Exangel

by Stephen Mead.

It’s simply complicated.
The future is behind you.
You are on an escalator standing backwards.
Beneath you is the present & the past has your eyes.

Seeing only these two, you feel the other
exactly where your hands aren’t.

I’ve forgotten the Greek phrase for this.
My tongue is of the Sphinx, that inscrutable mouth.
Perhaps it’s hieroglyphic from too much reading,
reading into & deeply.

Perhaps it’s a narrowing, that long view,
that historic, with some Egyptian fall
always shadowing one’s vision.

Do you know it too, the analyzed realism,
the so-reasonable cynicism, the parochial intellect
of hyper-tense sense?

World enough; the time/patience,
the faith/trust catching up for a minute clear
here where your world is still
a refugee’s postcards, the home
set about, the looking & the don’t look

back into a future simply colored by this knowledge.

Look, suddenly we take off our shirts
here on this escalator which could be
in Algeria or Iran, could be a film
on some flesh-resembling screen,

but I feel only the lines on your belly
while you feel the lines on my mouth.

This is asylum then, the future behind
& touch everywhere else.

 

by David D. Horowitz. “Don’t worry about making subtle distinctions in your dissertation. You want to make a big splash to get your work published as a book that gets you an academic job.” Thus, a professor decades ago advised me and the six other students in our graduate seminar. I greatly respected this professor—but […]

by Rose Jermusyk. She had come so far already, left her beloved highlands in the old country, crossed an ocean hoping the grass really was greener. She went to church with neighbors who had come before her, but she was on her own. All alone and always in transit between her boarding room at the […]

by Sylvi(a) Temple. The silence here is clammy, the house is motionless, as if it holds its breath – Too many memories have settled into dust; Young woman listen for the bell… Feel the world’s touch upon your skin, stumble into its arms clumsy and newborn: But the door is too wide open – and […]

by Jon Ferguson. Often I awake in the middle of the night to check if my heart is still beating. The light goes on when I flick the switch. Friend Whitman had no switches flicking. I see the things – light, lamp, books, clock, pen, near to finger touch always reassuring. The woman asleep, body […]

by Marie Davis & Margaret Hultz. Sylvia’s mother goes bump, bump and bump all the way down the sewer drain. Each bump makes a very pleasant, clangy, tinny sound — pleasant to the ears, a much-needed respite from the foul breath of the large sewer drain. But, pleasing to the eye how the giant pipe […]

by Robert Johnson. My old man was a piece of work. “Certifiable,” as the shrinks say on TV. He sat in that godforsaken attic “office” of his most of the years I was growing up at home, banging out his “tales” on an old portable typewriter, and—truthfully—I think he sold, what . . . two […]

by Benjamin White. I was in Europe To defend the West From godless communists Preparing to storm out Of their red politics And cross over bordered history To claim a Soviet future. She was born In East Germany and knew The policies and practices there Would not hesitate To operate and relieve her Of her […]

by K J Kindling. Arcadia by definition is a countryside that’s believed to be perfect -a paradise. It was the only word I got right on a fifth grade vocab quiz. I usually got every word right but I was too distracted by how much I loved the word Arcadia. Momma was mad and asked […]

by Tony Whitehead and Phil Smith. No one kills an angel. Mandi Lyon changed that. Though it was never her intention to upset the balance of so many worlds on the morning she arrived back in the county of her birth. Raised by adoptive parents, from whom she had drifted away after college when work […]