Issue Two

Dakota

by Kyle Hemmings
 

I buried Dakota in her favorite dress,
calico snug, said a prayer that I'd never
have another daughter born in a black blizzard.
I looked out over the clay gullies,
the impossible fossils rising like
hands. Flung her floppy sunhat over
the empty coulee. The dog barked.
In time, her pups would fetch it, bring it
back to the ranch. As if they knew something
by sheer dog sense. I looked East,
prayed for sorghum and flaxseed,
sunflower and milk-veined maidens.
Saw Dakota in the parting lips of clouds,
low and moving over drought and badlands,
saw her pantomine and sway
before the young moon,
her voice over the Cheyenne,
over cottonwood and willow
gently mocking me,the way it did
when she pressed my hands to her cheeks,
she, so numb from the cold, from chasing
the sheep that strayed. On top of this
bare hillside, I looked everywhere,
hoping for a sign of the next harvest.
It would keep me above ground,
this body of sod, mind of open spaces,
for another year. 

Your Tenth Floor Apartment

by William Doreski

Your tenth floor apartment features

glass walls and complex urban views.

No neighbor’s close enough to see you

press naked against your vista,

polishing your seamless ego.

You’re not at home today. Touring

your rooms with a friend I note

snapshots of discarded lovers

scattered everywhere with holes punched

in the eyes or groin. The atmosphere

oppresses. My friend wants to leave.

He thinks you’ll leap from a closet

and puncture his eyeballs or deflate

his already modest genitals.

I assure him that you’re a good host

and rarely attack guests who mind

their manners and keep quiet

while you’re explaining the glories

of criminal law. Defending crime

has rendered you rich as chocolate

and nearly as sweet, except when

you fork an eye or testicle.

My friend would like to meet you,

but not in your apartment among

these suffering photographs. Maybe

the three of us could dine out

some humid summer evening. Maybe

with waiters hovering about

we’d all feel safe enough to enjoy

a good Bordeaux , a dainty salad,

a piece of fish, a conversation.

In your apartment everyone

wants to press naked to the view;               

and thus vulnerable, most people,

regardless of sex, concede

their last scrap of dignity to you.

MY LAST WALTZ

by Hugh Fox
      Should I Luschei them into carefully literaried (“Moon
      sliver, you get rid of Al Power, desert extinction,
      why nineteenth century such short lives”) fragments,
      give it to them the way it is, Bachianas Brasileirasing
      it again tonight, how come Alex mixes onions with guava
      and uncooked beets, give it to me straight, how many
      more hours, days, weeks do I have left, here I am next
      to my Brazilian M.D. wife who makes $210,000 a year
      and is my Czech grandma sweet, always one more or less
      blanket, “A little honey on those cornflakes,” from the
      honey-farm down the road, all three wives hanging around
      watching me die, e-mail (Lyn Strongin) XOXO’s every
      day from Vancouver, B.C., more Carpinteria, Tampa,
      Rome, Santa Cataina ancient babes, two more novels
      coming out this month, on the edge of Steinbecking/
      Shakespearing it, you wanna year about the German
      solid honey with my oat squares and a hundred before-
      sleep hugs, or always another oncological-urological
                  smile?