Ricky Garni

The Way We Were

My Dad had a tattoo. It was a saber.

I thought it was a dachshund.

My Dad liked me because I thought it was a dachshund.

I liked my Dad because he had a saber that looked like a dachshund.

I like my Grandma because she first saw the dachshund

and didn’t know that it was a saber and screamed and

fainted and fell into the pool.

Mike Maher

Transplanted.

Adolescent Flaubert

announced that he wanted to spend the rest of his life

in an abandoned castle by the sea.

It's at times like these I can't say I blame him,

or that I wouldn't want to join him,

be his neighbor,

maybe even share a moat,

spend the day arguing about what Madame Bovary might have been like in the sack,

sending teasing letters to Julian Barnes about the real colors of that parrot,

or talking about dancing bears and pitying stars.

I want to be named after a star

or at least have a hurricane named after me.

"Tropical Storm mike Maher. Bombards Cuba."

"Hurricane mike Maher. Breaches the Levees."

Maybe Flaubert just didn't fit in,

like my cousin in seven schools in seven years,

like most birds in Northeastern winters.

The Jersey shoreline doesn't go anywhere when snowfall comes

because beaches don't die in winter;

they come alive.

She breathes easier with no one stepping on her lungs,

no flat-footed children or beach chair-wielding parents,

no Ken doing Barbie behind the dunes.

Solitude at last,

minus the grizzly old fisherman and his Labrador,

but they aren't unwelcome.

The man stares at a motionless Ferris wheel coming into view on the pier.

The Lab finds the ruins of a forgotten sand castle.

Moon still visible in the morning sky.

A horseshoe crab washes up.

Mike Maher lives, reads, and writes in the Pennsylvania's Pocono mountains. Some of his previous work has appeared in Calliope, and he is the recipient of the Martha E. Martin award for poetry and the Jim Barniak award for Journalism. He is also the founder and editor of Sea Giraffe, an online literary magazine.

Jessica Barksdale Inclan

Spinning

In the strange garage of the old French

house, I found a stationary

bicycle, the pedals

loose, the seat a hard

plastic wedge.

Every morning

I rode, spinning nowhere

as I read novels

in a language

I can barely speak.

One the story of a woman

with horrible neighbors.

I still don’t know

what they did to her.

Outside, the holiday August

weather full of sun

and particulate matter.

In the garage, gloom

through a leaded window.

My husband would

hike in the forest,

along the ridge,

come home with tarts,

juice, tales of the baker’s

daughter with the big smile.

Over coffee, I’d have no stories

he wanted to hear,

my thoughts on home

and how once we got there,

I would leave him.

Jessica Barksdale Inclan is the author of twelve novels.  Intimate Beings will be re-released in mass market in September 2011.  You can read more about her at http://jessicabarksdaleinclan.com/.

Patricia Caspers

Ten Thousand Years

1.

I first ate nori

on the linoleum floor

of the rental, from where

I couldn’t see Nana’s death bed.

Good for immunity, Dad said.

The Beatles sang “Yesterday”

through a derelict radio

as the seaweed pasted itself

to my teeth.

I couldn’t wash

the ocean from my mouth.

2.

Dad dragged me

through the back door

of a late-night

Sac Town sushi bar,

its neon Open sign the same

shade of pink as the tuna display.

The itamae served Dad’s usual--

tongue-like slabs of salmon, shrimp, eel

over rectangles of rice.

He pushed at me

a circle spiral of white

and green glittering

with red tobiko.

Dad dropped a cup of saki

into his beer, raised it, and shouted

Banzai.

I opened my mouth

and closed my eyes.

3.

Leave the rice,

the green paste, brown sauce,

salt roe.

I want bare sashimi

so sweet and easy,

it’s like kissing.

4.

At Kai’s, my children lift bowls

with two hands,

slurp miso, swallow

the tofu whole, nibble

vinegared rice

from their fingers, smear

avocado, dare

the wasabi.

The waitress calls them by name.

Somewhere,

their grandfather is pleased

with his bequest.