Holiday World
They lost me on purpose. They always do. They come here to Holiday World, knowing my cousins all hate Splashin' Safari, so they leave me around the Jungle Jets. Then after they, you know, wash themselves off, they slink away.
You want a description of them? My dad's wearing cut-offs. He's on the rides. He's the first to go. My mom's name is Anne and I don't know what color her hair is. I know what color it's supposed to be: brown, like mine, but she dies it red and black and there's some purple in it today. What do you mean distinctive clothing? She's got a bathing suit on. A one-piece with a pair of cut-offs and yellow flip-flops. No, no hat. No glasses. No lifejacket or hair ribbons.
We came up here to Indiana from New Orleans after Katrina drowned our house. We're staying with my aunt and uncle. They call us Displaced Persons. I can tell they're tired of us. And I can tell you this right now; I'm sick of them too. All they eat is cereal. We've been through a hurricane, so they think going to a water park is this great treat for us. They keep taking us here and my mom keeps coming, then leaving me.
They try and make the cement here look like sand. See? You can see the indents of shells pressed in. The concrete next to The Wave is supposed to look like a beach, like a disguise. It's all pretend. That's what my cousins say. That's why you call this place Lost Parents and not Missing Children, isn't it? Everyone's trying to be funny. Everyone's pretending. I'll tell you straight out, they're not coming to get me. Here? They only look for kids, not parents. It's like a safe house.
All they play is Beatles music here, too. Why's that? Shake it up baby. Twist and shout. I miss jazz. I miss the blues.
My mom? I told you the last place seen: Jungle Jets. Look for her. You'll see her walking. She just walks around and around the water, never going on the rides. She'll be carrying a Big Gulp. She drinks the free soda and gets her hands and feet wet. She walks and walks all around the water, as if we haven’t seen enough to last a lifetime.
Margaret McMullen

Reflecting Through Cows
“Cows are my favorite animal,”
she said at a friend’s house
as we waited for the spaghetti to cook.
“They’re like elephants but more chill.”
Maybe it was the Indian in her; maybe
it was the American in me
that thought it was the Indian in her.
The cheese on the veal melted,
blending into the red sauce.
I was reminded, for some reason,
of the time downtown at the Korean
restaurant, when I taught my friends
how to use chopsticks, a skill
that I learned at a young age,
but rarely used growing up.
Kyle Carrozza

