By Dion O’Reilly
Feature image: Old Woman Seated by Honoré Daumier 

Looking at my X-ray, the doctor
says my hips resemble
those of an eighty-year-old woman.

Weeks later, when I huff into a tube
to blow out virtual birthday candles,
my allergist mentions
with what seems smug satisfaction
that my lungs whistle
like an eighty-year-old woman’s.

O hypothetical eighty-year-old woman—
you skeletal model
walking the hospital runway
in this year’s open-assed robe,
blue dots on cotton—
how do you like being the It Girl of Mortality,

archetype of: You are nearly nothing?

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By Dion O’Reilly
Feature image: Hope, 1886 by George Frederic Watts and assistants

means whistle. A Spanish word
that sounds like silver
in the air, a little bird’s song
Oh My Dear. Oh My Dear.
Every year, the first time I hear
that smooth silbato,
it’s the first day of fall, a sparrow
with a small stripe lining its eye,
passing through
with the dying days
when the golden apple’s skin
feels softer than in summer,
a little more honey.
Oh My Dear. Little girl,
this is how it begins—
school, getting up early, not knowing
what you’re in for,
what your friends will do to you,
what you’ll do to them,
what being one year older
will mean in the world
of a girl. What to fear
and what to hope for.

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By Kate Sweeney
Feature image: Madonna, 1895 by Edvard Munch

threw a dead groundhog on my porch
the night after I stole her boyfriend.

My mother called the cops and the officer
knocked at its gut with his boot and blood drooled

from a bullet hole. That’s some good aim,
he said. Tell your daughter to watch out.

Years later, I tell this to a former student of mine
as we lay in bed, a Czech twenty-something

with a secret girlfriend in Prague.
Hanna, moje milovat—which he whispered

into his phone—was not hard to Google Translate.
I imagined how she could die. A slip down the stairs,

a misstep in front of the city bus. Rat poison is sweet,
the bottle under the sink whispered. Do not ingest.

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By Mark Kraushaar
Feature image: Still Live with Bottles, 1892 by Roderic O’Conor

Donny Banya does the room repairs or
when he isn’t buzzed he does.
I’m the night clerk.
Alma runs the bar—plus she’s an artist.
Big John, the owner, does the books
and walks around and plans big changes
to the parking lot and ground-floor Men’s.
There’s other staff but tonight
it’s just the three of us, or four including John
who is dozing on the sofa by the magazines,

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By Carrie Shipers
Feature image: Voyages of the Moon, 1934-7 by Paul Nash

No one knows its origins. Like carpools
and happy hour, the Plan has simply always been.
Its awkward page breaks and stilted phrasing,
preservation of failed projects, employees

long departed, are evidence of its ambition,
how it defies the limits of language, software,
human thought. No one has ever read the Plan
in its entirety. Attempts to download it

result in system crashes, sunspots, and recession.
A single hard copy is rumored to exist,
its pristine pages collated and punched,
then stored in binders ordered on a shelf—

but no one knows exactly where. A hundred years
from now, when the company has ceased to be
and its headquarters crumble, the Strategic Plan
will rest among the rubble waiting to be found.

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By Carrie Shipers
Feature image: The Purchaser, 1915 by Eric Gill

Do you pride yourself on your preparedness? For example,
have you already drafted a statement expressing shock

and sadness at the actions of Employee X? Did you
write it with a particular person and scenario in mind,

and if so will you say which ones? Given your choice
of disaster, would you prefer a product recall months

after concerns were first reported, high-level infidelity
involving interns and/or prostitutes, a flagrant

disregard for federal law, or embezzlement based on
shareholder fraud? Did you choose the challenge

you’re best poised to meet, or the one that sounded
the most fun? Speaking of fun, is it true most members

of your field make very poor decisions regarding alcohol,
sex and property damage, and therefore any conference

lasting longer than a day devolves into a bacchanal?
How often, in your personal life, do you attempt

to reframe information and influence someone’s view?
Is this a breach of ethics on your part, or would you insist

it’s simply human nature to want your own way?
Have you ever waged a secret, negative (i.e., “dark”)

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By Justin Jannise
Feature image: The Kiss, 1895 by Edvard Munch

Ban soap. Banish suds.
Sweep the dormitory clean
of polish. Let dust do
what dust does with no opinion

from feathers.
Invite musk. Be clothed
in scandal. Smear
and smudge and slander yourself

courageous. Fuck
courage. Stick your finger
in its wet mouth and kiss
its salty neck. Slip in

as many chickenshit deeds
as any deadbeat dad
ever did. Forget
birthdays. Ruin Christmas.

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By Ruth Bardon
Feature image: L’Armoire à Glace, 1924 by Walter Richard Sickert

She is ignorant and admits to being
easily confused.

She tells her jokes with a cheerfulness
that shows how lost she is.

I want to help her and teach her how
the world works,

and I love this feeling of knowing
so much more,

but it also makes me hate her
a little more each time,

each time she admits she’s having trouble,
is helpless to assist,

like a mother of grown children,
who see her now

as someone who offers only facts
from the news,

a weather report or a small repertoire
of songs and stories,

like the mother I may become,
sitting and nodding

as if I understood the talk,
chiming in

and coming to attention
when my name is spoken.

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