A FRESH COAT OF PAINT by Christian DeLaO |
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HOTEL ROOM
by Erica Goss The bed is always center, and it's never dark enough. Dry cold whispers from the air conditioner. Witness the passive desk, with its blank pad of paper and the telephone, naïve in spite of the many hands that have grasped it, the many mouths that have breathed into it. Go ahead and take the pen, the soap, the little bottle of lotion. They are charms against anonymity, like the Bible with its dented cover in the drawer next to the bed. Love starts and ends in places like these where grief hides in the bathtub where morning and night a sliver of light shines between the drapes. |
ALL A LIE by Katy Brown |
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THE STAIR-COUNTING POEM
by Arthur Russell The number of stairs between the first floor and the landing has changed. It was ten, now it's nine. You wonder who there is to complain to. You actually look over your shoulder. That's normal. When a stair goes missing between the first floor and the landing, you wonder who is in charge. No one is in charge. Be happy that you can still get to the second floor; you don't step off into a void. If you're lucky enough to meet a jeune fille, convince her to go home with you, and to come upstairs, she won't notice. The stairs appear the same as always. Creak, railing, paint drips: same. She will look up at you with a smile as you turn to look back at her midflight. Your soft face and petitioning eyes will reassure her. Everything is fine. The nagging thought that a stair is missing will distract you when you get excited during sex. You will count the stairs again as you go down to make breakfast. Nine stairs. You will hear the shower come on and take a mental inventory of the towel situation, the toilet situation. Both will be fine. She'll move around the bedroom. You'll like hearing how your house plays her melodies, like someone new playing the piano at The Village Vanguard. When she comes down, you will count again. Your last thought before she enters the kitchen with that luminous face and unbrushed, wet hair will be: still nine. You'll get the shoeboxes after she leaves. That means looking at photos of your wife and daughter. You've practiced passing over that hard place. There's a photo with your daughter and three girlfriends sitting on the stairs at her eighth birthday; they're wearing pink hair bands with spring and foam-ball antennas. As you expected, there will be ten steps, not nine. You will go into the living room and count again. Nine. You count the stairs in the photo. Ten. You climb the stairs holding the photo like a GPS, trying to figure out which step is missing, but none is. There are just fewer than before. |
HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL by Stephanie Lakos |
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THE STIR
by P.M.F. Johnson (for C.W.) In this box apart-ment above many rooms below many rooms an electric fan ruffles his parakeet ruffles his parakeet it's coming on morning the heat still fat the windows of this slop-sided building let in the city behind the curtain the shadow of a clarinet from an old-time band the stir he's lived in years beyond years tired and retired an attack of jackhammers unsettles the mice the rhythm gets behind the molding to choir up their squeaks stirs the dust of a hundred years behind the wall in him a wild song he used to play |
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