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Robert L. Giron

Issue 134

In this issue, work by


 

Edward M. Supranowicz


Singing in the Choir


Copyright © 2019 by Edward M. Supranowicz.



About the Author

Edward Michael Supranowicz has a graduate background in painting and printmaking; he is also a published poet. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia.



Richard Atwood


The Model


Look at him.

Male-perfect body to the bone.


Well-stanced, handsome

. . . but a point in the eyes


the downward curve of the mouth.


How often

has he undressed,

to watch himself:


how often

stared back into those eyes

like blue china


combed the gold-heavy hair


worked long hours at the

gymnasium, the photographers


. . . alone,


caressed the knit-plate muscles

of his chest


the ridges of his loins,

the fullness of his manhood


the incredible thickness,

the cords—of

the arms, the shoulders


—the richness . . . .



And not said silently

at 50/60, when youth was gone


and there were no more pictures


for all the fun—the numbers,

the play


no one, no one.


I’m still young. Still strong.


The heart a long time making ready.


And my body, my tears

still useful.



Copyright © 2020 by Richard Atwood.



BECAUSE then


my face will be against

the plain door when you go,

my hands flat as smashed eagles

dead against the wood and

pressing my nose and cheeks to the worn

texture, my breath full of alcohol and wine

and the smell of you, the grain of your face

the hard rockets of your chest

like murder as I remember

and taste again that sweet forever . . .

my lips buried into the side of your neck

your throat, and our fingers entwined

thrusting into each other to never let go

and I shake I breathe I grasp I die

the tears free and salty as I quake . . . and

you


are gone.


(grasp is not a typo)



Copyright © 2020 by Richard Atwood.



About the Author

Richard Atwood has published three books of poetry: descriptions/reviews/awards are available on Amazon. He has also been published in several literary journals: Poetpourri, Karamu, Educe, Oberon, Avalon Literary Review, Mochila Review, River Poets Journal, Ashvamegh Journal, Angry Old Man, borrowed solace, Better Than Starbucks, O:JA&L, and Penumbra. Atwood has also authored three screenplays, and two large stage plays; plus an m/m erotic-romantic fantasy with a GOT ambiance (Chronicles of the Mighty and the Fallen, under the name of Richard McHenry).



Mary Foulk


Abomination in Sunlight


We wander slowly

down a sunlit Village street,

lingering in tree shadows cast

across aging brownstones.


I hold my wife’s hand,

fingers gently intertwine

with the graze of silver bands

and last night’s touch.


A young man

walks towards us,

his strange approach

near neighborly.


As he ignores our nod,

we tense quickly,

his path now clear.


Against his eyes

black and empty,

against his jarring break,

this tenuous hold,

we steel, our

stolen.


His fleeting “abomination,”

his laughing

into an urban crowd.


Tremble from my mother’s

warning, this wound;

you will be less.


And tulips

on doorsteps, in narrow

sidewalk gardens,

yellow and alert to this

cloudless afternoon.



Copyright © 2020 by Mary Foulk.



About the Author

Mary Foulk, an educator, writer, artist, and activist, lives in western Massachusetts with her wife and two children. Her work has appeared in: VoiceCatcher, Four and Twenty, Hip Mama, and the Soft Skull Press anthology Who’s Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers. She studied for several years at The Writers Studio in New York. Currently, she is completing an MFA in Writing (Poetry) at Vermont College of Fine Arts.



Raymond Luczak


My Corpse Self


alone in the woods

across the street from moms house

trails worn down became boundaries

of a country with no name

it would take me many years to walk

this meandering path across

peat concrete grill escalator elevator airplane aisle

in between waited for clarifications

the only thing found in morass of trees & grasses

was my shadow barely alive

panting for my kiss

sleeping forlorn prince

he looked familiar but nothing like a reflection

my watery self not even close

tall & lanky with a mask made with wood

stained & polished with veneer

perfected from years pretending to be happy

while people took him down behind his back

threw tiny paper balls at him

always feigning innocence who me

surely you jest their faces all said

i looked down at

his lax skeleton in a faux shroud of turin

his body spotted with grays like leopard gone starved

i didnt want to hold him

i didnt want the weight of his troubles

when in my shoes a sea

pebbles a relentless reminder

puncturing each step walked for miles

couldnt a shadow be light easily blown away

like how people dismissed me with a glance

just like my hearing family & classmates

constantly cleaved

mortar slabbed onto bricks

until my face turned unreadable

now his

there in my arms

the darkness of him

transparent

bright shining eyes

begging me to save him

alone in the woods



Copyright © 2020 by Raymond Luczak.



