Issue One: April 1 (Now Available!)
Issue Two: June 1
Pregnant Women & People with Heart Conditions
Laughing & thinking I hope I don’t die.
I admit: out of the corner of my eye,
the girl sitting up next to me—her pink
blind-folded tits between the harness. It was hard
not to wonder about those who chose to get off
before the ride was over the people.
Derailing—sailing above the lines divided
by sagging chains. Their turn for breaking
free—not one suspect to the vanishing
of bones against The Architect’s frozen lathe.
When I finished screaming & she finished screaming
our cords relaxed to climax on concrete.
A Cross Country Team Runs by a Corpse
Dressed in a blue suit and a yellow tie—
a noose too hard to tell on this fellow. Thank God
For the twisted position in which the body lies
—it hides most of the decomposition
and a few of those plague-thirsty green bottle flies.
This dead guy’s wrist is fixed with a—tick, tick—
timepiece; an ornament in life which has become a stop-
watch of sorts (that trophy was all his wife gave
with his police description). Safety-pinned squares
(individually numbered) give encouraging claps
on the young men’s backs, until the friction
of shorts making secret sounds ceases.
An awkward athlete (#3) sees him first. At school
an abbreviation for the team looks like: X-COUNTRY.
And we know what’s next—that primeval rise & fall
of feet; a genuflect reflex to cover our mouth
—cover our face. Most boys retreat from the cadaver
and run away from the finish line; no longer
concerned with who wins or who has the best time.
However some maintain this is a race after all.
In a Small Town of Gods
You can learn this much about the big to do:
who is invited and how the church should be
divided—no objections. Accept that careless
caress of golden guests—give yourself to this
manifested perfection. The Immaculate Reception!
Here: Ledaean bellies filled with post-coital
punchbowl ambrosia. Lyre-inspired tears dancing
—dancing down flashbulb faces. Oh stranded glamour!
In the pantheon one finds it hard to fight the Divine
dream tonight, or avoid engagement in those
stagnant dramatics, like the cosmetic bobbing for
applause. So try not to cry like the bride:
who is bawling with a bloody nose and a slice-smeared
mouth of cake. Take this advice: it would be a mistake
to wear your wife on your sleeve. Leaving: a man walks
away—head down; making sure he does not look back.
Finishing Touches
He waits at the kitchen table and stares
at his sepia-framed face in that space
over the sink
—that hazy x-ray reflection lingers
in the window. Twilight stretching shadows
on the other side.
Under the low-watt glow: vegetable soup
getting cold in a bowl—cold like the
umbilical spiral
of cord hanging from the rotary phone
would feel between his fingers and how
the receiver might be.
Never repeat this: mostly he thinks about his father’s farm
out in the middle of Illinois, surrounded by lakes
of frozen fields.
This man continues to listen to God
& Devil debate over business in the family
room. From time
to time he glances in on those two as they argue
in the near darkness—both backlit
by the night lights
of his Christmas tree (which has taken years
for him to break down and put back in its box).
And still he waits
For his dead wife to come home from Armenia
or for you to walk through the door
—which ever happens first.
Clint Smith is an Honors Graduate from The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago, Le Cordon Bleu, and is currently the Chef Instructor in the Culinary Arts Department at Central Nine Career Center—a vocational high school in Greenwood, Indiana. When he is not teaching, Clint turns his attention to writing, reading and Chaos. Clint lives on the south side of Indy with his lovely wife and adopted cats.