CONTENTS

Masthead

Donors/Benefactors

Editor's Note

Poetry

Rebecca Aronson
Drew Blanchard
Myron Ernst
Adam Ferrari
Carrie Green
Angie Macri
Christiaan Sabatelli
Sarah J. Sloat
Lindsay Marianna Walker
Mark Wisniewski

Fiction

Daniel Browne
Michael Gavaghen
Matthew Hobson
Shelagh Shapiro

Nonfiction

Bill Capossere

Interview

Henry Rollins
Alison Smith

Art & Photography

Gary Lanier
Jarod Rosselo
Heather Whitman

Book Reviews

Atmospheric Disturbances
Our Keen Blue House

Contributor's Notes

 

A Day Off

Adam Ferrari

Give me banshee-tattering facewinds around motorcycle curves with fear-chilled trickles thrilling down my sides, then a charging leatherback boozehound on a cheap bar’s parking slab— I’ll smash my fists on bones of temple steel. Give me limestone-shredded bloodhands cramped to overhanging jags, legs swaying danglers scrabbling for a hold on a Sherpa-gnashing sheer face; drunk on smother-thin cloud air, I’ll heft to ledge and balm my cuts in snow. Come the siren-winding cyclone— pummel me with rumble beat of glassshard hail and trident-flashing flares; let me stampede out in cloudburst and taste heaven’s melted ice, then run—dive!—sliding rivulets through the mud; Bring me every touch, Mephisto!— every plush of Gretchen’s breast, the taste of every saltlick on her thighs; loose your furor, world of cages— bring each prick of pleasure-pain, each texture grind my hands and juice soothe tongue. Give me blood-brute heart to crouch on my department’s window ledge and leap out to land rolling in the dew— I’ll roar city-shaking thunders that tremolo low and ring— my freedom rippling through the mist-chilled air.