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ARE YOU WHO YOU SAY YOU WERE?
Milton P. Ehrlich Don't get bent out of shape figuring out who you were in your last life. Slurp your alphabet soup of infinity. You're not the only seraphim in town who needs protection from every soul-crushing poltergeist haunting Time's House. The weathered face of God's wife smiles, inviting you to get on board the Milky Way Ferris wheel with Moses and Tutankhamen. The only matter worth remembering is the first time you made love, — the elixir of bliss, when all the bluebirds chirped resurrection. |
TUT by Samantha Cox Colborn |
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DRUGSTORE PHARAOH
by Robert Beveridge We sat at the packed bar, traded shots of Four Horsemen as we waited for the sunrise. "Perfume," he said, "was for mummies, back in the day." He drank. "The spices they used to embalm mummies had a pleasing scent. Women imitated it, and kings, to get closer to their gods." My turn, the mix of peppermint, cinnamon, and darker things, swirled through the teeth, on the journey from throat to bloodstream. |
APOLLO by Brent Wiggans |
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EURYDICE—ANOTHER LIFETIME
by Ann Wehrman suddenly spring delicately riots fragrance of new grass wafts on warm breeze, children swing pit bull on leash runs grinning catches Frisbee in her mouth, barks deep joy sun warms skin hidden far too long standing at the bus stop, I watch all this, as if in a dream then I see her again, the squirrel that I'd first thought a rat, until she moved I watched her for a quarter of an hour, days prior as she squatted on a drainage gate in the parking lot I assumed she was hunting worms, bugs, whatever climbed to the iron skylight over that drain— an easy catch, like ice fishing she had even warned off a fellow squirrel that day baring teeth and claw, guarding her solo spot today, though, as I watch her crouch, motionless on the cold grate her pose seems more like a vigil, perhaps for her mate who might have slipped through the bars fallen helplessly, irretrievably into foul darkness leaving her unable to move, hoping against hope for his ascent, the emergence of his small, brown, fur-covered head instead, in a cruel gender reversal of Orpheus' fate she must ultimately accept, must move from the grate even if her shell-shocked psyche leads her to a fatal mistake vagrant's knife or passing car tearing her limb-from-limb yes, she ventured below in her mind chirping and clicking, probing dark water, slimy walls perhaps the end of the sewer-river does, in fact hold what she saw in that dream during her lonely vigil on the grate— rusted throne, the Lizard Queen, and at her side, the squirrel's mate somehow still breathing, though spent or perhaps that was just a dark dream engendered by loss keeping her hesitant there in today's pristine rebirth of spring squirrel dame crouches, listens, yearns guards the grate ferociously her dark longing will never be satisfied her fate awaits—to be torn, then set among the stars |
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