Issue 31
Newohioreview.org is archiving previous editions as they originally appeared. We are pairing the pieces with curated art work, as well as select audio recordings. In collaboration with our past contributors, we are happy to (re)-present this outstanding work.
Issue 19 compiled by Connor Beeman.
By Laura Maher
Featured Art: Idle Governer by Horatio C. Forjohn
If I needed to make a list for you
of all the beautiful things that have gone
on since you’ve left, the first thing
would be the line of bats leaving
the bridge at sunset, hundreds,
flying into the sky until they disappeared,
the effect making the mountains
to the west look more like a scrawled
suggestion of words than a skyline.
by Elizabeth Murawski
Featured Art: Sunset by Frederic Edwin Church
Too many women to count
rode behind him in helmets,
clung to his waist, wedded
to the wind in the dark
as the bike’s headlight pierced
the wooded hills, scaring
a deer, sending up an owl
in an explosion of wings.
I knew there were others
in line, grateful to share
one hour with the blue-eyed sun-god
worshiped for his light.
Always the nagging fear
he was never really there.
I saved his green bandanna for a year.
By Robert Cording
Featured Art: The Pink Cloud by Henri-Edmond Cross
Sixty-six, my shoulders rounded, my arches flattening,
I am, Lord, a small man, now a full inch shorter,
I’m told, than I once was. And so I pray
that my end-of-life diminishment might prove
the occasion
for some late opening of my cramped borders,
this no-exit, small country of the self.
Lord, what I wouldn’t give for a lifting up
to be free of this strange human gift of making
something less out of something,
New Ohio Review 