To Dr ----
My dear professor, I beg your pardon.
I yawned, I doodled, did not pay attention,
but your monotone, consistent as it is,
cures my insomnia.
One spoonful, derivative of x,
and I dream dreams
(about math, of course),
arithmetic oblivion
of integrals and differentiation,
until I wake up
as a result of the chalk
you threw at my head.
Charlee Redman
Canned Vegetables
“We’ve become ghosts of something greater tonight, you know. We’ll haunt these rooms, each other, for the rest of our lives”. The door shut behind him with the same delicate sadness of a book being placed back upon the shelf once it had been finished. I hadn’t spoken or moved an inch in the past hour and now all I wondered was where I should put my hands. There is nothing more disarming in this world than removing someone from your life. Everything on my body felt alien, as if my soul had been transported to a place outside of me and I was looking in on this fragile girl with her back curved against the wall; unaware whether she could move or speak, but entirely lost in her being. The intricately marked boxes of my former roommate needed to be moved and were blocking all of the light that typically saturated the cracks in the wooden floorboards where my bare feet swept back and forth. The light would come back, incongruously enough, once his possessions were gone.
I am counting the minutes until the neighbors fall into their bed, touching the wall I’m facing from the other side and drinking in each other’s scents and tastes like they’ve never spent a goddam night in bed before. “It’s always something new for us,” the girl tells me when I see her in the grocery store. “He’s a brilliant surprise that I keep unwrapping and discovering”. I grab the canned vegetables and stare at her as if she’s speaking German. Her face is absurd and shaped like a bedpan that’s been used by every patient in the psychiatric ward where she works. I touch her arm and tell her I have to get going, but that it was a pleasure seeing her. It’s her routine to shout down the aisle something about meeting for a drink soon and mine to pretend I never heard a thing. At least we’ve got that in common.
I hear the clamor of the locks and know he’s back to grab the rest of his things. The boxes are moving and the waves are swelling in my eyes, but I don’t know how to move again. The ghosts are all around me, just like he said. He’s in the other room and in this bed at the same time, brushing my hair out of my eyes and wiping away the tears while the boxes keep moving back and forth from the door. I know my ghost is in the room with him, sitting on the floor in his flannel shirt and sipping coffee while he tries to pretend she’s not watching his departure. She’ll weave her fingers into his and pull him down next to her, telling him all about the colors she’s found to paint the mural in the bedroom. He’s dealing with his own waves.
Kristin Anne Blacker
The Igloo Movie Theater
The North Pole winter had been colder than usual
but huddled snug between the two fuzzy yak-fur blankets
there could be no way for us to tell.
In the igloo movie theater
the penguins served us hot popcorn on trays of melting ice
and the steaming hot chocolate
was smooth as the curve of your legs
and your lips, as soft as I remembered
completed your body so perfectly
warm and radiating out.
Holding you tight, there at the great frozen hat rack of the world
I laughed as we looked out through the frozen air
past the velvet red seats lined up
with shiny brass poles along the aisle
and the Eskimos touching round red noses
so passionately like lovers always should do.
As we looked out past the polar bear audience
sitting so politely and clapping their furry white paws
together in a great roaring of applause
out to the vast semi-circle ice ceiling
and the aurora blazing bright
like mystical Christmas lights shining in the sky beyond
I turned to you and said, “Those polar bears are so cordial aren’t they?”
And you smiled at me, and thought:
“What a silly thing to say”
but you nuzzled your nose still deeper
getting lost in the warm depths of my chest
and there you laughed to yourself, just a little.
Polar bears would never really clap like that.
And the movie might have been a hit
but then again, we could never care.
Our world ended at the length of an arm
At the end of a kiss
and the silvery screen held so high up ahead
might as well have been empty
or might as well
never existed.
Jim Rose
You Shouldve Seen Her
Legs plagued with black liver spots,
she squints at me through her thick rimmed glasses,
already too weak for her ever-worsening eyes,
a tube passing through her saggy skinned neck.
After the prompting, "Remember? Rajiv's daughter,"
She smiles, teeth yellowed except for where they're missing,
(it's terrible to admit but she's terrifying)
and says, "Oh girl, you look just like me."
I shudder.
My grandma walks slowly, with a cane, but she's still walking.
She burps and farts and takes her dentures out in public,
but she recognizes names and faces,
remembers how to say "no English" into the phone when it rings,
the names of all those gods she lines up in her bedroom,
prays to for the happiness of her children, and theirs.
Mostly she watches soaps,
the heroin doe eyed, the vamp in western clothes,
and talks about how she did things in her kitchen,
about home.
Sometimes, when I remember how old she is,
when I remember that no man is mortal and that no woman,
no matter how old or crazy or boring,
should be alone,
I make her a cup of coffee with milk and extra sugar.
(I'm the only one who gets it right.)
That's how I learn that Dad was her husband's favorite,
that home is the smell of over-ripe mangoes and neighbors that speak your language.
That's how I learn that a man thirty-four years dead
can still make you cry. No matter how old you get, you remember your husband.
That's how I learn what it feels like to find out,
at the age of eighty-four, in a foreign country,
that you've out-lived your first born, your only baby girl.
"She was beautiful," she told me.
"You know, you look just like she did."
Swati Prasad
Ben Franklin
Get your fingers off my face!
This indignity is difficult to take -
all your grubby hands touching my skin,
immortalized and impregnable,
on worn green paper.
I see what you use me for;
cheap transactions
at the Wall Street Dollar Menu,
crumpled up in pockets
kept company by lint and gum wrappers.
I was a great man,
renowned in England and in France.
I pass from hand to hand,
metallic clink, brush of skin,
and you don’t even notice
I was watching you the whole time.
Charlee Redman
After the Miscarriage
Two weeks later, I put the cardboard boxes -
the same ones that we kept everything in
after the shower - in his room. I stacked
the small ones inside the big ones and -
I feel terrible for this - thought maybe
they had been emptied prematurely.
Folded clothes, unopened wipes, shoes,
tongues perfectly even, their little mouths
agape, I eventually packed everything back
into the boxes but could not take them
back up into the attic. Some nights,
I would wake up and walk over to that room,
almost the same way as I'd once imagined
that I would. Moonlight crawling
through the blinds, the walls were bare
and the bureau empty.
I stared at the boxes and thought
of how the room looked the same
as when we moved into our home.
Kyle Carrozza

Provolone on Rye
"A turkey panini, fries and water, please.
Grilled cheese, provolone on rye, coffee. Thanks."
The waitress leaves and I hiss,
I might not have wanted that.
He grins, "No? I'll call her back, then."
He makes a motion but I stop him, embarrassed like always.
It's true. It's what I would have ordered myself.
I have been to this diner,
with the old Greek waitress who would wink when he payed,
an infinite number of times, always with him but
normally not quite like this.
The food comes.
I pull the halves apart, or try.
The cheese resists, melting, pulling together.
Separation is hard, I've heard. I had not known.
The mayonnaise that has crisped my rye
is his favorite. He pours gobs
of the white stuff, perishable egg pudding,
onto his fries. I look on in disgust.
He takes one, eats it slowly, smiles.
I am playing with an empty canister of half-and-half,
drinking my coffee and forgetting to eat.
"Just like always." He laughs.
I should throw his water across the table,
yell, "These habits aren't yours anymore,
and anyway I've changed."
I'd walk out of the place,
triumphant.
But it sits in front of me, provolone on rye,
so I eat.
Swati Prasad
Organs
In my youth, when asked if I would rather live with a full heart and an empty mind, or with a full mind and an empty heart, I chose the first. A carefree conscience led me strait to an empty-minded girl. She would empty lungfuls of lies upon my ears daily. She would empty my bank account to buy imported objects and empty literature to perhaps incite empty conversation. She professed empty promises of her love-filled heart with a smile as fake as an illusionist’s prop. After dinner she would usually empty her stomach and whine about her empty feeling of weakness. When I alluded to a tender or funny moment we shared, she had forgotten, and so I chose to forget her.
Now, when asked if I would rather live with a full heart and an empty mind, or with a full mind and an empty heart, I choose the latter. Not because I am bitter, but because living is full of complications, and loving is thoughtful. I know that the heart cannot properly function without the mind. I’ve been seeing a one-eyed girl with cleverness, clumsy hands and a complete sense of humor. Her mind is full of musings of depth and sentiment. My once empty heart is now full of laughter. Her heart is empty because it’s impaled by a steering column somewhere on Interstate 8. The paramedics resuscitate her and the hole is now filled with a mechanical one. After the operation, she says she loves me, and for the first time ever, I believe it fully because I know even a girl with a clockwork heart can love.
Max Moon