About the Author

Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of 22 books, including Flannelwood (Red Hen Press) and Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman (Squares & Rebels). A ten-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.



Laura Mayron


Dyke March, 2050


We weren’t supposed to still be here.

Somehow, at the end of days,

the queers are still dancing on the edges of it all.


We know what it is to be in the core of night,

warm with our bodies tucked away from stars

among the glow of neon walls, press of bodies.


I wonder if there will be another butch celebrating her 70th birthday,

dancing old school with her partner to songs the new kids have picked

as the world burns and drowns and weeps.


It was always ablaze:

call us riot, call us time immemorial;

our bodies beg inscription.


Somehow we manage to dance futurity

as the floor gives out beneath us,

what they call our “climate grief” refracting off


of some stunner’s lucite lightning earrings

as they slip into pulse and song of crowd.

We have lived through so many other apocalypses


that this can’t be the last,

can’t be the end of the glorious mythology

of leaping onto the bar, flashing tits among floral laughter.


I am aware of us as poem,

the divine flood of relief that men don’t look at me to consume:

I dance whole.



Copyright © 2020 by Laura Mayron.



About the Author

Laura Mayron is a graduate of Wellesley College and was born and raised in Maui, Hawaii. A queer poet, she is pursuing a PhD in queer surrealist Spanish literature at Boston University. She has won Honorable Mention in the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award and has been nominated for Best of the Net 2018. She has been previously published in 3Elements Review, Noble/Gas Qtrly, Arlington Literary Journal, Rising Phoenix Review, among others. If she could go back in time, she’d have a drink with Spanish surrealists.



Jendi Reiter


Dreaming of Top Surgery at the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop


Let us now praise the great men of New Jersey

Turnpike bathrooms—Walt Whitman unbuckles

his big-’n‘-tall Levis at his eponymous urinal,

no stalls for Uncle Walt, his gray-haired belly springing

free as the rain that pounds the fake-shingled roof;

Joyce Kilmer shall never see a poem lovely

as pulling off at this oasis

in the bumper-to-bumper wasteland,

sweet relief only a locked door away;

and Alexander Hamilton clutches his seeping

breast wound, the intimate duel gone wrong,

laced limbs darkening with the floor’s stains.


But I am not Thomas Edison, nor was meant to be

seen in the fluorescent glare of an Auntie Anne’s Pretzels

trying to sneak into the Men’s Room

behind my hopping little boy and patient husband

to whom I whisper, “Who was Vince Lombardi anyhow?

Did he have something to do with football?”

I am not the last

of James Fenimore Cooper’s Mohicans—though I resist

the world’s blandishments in the form of a rhinestone

and floral print Yankees cap at the gift shop,

no one will honor

my Provincetown tank top, shaved scalp and untrimmed chin hair

as more than the forgivable marks

of a 12-hour roadtrip mom who’s quit trying.


O, Vince Lombardi, champion of the Packers—

I believe you would agree

with Kierkegaard, who was not from New Jersey,

that purity of heart is to will one thing.

Not like Nurse Clara Barton, the only real woman

with a bathroom named for her—

two hands to bind up wounds and powder cheeks,

a breast for the husband, a breast for the child.

Vince Lombardi, according to the Internet a symbol

of single-minded determination to win,

how do you know where the end zone is

without a trophy, a team

of mighty men drenching you in Gatorade

that shocks you breathless like love?



Copyright © 2020 by Jendi Reiter.



About the Author

Jendi Reiter is the author of the novel Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, 2016), the short story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press, 2018), and four poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree, 2015).



Stephanie Sabourin


Pigeon Point Lighthouse in Spring

Copyright © 2019 by Stephanie Sabourin.



About the Photogapher

Stephanie Sabourin is a photographer, teacher, and nature lover. She draws inspiration from the beauty found all around her. As the owner of Stephanie Sabourin Photography, she is frequently found photographing dogs and other animals, along with their people, in natural settings. Stephanie is a member of Professional Photographers of America, and she has been published in Wonderful West Virginia Magazine and on a number of web pages. She lives with her husband and standard poodle in Columbia, Maryland.



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