© Era Bushati, 2012

meet Julia in Lincoln Square
as she turns heads of passersby
with clutch purses, Berken bags, classic dresses,
tailored suits, shearlings, black-brimmed Prada glasses,
with long fingers and large rings
holding a martini glass at a the VIP lounge,
posing for photographs at the Russian embassy,
with her mother dying of cancer four states away
she waits for the train whispering
probably its easier to lose a parent
when you are a parent

spend a day with Julia’s ex-husbands
sitting on a fallen tree, passing beer and hot dogs,
the alcoholic weather anchor, the violent TV producer,
the homeless sailor with fantastical dreams,
the programmer who fell asleep and jolly guests
lay stuffed animals all around him,
she still waits for her bashert,
makes trips to the sex shops,
among rabbits and butterflies
she asks to see something
that can be used
with a gentleman friend

Julia
with a sniffling nose and visions of ice,
and sinking Kursk and toppled Twins,
law degrees, depositions, petitions,
her business lunch and 4 grey goose vodkas,
her attempt to stop
living the bordello life
and her move to New Jersey,
she stands in a bubble wrap among boxes of books
remembering how there were 4 of them,
childhood friends, all pregnant at 24
and she was the only one
who had an abortion

write a eulogy for Julia
holding her red apple in your hands
how she returned to the house of red walls
and was found dead on Labor Day,
Monday September 4th,
39 turbulent years
measuring someone else’s 70 dull ones,
her nickname Rosa Luxemburg
“the stinging rose of the revolution”
and her last voyage,
away from Irving Plazas
she travels in a wooden box to Boston
to rest next to her mother

© Marina Rubin, 2012

I am what I am,
take me or leave me.
I’ll never fall in love again.
But soon it’s gonna rain
a memory, summer nights, and
some enchanted evening.
If this isn’t love, then send in the clowns.

Honey, honey
I’m Dulcinea, Johanna.
Think of me defying gravity
for the next ten minutes
with you
tonight
and they say it’s wonderful.

© Andrea Reisenauer, 2012

© Cathy Guo, 2012

© Erren Geraud Kelly, 2012

“Irregardless” of your blank mind,
I enjoy having opinions.
Sometimes I “overexaggerate,”
but it’s better than your lukewarm.

© Olivia Finley, 2012

Well,
he checked your luggage first
in the flowered bag.

I remembered
your calorie journal
and your therapy book
and your secrets that you’d hidden
in your
too
big
jeans.

I hoped he wouldn’t see
those dark things.

I hoped he would skim a
layer of underwear
and feel intrusive.

I hoped and prayed
he hadn’t noticed your bones,

or your limp hanging skin,
or your unreasonable habit of
eating
with
your
fingers.

I prayed this all – me!
with no sense of god.

I hoped you had packed god
somewhere
in your floral trunk.
(under all the xtra smalls)

I tried to know you had.
I hoped and prayed you had.

© Victoria Randall, 2012

drove four hundred miles to my
sister’s and cried for
eight weeks
rented a single in berkeley in
a building once home to nuns and
cried for eight months

built in the 1930s with a drop-down
ironing board and murphy bed
a rose bush at the kitchen window
so beautiful it hurt
insomnia and two a.m. gazed up at
the full moon and knew i had exchanged
one bleeding wound for another

i met him in the laundry room
missing socks
then knocks on doors at night
candles absinthe pot and splendor

one night we did it in my long white dress
and red boots
and inside me he whispered
is this what you wanted

this
you mean
i thought
this moment or
this life or
this hell

i did not answer him but
yes
yes and
yes

© Maureen Foster, 2012

We feasted on the fruits of the sea:
abalone, squid, and oysters,
and fragrant matsutake
freshly picked
from the matsu forest of Awajishima
island birthed by deities and forefathers of Japan

Yet Papa yearned for America

Picket white fences, golden grand canyon, spaghetti and meatballs
“Lady and the Tramp”
My first movie
At Hibiya theatre in Tokyo
I still see the deep purple-red curtains
feel the soft velvet seats on the backs of my leg

I wanted a dog

Poco a prized Scottish Terrier
My fifth birthday present
from Papa’s brother
He was rich unlike us
But Poco was not so smart
and would wander out
Local police would find him
and bring him back
One day he left
and never returned

Mama said he was stolen
because he was so valuable

Oba-chan and Toto came to live with us
because Papa was in California
She said Toto was just like the dog
from “The Wizard of Oz”
Movie I did not know

Oba-chan used to work for the missionaries
she told us many stories
My favorite was
Toto would go to the butcher
carry home
a bag of deep fried croquettes
wrapped around his neck

A smart dog unlike Poco

Next time I saw America was on the TV screen
Motorcade, hazy dessert, and loud gun shot
Scary
Not at all like my first movie

John F Kennedy is dead

Papa said we are all moving to America
I assumed he meant Toto too.
But when Oba-chan and Mama took Toto
out an errand
they returned without Toto
He was nowhere in sight
They explained that Toto was too old
could not move to America

Toto was put to sleep
just like JFK

Once so bright, surreal and magical
America felt like a sacrifice
dark, harsh and lonely

© Jinko Gotoh, 2012

navigate perfect hardwood floors to the eyes of suited black men
their tongues wrestling a Nigerian accent
one complains his check bounced

each painting perched as deity
but i cannot unthink fingerpainting

the men discuss current remedies for finance
enjoying the sound of voices in the vacuum
they are paid to patrol

i fish into my pocket’s depth
grasp the only sheet of paper
and rescue it from a dusty purgatory

“Gesture swipes…erasures…awkward drawing…crude cartoon”
all the adjectives and nouns placed upon him like a crown

i can only picture a mad man
restless and impotent
swiping drawings in hopes to erasure a flaccid dick

but the pseudo-writer in me
hopes that the words used in description
are not for real but faux-real

I hope the artistic language is like gypsies speaking a cant in front of
tourists
and that performance is the creation
and the con is the selling

and those Nigerian men and this “artist” who illustrates the “unfinished
dialogue between binary oppositions”

are all just talking about cashing checks.

© Grant Schubert, 2012