dreaming
he knew what he had seen, saw what he had felt

and each word rang a new bell
or bruised an old wound to bleeding
but he pushed on to finish it all the same.

When it was done he held it up and read
the triumphant chronicle of defeat
at his own hands: the craven appeasements

the months of capitulations
the years of friend after friend dying away
and vices equal to his sorrows.

He sent it off, within days came word
they would be glad to print it,
the season shifted and he slept late.