ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Three Poems
by Karyna McGlynn


…& the Southern Cross slid below the belt

this was before our time: coals in a jewelbox
               stars in a coalsack

something flagged it down

               way down where
this coat of arms not cold out
this crux is not the issue
               my eye naked
this anchor
    sinks down south
this treasure trail
this Eureka

Jesus under a cellar of black ice, fixed
underground, under god

               by musca
this fly hummed hymn in reverse

    an egg sac moves, Mary
    in and out of my reach

underwatch the driftweeds
where it silvers off I cannot stop it

this downward dog
this pole position

a Chevy rolls under the canal's heavy wrists

a crucifix dangled upward from its rearview




At the far end of the room buzzed with 40 tiny fans

a single beam lights
her hand lowering a bunkmate's into a pan of warm water

(on a county road
next to an old service station a woman sits cross-legged beneath)

a single pair of headlights
snaking the hill is some girl's freedom to eat, drink, fuck

(a VW, the father's feet stop
next to the tire—he bends down and looks under the carriage)

                she can't get her feet
inside the bed, a pair of panties in the trashcan

(just below the dripping radiator
of the stalled bus, a woman with pointy teeth, and she plays)

                they're so bloody that
no one will claim them and no one will empty the trash

(something like a dulcimer
only it isn't a dulcimer, it's the bones of his 9 year-old daughter)

                a fist-sized scorpion scuttles
down a beam and thuds softly on her floral bedspread

(newly clean as flutes'
marrow gone, see the things were musical, the metal diesel sign)

                and the smell of piss
flowers up in the graffiti code of the cedar rafters

(squeaked in the wind
he saw her pointy teeth and ran on fumes for days)




She Subsisted on Brine Shrimp & Mint Jelly

she gives him the bird and changes the locks
He stands on the porch and snuffs His cigarette
she twitches over the phone, He looks at the salt lake

she watches Him through the window

He keeps circling the porch, snuffing a cigarette
lighting another
passing it through a rip in the screen door

she wants, but won't accept it
…lingering there in her black espadrilles

a couple of live worms
a closet with one sweater in it
a basket of wax lips in plastic
a poem about el Diablo
a stuck pig in pineapple juice

               "…it's almost as if
this is the end of my life"

a repeating, a faceless mammal
which does and does, but never says
or she forgets this song she heard:

the cat came back the very next day