By Brian Anthony Hardie

Skin lathered oil lubricates softly, in a

Rain shattered mind collapsing, under

Rocks activating dim China light.
Individual

Separation provides meaning, and sits awake with

Caffeine ghosts present to trailer park memories. To

Cut the luck struggling to become is to be pure in humid

Battles against being alone, undone. No light

Traces soft insight. Talking lips murmuring madness away.

Bed rides engaging bad days, forcing to stay. Honesty
Gleams in the spot light exposing all accompanied.

In the few lives that I cry, genuine eyes blink in a
Tension alive with guilt and indecision. There, is a
Throat that swallows truth massaging my heart through

Exhaust and partial romance. I cannot fix inability,

Only smile upon you all that have not failed. Purpose
For the shape is where holes are dug into a stale,

Native shore, coating the fins of youth onto

My canvass of psychosis. Makeup runs erotic,
To the bottom of faith in church, to the bottom
Of my heart, escape attempted.

Brian Anthony Hardie, a native of Portland, Oregon, has been published in numerous small press journals and e-zines, including The Pebble Lake Review (Houston, TX), Conceit Magazine (San Fransisco), Hudson View (NYC/South Africa), Ditchpoetry.com (Canada) and SALiT Magazine (International), among others. He will appear as a guest speaker and writer at Mount Hood Community College this spring.

Contact: Brian Hardie * Email: rose_angeles@hotmail.com

Website: http://www.myspace.com/farestandthefieldsoffrance

By Cedric Tillman

1.

In this movie,

the browner people are the more spiritual people.

This is a old convention, one seen in films

such as Imitation of Life and Driving Ms. Daisy

and in the work of writers like Hemingway

whose infrequent black characters

were generally wise. The white girl,

blonde, thin, happy and definitely

better off than her immigrant Indian lover,

has opulent parents

who we know, deep down, must make

campaign contributions to Democratic candidates.

Her parents have “a place,”

perhaps in the Catskills,

given the movie’s New York City setting.

Inevitably,

Gagan finds the religion-oblivious Jacki annoying.

Though Gagan is hardly a devout Hindu,

he feels he ought to have been less aloof

from his family and its traditions

after the loss of his father.

Jacki seems almost genetically incapable

of plumbing the requisite depth of empathy

for Gagan. For her, death is just that- death;

She wants him to move on

so that they can return to their extra-Indian,

Columbia University utopian urbaneness,

but he realizes only now that he’s been a sellout,

ethnically derelict, initially afraid

to even introduce Jacki to his family.

Eventually, Jacki’s whole Ivy-League, stock whiteness

is inadequate next to Gagan’s latent but effervescent

brown spirituality, and we understand that Gagan

must leave her for a new flame,

a necessarily more Indian one....

2.

But after being inculcated with the notion,

with apologies to Lionel Richie,

that common ethnicity, not just love,

conquers all, Gagan’s well-traveled

worldly Indian wife leaves him

for an old flame, a French guy,

which leaves the audience,

particularly perhaps the brown audience, wondering

What white man said he wouldn’t release this film

if good down home white heathenism didn’t trump

brown Holy-Ghostness at some point along the way?

In the end, it’s not just that the film succumbs to a

stereotypically Hollywoodish, nebulous agnosticism

(the audience is gently beat over the head

with a rhetorical God/religion-is-not-the-answer throw pillow

when Gagan’s wife cheats on him)

which is, as they say, a whole ‘nother topic,

but it’s that the story’s resolution is false, or at least untrustworthy

because it reeks,

because it is positively redolent,

of demographic determinism...

Cedric Tillman received a BA in English from UNC Charlotte and an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He lives in Charlotte.

Contact: Cedric Tillman* Email: juggsmurf@yahoo.com

By Kieran McGonnell

The Day I Took Van Gogh's Picture

Once Upon a Spinning Time

Live at the Green Mill-Radio Days

Contact: Kieran McGonnell * Website: www.kieranmcgonnell.com

By J. Cooper (middle school student)

Drinking in our pain,

Our strain to be whatever

Our hearts are bent, broken,

Misshapen by bulleted words.

Like glass they see through us,

And like glass they break us down –

Into teardrops, cuts – last shards of dignity.

So we cry our eyes out.

Our every muted shout lingers and

Their faces are thick with lies.

Nothing left to loose, so –

Let’s burn it down! Burn it all!

The ruins of our minds and hearts –

Let them burn!

And then savor the ashes

Of what could have been –

What would have been,

The rest of our lives.

By Jesi Bender

Carnality of the crucifix

Our pacifist masochist

We Sublime motherwhore

We Mary, (some magdalenes)

All daughters of the same black Eve

She in us birthed sin

We in turn cradle

Its naissance in our stomachs

Happy violent chasm

Laughter peals like church bells

Or split orange skin

Bear this burden with a grin

Malevolent christchild nucleus (Father)

They were made in His image (Son)

But we are only broken bones (Holy Spirit)

An artist from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Jesi Bender graduated with a B.A. in English and Fine Arts from Cornell University in 2007. Her first book, entitled Oppressed by the Notion of Beauty, will be released by December 2009.

Contact: Jesi Bender * Email: jesibender@gmail.com.