Tim Suermondt

JOB HUNTING

I’m overqualified for this.

not qualified for that.

And when I inquire at the local

pizzeria the manager says,

“Tim, I can’t hire you. You’d

eat most of the pies before

anyone else could get a bite.”

I buy a small pepperoni pizza,

twirling the box over my head

in my apartment’s kitchen,

aping the way the old pizza makers

used to treat the precious dough.

The sun trickles through a light

rain, the first slice I take shines.

A PHOTO OF MY WIFE

WHEN SHE WAS A TEENAGER

You can detect the determination even then

and you swear you can hear her about to declare

“I love you, Hong Kong, but I’m leaving for good”—

her lips savoring the words she’s always wanted to say.

Unseen and a number of streets down on the right

her father is returning from work, stepping off the ferry,

passing the fishmongers clustered like star snappers

from one end of the pier to the other, a light rain sizzling

under the hot sun, and a number of streets down

on the left her mother is preparing supper, an egg dish

she’s made her own, a concoction the family loves.

My wife will swing her schoolbag, skip past the classic

buildings, the junk boats that will last only a few more

years and dream of her getaway on the dark, blue water.

Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest JOSEPHINE BAKER SWIMMING POOL from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, Gargoyle, On the Seawall, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

Tobi Alfier

Litany

I am mercy’s wayward apprentice.
I am the dubious truant of grace.
I kneel at the Stations of the Cross,
then climb through the shreds of a fading downpour.
I am the late sun that flames through a window.
I am a cityscape of wind through the alleys.
I am a desert highway fringed by meadows
where fields and blossoms unfold into radiance.
I am a clock that needs to be wound.
I am a cello that plays in the evenings,
ushers in nightfall’s infallible silence,
and the sweet scent of creosote in the pitch dark.
I am a love you may almost remember,
your mind lazing loose in imaginary elsewheres.
There is no amnesty for ancient sorrows,
I am the galleon, sinking, still vanishing.

Winter Tourist

Once, in another winter, in a village
by a seaside with different accents
than mine, waves crash dark against
the shore and over the breakwater,
a woman in a red coat hurries through
her realm of kith and kin:

fishermen just docked—nets and boxes
brim with still moving catches for pubs
and homes, restaurants fine and common,
children walk to school with grannies,
their uniforms bolstered with hand—knit
scarves, hot bao from the Chinese bakery

in each pocket to warm their hands,
schoolwork in backpacks bear
the latest superhero and ballerina—
other women in bright coats with smoky
exhales bustle on their way to bank work
or as nurses at the clinic.

Wind carries the iron voice of cathedral bells
through the streets, an undertone
and melody for morning birds,
their sweetness drowned by crows
and seagulls, gangs protecting
territories, criminal versus delicate.

I am but a tourist here, brought by my love
of coastal roads, my curiosity of lives
touched by the sea, by the winter.
Laughter floats from half-shuttered
windows. Crimeless payphones ring.
I could’ve traveled half a year to find you.

Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee. “Slices of Alice & Other Character Studies” was published by Cholla Needles Press. “Symmetry: earth and sky” was just published by Main Street Rag. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

Kevin Ridgeway

The Last Time I Saw My Father's Face

My father

was bearded

and zoned out

on psychiatric medication

he could not pronounce

behind the glass from us

in county jail,

where he awaited trial.

He and my mother

argued over

why he did what he did

until he could only

slur insane gibberish. 

The guards treated us

so much like shit

we could still smell it

on the drive home,

when we both agreed

never to visit my father

in jail or prison again. 

Neither of my parents

were there when I got

locked up in the same

madhouse that swallowed

my father whole,

but it choked on me

and spit me out

in a demented miracle

no one prayed for but me.

Kevin Ridgeway is the author of Too Young to Know (Stubborn Mule Press) and nine chapbooks of poetry including Grandma Goes to Rehab (Analog Submission Press, UK). His work can recently be found in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Plainsongs, San Pedro River Review, The Cape Rock, Trailer Park Quarterly, Main Street Rag, Cultural Weekly and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. He lives and writes in Long Beach, CA.

Stephen J. Golds

4:48 In The Morning

R.I.P

Sarah Kane

It arrives

like a yellow taxi swerving into a parking lot with

warped flickers in the windshield.

An insect crawling mindlessly up a concrete wall with

five legs and the sixth dragging broken behind it.

The small stone trapped in between the tread on the

worn soles of sneakers that are too tight.

The clerk behind the counter of the liquor store

with the eyes like broken street lamps and a smile like a street fight.

The doctor in a Christmas sweater with

a handful of pills but a mouth with no answers.

An empty coat on a hanger hung in a darkened window in

the apartment building across the empty street.

A broken umbrella, it still seeps in, soaks and

dampens these fragile fabrics at 4:48 in the morning.

Stephen J. Golds was born in London, U.K, but has lived in Japan for most of his adult life. He enjoys spending time with his daughters, reading books, traveling, boxing and listening to old Soul LPs. Glamour Girl Gone his debut novel will be released by Close to The Bone Press January 29th, 2021.