Issue 1
Table of Contents
Contest Winners and Finalists
Poetry
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction
Bios

Authors
Eliza Bishop
Sharon Doyle
James Doyle
Daniel M. Gallick
Huang Xiang

Eliza Bishop
A Marble Shoots Through the Center of Memory

We spoke, two mirrors facing one another,
“shovel straight to the heart.”
I slept in a bow tie for a week straight
to see if my dreams could become more proper.

I wrote a paper in your bed entitled “Where Light Leads.”
You said it is behind us, spiraling and oscillating.

The last time you used the word oscillating
was to describe a Haitian painting of a wedding dinner.
The floor was checkered cream and crimson.
I wanted to lick the characters into floating existence.

Those idle speculations
about the disciplinary system of Santa Claus
or the polytheistic nature of culture
made me tap on a hollow log to see if insects would emerge.

I referred to the bedroom as the room with angles.
Which was wrong of me
I'd like to remove that statement
right now.

Call it a volatile vertex, or urgent intimacy. No room
deserves measurement if it contains rays of desire.
Don't end on desire.




Sharon Doyle
Morning Greeting in New Orleans

My grandmother's grave is concrete,
a box above the ground at the dawn
because water likes to seep inside, I
never understood that and

I wish she wasn't up here,
still like a whole thing
I can talk to.

Someone should
put her away.



James Doyle
Okay You Sumbitch,

git over here where I kin see you.”
He gestured with a shotgun barrel.
I was knee deep in the hay
where I had slept last night.
I waded out to the barn's door.

Behind him were his wife, four
kids, and a spotted hog. The sun
took my eyes down a peg or two
which I was hoping would pass
for humility, a game I played

of religious facsimiles. He pointed
the gun straight up and pulled
the trigger The ringing caromed
back and forth across my ears
like the marble in a pinball machine.

“Show the kids what a peckerhead
from the city looks like. Dance!”
I just stood there. His wife began
wailing. The kids started jumping
around. “Shoot him, daddy, shoot him!”

The last farm where I slept over
I took a pitchfork through the leg.
I could barely walk, much less
dance. Two farms ago a kitchen
knife cut tendons out of my arm.

I couldn't even gesture. When I
ran, my arm hung so loose
it flapped against my body.
I had to tie it to my waist
with shoelaces And now I was told

to dance? I sat down on the spot
and drooled The hog came nosing
around me I sliced his throat
open with my fingernails. “Is that
dance enough for you?” I said.

“Yes,” they said, “yes, yes, yes.”



Daniel M. Gallik
What A Loving Man Thought of Matters

My girl told me I owned
Some Zen-like jests. I
Said to cram it in a kind
Way. She laughed and left
Me for another man, one
Who understood looks but
Was not looking. I

Cried for a millisecond.
Then laughed about my new
Girl. A grocery store
Stocker from New Jersey
Who never ate a thing
Other than the wind. Her
Name Windy. Immediately,

She kissed my whatever. I
Smiled. Then she kissed
It again. This time I did
Not smile. Asked her to
Leave for a coast. She
Promptly left for Michigan .
I asked both girls what

Was the matter. Zen-girl
Said nothing except I don't
Know. The Heinens' model
Said, I know who you were,
Not who you are. I lifted
My skirt, peered, then said
I want to be Michigan.




Huang Xiang
Dirge for a Young Country

— A Lament for the Terrorist Attack on New York 's Twin Towers

In a dream
New York 's two great pointers are severed
The pain pierces me to the bone
Ships traveling the centuries about to sink
And I seem to face a horrible death by drowning
The twin skyscrapers
Are two masts
Abjectly teetering, hopeless
Are two antennae, newly broken,
That desperately call
To heaven for help
Under the clear sky Upon the Earth
Oh God, Oh God, Why, Why
Are You so completely silent
In the twin towers' savage destruction
My body within their massive forms
Collapses at the same time
They were “murdered”
And I am strangling
They suffer an attack
And blood flows like water from my gaping wounds
Their bones and sinews of steel bend and break
My whole skeleton.
What the towers have lost of themselves
I am now the less
They are leveled flat
And I am crushed to dust
I tell you loudly
I am the skyscrapers,
Proud pinnacles of earthly construction
New York 's landmark is the same as Beijing 's
Landmark, Tokyo 's, Paris 's, London 's
Landmarks.
The symbol of American civilization
Any American's misfortune disappearance
Or death
Is the misfortune disappearance and death of
All the people of the world
Everyone's life is equally precious
Equally precious is everyone's life
On the Earth Beneath the clear sky
Oh God I find
Posted along New York 's streets pictures of
More than 5,000 missing people
Every one of them is a missing relative I'm searching for
Every picture that stares at me is
Me myself.
I am the father of a child who
Lost a father,
The husband of a wife
Who lost her husband,
A mother who lost the child of a mother
Twin wings of smoke and flame
Envelope me
Incinerate me
It is the smoke of fires burning
Every continent
Every building
Every room
Every person on our planet
The two towering lute strings
That resounded across the skies
Have snapped within my body
And so within the bodies of all of you there is only
Silence
A living world has crashed down
Into the stillness of the oozing blood
As though the great King of Terror descended from the sky
The centuries-old prophesy of Nostradamus
Has been fulfilled
Remember this day Remember this day
In a memorandum on the history of mankind
Record this date
Remember this day Remember this day
The darkest moment of cosmic time
—— September 11, 2001——
Oh God, Oh God I have faith in you, I call you to appear
Be with me Be with these silent votive candles
All things on Earth that once have died must forge their way
back through the bloody muck
Under the clear sky Upon the Earth
To go on living Forever and forever

SEPTEMBER 20, 2001

In New Jersey sunroom
Translated by Andrew G. Emerson

Huang Xiang
Guitar

On my body are two guitar
Strings
One is the Yellow River
One is the Yangtse River
They are tightly strung on my back
Thrumming now two vibrant words in my
Own language:
China! China ! China !
With every strum
Inside my body
A tide surges
The roar of its churning waves
Blasts out the silting stars of
Time
That fill my body
To the brim
China! China!
China!