Hours to Share
I imagine you:
an ornate teacup
full of moonshine,
sitting crookedly
in front of a harmonium
on the beach in December--
your back turned on the world
and its atrocities.
You appear sentimental,
waiting to be understood
gazing across the Pacific,
imagining me:
alone in Kanagawa
rain-drenched--
laying on my back
in the gardens
bleeding from the gums
onto cobblestones,
orchid petals,
and scattered
front teeth.
laughing.
I might be wrong
Max Moon
Flowers for Someone
My grandmother loved pink roses.
Bouquets of them surrounded her
mahogany casket.
Lady bugs hid in the petals,
scattering about the church
when the service started.
I sat next to my mother,
her face pink from the tissue’s
caress—I could not comfort her.
After the service, I picked up a bouquet
and gave you a dozen pink roses.
You sniffed, removed the plastic,
and slid them into a vase half-
filled with water. You called them
lovely, as you put them on your
dining room table.
A week later,
I am sitting in your dining room,
and you thank me again for the roses.
I stare at their evenly cut stems,
breathing in their rich air, watching
the once pink petals turn brown and stiff.
Kyle Carrozza
The Paper Butterfly
Round, round, round
in circles you run
while the sun never ceases to stare you down
The image fades
as you come before me now:
opposite, a table apart
Silence is the blanket we're shivering under
while we wait
for our voices
Your restless hands fall upon a sheet
blank with unsaid words
and thin as beauty
Spindly fingers work the edges
bending and folding
smoothening each crease to perfection
In the end, you cup a paper butterfly
light as a sigh
with wings that gently fold, unfold
Lifting your head,
our eyes wash over each other
with all the cold of knowing
Standing and turning aside,
my eyes are drawn to the sun
but I am ashamed by its honesty
Almost carelessly, your flat palms bend,
your fingers stretch toward the ground
and the paper butterfly tumbles
Wings askew
it falls to the endless cool grass below
making not a single sound
You joining me at my side
is harder than crying -
I only see the butterfly
Gently,
you press one hand over my lips
but you can't stop my eyes from seeing
Behind me
your footsteps fade;
you only forgot this
Amanda Marie White

Taciturn Tantrum: A Tawdry Tongue-Twister
Observe The Obelisk Isrith: an obstinate obstacle to our oral obliteration; an orchid in an obligatory unorganized orchard of organic offal. The intellectually tenacious tribal tribunal of purple pandas triumphantly transcribes this tablet of trust, preventing our parallax proclivity to the prosaic and paltry past in an attempt to indiscriminately immortalize and immunize Isrith from impetuous infidelity. However, every verisimilar vision vaunted in verbosity yet veiled in vivid vitality vanishes. The veracity of our vernacular is victimized as vicious visages of vehement villains vent violent vocalizations through vacuous vocations. Avaricious invaders vanquish our vulnerable villages before brainless brawlers befoul the beautiful bastion of brilliant banter, bringing Isrith below the brine in battle with a barrage of brutish banality. Lecherous lords of lands leagues away licentiously lobotomize life by leveling libraries, leaving lunatics to lecture lurid litanies in a lost language.
Eventually an effusive accumulation of offhand assonance and alliteration epitomizes an orator’s exasperation. He finds folly in the frantic flow of fiendish phantasms from his failing pharynx, while whispers whither with every wanton and wasted word. It’s as if succinct and scathing sub-standard speech superciliously severed symphonies of soliloquies at the source. It resembles the requiems of religious ruminations ruling rural regions: rubes in rapture; a ridiculous reassignment of right, wrong, and reconciliation. Rare remaining panda refugees resiliently refute the recently-risen rapacious reticence in reminiscence of the relic’s reign.
Despite the decadently depressing duration of desolation, dreams defy death and a duo of daft daredevil descendants dive down into the depths and rediscover Isrith, the dated dialect. Direct decipherment commences, causing caustic controversy in a conclave of crude crustaceans. Fragments of phonetics are found and filtered from the filth of fifty fathoms. A sudden surge in socialization ceases six centuries of silence as a preposterously pleasing pandemic of poetry spans Pangaea, proliferating panda population. (as pretty purple pandas are perfectly prone to prosper upon punctilious pageantry and pomp!)
Max Moon