Debby Florence

FIRES

I am one hundred years old. When the birds do their evening song and
I am walking near the industrial trains with their graffiti cooking in
the sun, I can hear your machine gun. Your face looks so young but I
know you are old like me. You have solidified your mask so it doesn’t
age. I am walking on the hot earth that is measurably able to scorch
thank god for shoes. I am walking slower than I want to. I am walking
slower than I can walk. The sun is making two suns in my burning eyes.
I drag my hand across the strange solidity of chain-link fence.

I believe is getting closer. Deepest things. I believe inching into.
Blinking screens of our faces. I believe static monstrosities that are
burning down, are burning themselves down. I believe the fire causes
light.

I have things inside a basket and she keeps struggling to spill it out.
So I hide the basket. One day, the basket is too heavy. I put it on a
table and she burns it. As it burns she sees her own face in the flames.
Her mother’s face and her mother’s mother’s face. The basket turns to
ashes. She sweeps them into a vase and puts flowers in the vase and the
flowers die. She curses my name.

A mouth is floating downstream. Several hours later there is only foam.

Pronouns aren’t savages. Pronouns never were. Pronoun let pronoun go now.
Pronoun put this back. Stop making formations, no matter how beautiful. Stop
winning. Pronoun has gone under. Pronoun must go back. If only as a little
herb garden along the fence. If only when sinking desperately into the earth.
If only blood, asking for help, sends its message through the soil. I am
talking to you. My confidence angers you. I am talking to you of peace. My
peace threatens you.



Debby Florence is a performer, poet, social worker, and community organizer who lives in Missoula, Montana, U.S.A. She has been published mostly in Canada, which she usually prefers except for this whole Harper regime thing. A creator of artist books, she has been the instigator of a small press called Slumgullion, which pedalled zines and books on a bicycle-powered bookmobile. She teaches zine-making, self publishing, and general rabble-rousing workshops to youths and adults alike.

Dag T. Straumsvåg

ON/OFF

We bought a cocker spaniel, but it wasn’t realistic enough, so we gave
him away. When the goldfish died, we turned to appliances. Our old toaster,
the glass-topped stove. Appliances are not flawless either, but the on/off
buttons work so well we decided to develop a similar system of our own.
Instead of on/off buttons, we use baseball bats. One rap on the skull means
“It’s your turn to do dishes,” one smack to the shin means “Leave me alone,”
a heavy blow to the solar plexus means “Can you repeat that, please?” Life’s
a lot simpler now. The kids line up every night to do the dishes, I get to
read the paper in peace, and when we’re talking, we get straight to the
point, our diction impeccable.

Translated by Robert Hedin


Dag T. Straumsvåg was born in 1964 and grew up on the western coast of Norway. He is the author and translator of four books of poetry, and serves as editor and publisher of Pir forlag, an independent small press in Trondheim. Red Dragonfly Press has published two of his books, A Bumpy Ride to the Slaughterhouse and The Lure-Maker from Posio, both translated by Robert Hedin and Louis Jenkins. He lives in Trondheim.


Robert Hedin is the author, translator, and editor of nearly two dozen books of poetry and prose. He serves as founding director of the Anderson Center, a residential artist retreat in Red Wing, Minnesota. At the Great Door of Morning: Poems and Translations is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2016. He lives in Frontenac, Minnesota.

Loren Goodman

BEFORE THE FIGHT

Doc took a towel off the rubbing table
and wiped Eddie’s face quickly and then
he wiped Eddie’s chest and back and arms
and, bending down, his legs. He motioned to
the rubbing table where Eddie’s brother had
spread a couple of fresh white towels. Another was
folded at the head, and Eddie boosted himself up and
lay down on his back. Doc took still another clean towel
and placed it over Eddie’s chest, and then he got the robe
and spread it over Eddie.

“Give me a towel for over my eyes,” Eddie said.

He was lying directly under the ceiling light, his eyes
shut, and Doc folded another towel and placed it over
Eddie’s forehead and eyes. Eddie lay there, the robe
moving up and down and Doc folded another towel
and placed it over Eddie’s forehead and eyes. Eddie
lay there, as Doc folded another towel and placed it
over his forehead and eyes, and Doc folded another
towel and placed it over his forehead and eyes. And
Doc folded another towel and another towel and
another towel and another and placed them over
Eddie’s forehead and eyes.

“How do you feel?” Doc said.

“That’s a lot of towels,” Eddie said.



Loren Goodman is the author of Famous Americans, selected by W. S. Merwin for the 2002 Yale Series of Younger Poets, Suppository Writing (2008), and New Products (2010). He is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing and English Literature at Yonsei University/Underwood International College, UIC Creative Writing Director, and Pacific Correspondent for The Best American Poetry Web Blog. Loren lives in Seoul, South Korea.

Kathryn Mockler

THIS IS NOT A SEXY DREAM

Last night I had a dream where there was a man, a
woman, and an old man. The man pointed a gun at the
woman and the old man and told them to fuck. They
had to fuck everywhere and try not to get caught: on
the street, in a car, in a barn. The fucking was not
sexual; it was kind of like running or walking, but
it just happened to be fucking. In the dream,
sometimes I was the woman and sometimes I was
the old man, but I was never the man with the gun.

Kathryn Mockler's third poetry collection, The Purpose Pitch, was published in April 2015 by Mansfield Press, "a stuart ross book." Her writing can also be found on The Butter, Vol. 1. Brooklyn, and Geist. She's the Toronto editor of Joyland and publisher of The Rusty Toque.