Autumn 2023
A number of images and image-dependent features have been removed from this and preceding issues due the the application of AI to image-searches for copyright infringement. We have been legally threatened and forced to pay for use of a substantially modified image. Whether our use of modified images in an educational/cultural publication that does not charge a fee is fair use is here beside the point. We cannot carry the cost of defending ourselves in court.
Because there is a very real possibility that a publication such as this could be subject to flurries of such claims, we have had to remove all non public-domain images for which we do not have express permission. The legal threat also applies to images used in collages, thus we have had to remove a number of art features, and many of the back issues now present a maimed appearance.
Memento Mori Theater
Note: I met Olga Taran many years ago by a strange and happy series of coincidences. An interest in Descartes led me to study geometry. Since my education had been…
Poems from Late Epistle
Fishing in Childhood —after lines by Tony Hoagland If we are always who we are, if our livingis finally of a piece, couldn’t we observe itcomplete in any moment—choose any…
Teacher’s Pet
Sunlight streamed through the westward windows at a slant, glinting off the twenty desks arranged in standard grid formation. That sunlight seemed almost heavenly to Jackie Potter as she sat…
Ziggurat Prison Ministry
Little Red Zombie Little Red Zombie, who made thee?Who framed thy dreadful symmetry?Little Red Zombie, burning bright,Drinking Liquid Wrench all night.Little Red Zombie, cold and blue,You’re not happy, boo hoo…
Hairs
Journal Entry #1 There is more hair in the sink. There is always more hair in the sink. And in the shower. And in the drain. And in my hands.…
The Kindness Monster
I think I’ve chosen darkness. Or maybe I’m just lazy. Not really sure. There was a boy, drowning. I was sitting against a tree, reading. The birds, the damned birds,…
Three Flash Fictions
People are Strange This is the end for my dad, but he’s died before, so maybe I’m wrong. I know it’s a cliché, but deathbed regret is a real thing.…
Margot Farrington: Four Poems
Hunger I’d not yet eaten, but walked where the feast was spread. The first course offered wild rose in a pasture’s corner, slice of path cutting uphill to walls of…
A Pox on Both Our Houses
A POX ON BOTH OUR HOUSES Ah, syphilis—so sweet, so soft and sibilant, the most beautiful word in the English language. I sing the infectious tune, the bacterial…
The Heart of the World
The Tale of the Seven Beggars Part Three On the third day of the wedding celebration, the bride and groom remembered the third beggar and longed for him so strongly…
Modern Responsa
The Wetness Notwithstanding “Urination,” he told the class, “may be a sign or a symptom, but it is almost never a cause. ” And as usual he felt compelled to…
Reviews: Margot Farrington, Anne Myles, Jean Lorrain, Federico Andahazi, Behr’s Women Artists in Expressionism
Margot Farrington, The Blue Canoe of Longing, Dos Madres Press 2019. Available from Dos Madres and Amazon Margot Farrington’s Blue Canoe is an unqualified pleasure. Every poem in it is…