 Glasgow autumn was. Always. … My uncle’s wood bare floors and pale vases green. A child’s upright piano bust, his mother done by. Another clay beside figure it (androgynous. Perhaps unfinished. Perhaps) My uncle’s own and bedroom aunt and my guest mother a room. The crib child’s room shared and I. Long uncle-legged, a teacher lean artist. Dull breaking plaster wall-space (grey between hung painting one his. A man) chair sitting blue, head propped hand. Waiting his. … Glasgow flew to we, my I mother. Clouds close hovered, tails by wisping patch spectral. My stuck suction face a cup to small glass window fish bowl. Ocean I below could. Vast. And distant. Unreal and. … Apple child-cheeked (and ringlet mopped inky. He) naked cold flat white. Pitched yowl high the corner every piercing. Dance ritual or an absurd. Music machine strained cheap, dappled he and scratchy, in one round place turning. (And round. Expressionless. A between) cross music. Holy box shaman and. Mother my child aunt, great sweaters inhabited. Usually hair brown covered straight. A kerchief by and. Stray or two the strand always like. Threads: escaping light. … Father off airport saw us. A lounge was chair arms and couches with. And sand standing ashtrays filled with. Crushed sprouting cacti butts in well desert-spaced. Huge were runway seen windows through (which. My I mother) as walked tarmac passengers with across. People glass airplanes behind the watching. The land and the take off. One father of my. Waving. His. … Early uncle’s flat I would room mornings creep mother’s in my. Half floor darkness sighed boards heavy weight under my. Snickering door her: opening hinges of. Rolling bed’s bundled body the topography my I mother’s outline against curled the cold. Whispering slipped not to wake so as covers her under. Formed air lips like words frost a winter in. Waited. And. Movement for a. Murmur, half her eyes opening dark. And distant. Unreal shuddered body her tighter and hugged herself she. Stuttering throat her rattled like. Engine. Broke jagged. Coughing raw (fits into of. Growing. Worse.) … Museum a Glasgow in. There was. There a boy my was friend. Two older years was than he I. High we hollow through walked and corridors. The whale of inside a. Tools of (and exhibit weapons swallowed. History). Whole. And room then there the. Was. Dinosaurs. Repetition skeletons; a bone reconstructed of. Room the pointing. Blanks. The fill in. Curve to run each hand my along bump, each… still to search sleeping out the marrow, unearthed even after have the bones been. … White I night that as bone lay my bed in. Dreamed and. A moon under. … Past the morning and in crept the I breathing child’s crib. Books piano past and, the parroting. Blue silence (phonograph. My room’s mother) crept toward. Open finding. Door, the and flat bed smooth. Uncle my beside was me standing his. Red. Eyes drawn face his. Hair. My long touched fingers (gentle. Telepathy) some if impart could they, by. What me. To tell. He had. ABOUT THE POET Steven Mayoff was born and raised in Montreal, later on lived in Toronto and moved to the bucolic splendor of Prince Edward Island, Canada in 2001. His fiction and poetry have appeared in literary journals across Canada and the U.S. as well as in Ireland, Algeria, France, Wales and Croatia. He published two books of fiction: the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), which won a PEI Book Award, and the novel Our Lady Of Steerage (Bunim & Bannigan, 2015). Upcoming is a poetry collection Swinging Between Water And Stone to be published by Guernica Editions in 2019. Find out more about Steven Mayoff on his website. Feature image © Rebecca Chitticks, 2016
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 beige and blue the beak of a bird touches water. in the belly of the Indian ocean the tides are calm today. waves form foam and sounds white material residues the clasp oncoming sharp memory folds in the old. a feather is left in the sand eternal skeletons of mollusks left behind. seashells, full of calcium carbonate the mineral of waters. the nest, flashing around the pulse of sand fine footprints filled with reverberations of life. contextual under umbrellas of positioning a person under the rubric of a sphere and a double-headed dragon with fire in his mouth falls into a pit of darkness and tugs at its black hair and the whiteness of shame it hangs it hangs it hangs within the underbelly of emphatic resounding nothingness. Communication Disclosure I. There was a crumpled paper which lay on the table with a dark wood finish (Made from the bark of a rosewood tree). "What are you thinking?" "Thinking, nothing." "There is a lunch get together this Sunday." Something the lack of an answer explained. The synthetic perfume perforated the room. "Did you hear her husband just lost his job?" "My neighbors cat ran away somewhere." "This pearl necklace is of freshwater pearls." "The rain always spoils my silken dress." II. (By now, Romeo stood beneath Juliet's balcony.) "Are you reading Shakespeare again?" Quietude pervaded and I continued reading in a corner. Guests came and went through the narrow passages flippantly, asking questions and not waiting for answers. (As though their questions were asked for the sake of questions being asked; for no answer.) Under artificial lighting, the moths played. "Hurry up, don't you want to be among the first in line for the buffet?". They lined up like a string of ants around a giant anthill. III. "They made an April fool's joke and he was fooled." "That chap would not know of forced rudeness." "The entire office was laughing about his - O salad." "Iceberg lettuce leaves and tomatoes again." "I had told her to keep the romaine and butterhead." "The cutlets have less crunch and the ketchup is soggy." "This chocolate soufflé has saved the show." The sounds and fury that passed lingered in the banquet hall. IV. "Are you still taking those birth control pills?" "Did you see he has purchased a new automobile?" "Automated brakes". The grin on their faces increased. (The sounds of horns increased as the cars lined, one by one.) I was among forks and spoons and silvery plates alone against the entire crowd pressed together. "Are you still reading Romeo and Juliet?" (They had both died by then.) The night bed had red sails and I walked in the company of a solitary lane, the south-west wind and tall trees. ABOUT THE POET
'Sneha Subramanian Kanta finds credence in non-linear forms of looking. Avant-garde art, untold stories and tales of refugees are matters close to her heart. Her work is forthcoming in Fallujah Magazine, ZOOPOETICS, Serendipity, Erstwhile Magazine and the first print anthology of Peacock Journal and elsewhere. She is a GREAT scholarship awardee, pursuing her second postgraduate degree in literature in the United Kingdom. She believes in forms of dissents and uprisings, renaissance, handwritten letters and the word et cetera.' 3/20/2017 1 Comment POETRY: Howie Good, two poems
Ambulances roam the roads in anticipation of random shootings. Yeah, every day. Many of us can’t believe we’re still alive. Run Hide Fight. It’s an intricate dance. You don’t want to fuck it up. * The crime tip hotline rings continuously. “Who’s the bad man?” the police operator asks. “What’s he look like?” He looks a little like one of the Twelve Apostles, the tallish one with dyed blond hair. The police may not catch him. He could still be here months from now, whispering to women on the street, “Your egg, my semen, we change the world.” * Is it evening? The weekend? Another time when few people are around? I take a walk on the Boardwalk. A woman has strategically placed herself under one of the infrequent streetlights. “Tear here,” she says with a wink. I didn’t actually go to art school. So, to me, this is art school.
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