Eastman

by Amanda Little Rose Iacampo

 

“Boy,” she said, “Pick a Christian name,”
I stared blankly back at her,
And my heart died the moment she put the blades of the scissor to my hair

I winced as I heard the sickening -kerplunk-
of the thick braid, as it fell from the nape of my neck and onto the floor

“Boy, Pick a Christian name,”
I purged my spirit from myself and into the sky,
Praying that some small part of me would fly back to the land of my brothers

These light-skins did not want us to hunt on white lands,
They did not want us to hunt great buffalo

These school chairs, as they called them, were not easy
I longed for the soft tufts of grass on the warm home lands

“Ohiyesa,” my father said to me, “You must stay”
and “Kill the Indian, Save the Man,” came not too long after that

“For the last time, pick a Christian name!”
I opened the said great book before me,
and pointed to the first white word I saw,
Sending Ohiyesa back to the land of his brothers and sisters

I answered the teacher,
And I became “Charles”

###

Amanda Little Rose is a 20 year old, full-time student at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. She is a published poet and the Editor-In-Chief of the universitys literary magazine, The Willow. Amanda is also the President of Salve Regina’s English Guild and continues to work diligently as a pre-service, English Literature teacher.

2% Milk

by Amanda Wall

The milk you gave me was skim. I wanted two percent, I would’ve even taken one.

But skim milk makes the grass bend down and it never lets the leaves fall.
It puts me in a congested alley.

But two percent you see,
it puts me in a small cabin on an orchard where apples are so bountiful, I can stand on my toes and reach them through our kitchen window.

Two percent is sweet wine and kisses in the garden, public for all to see, but private because it’s just you and me.

Two percent is you and me together, nothing separating us, nothing stopping me from stretching me to you, nothing stopping the connection.

Two percent is leaves falling on us at our wedding, two percent is our bed of leaves that night. Two percent is my gift to you.

But all I see right now is skim.

wait

by Kanchan Chatterjee

she reads tarot cards
got a great smile too

as she shuffles
the cards
intently

I look
out of her
10th floor3 BHK
apartment

the Sunday evening traffic
floating by
silently…

she’s ready now

the incense sticks are
burning alright

the time has come

I ask my question
and wait..

Lunch Break, Kansas

by Devin Harrison

The children dip midday under broad-armed elms
by the edge of the lake cup their hands in water
send schools of marbled green glass minnows
shuttering through the shallows

we have just come off an endless summer road,
stopped for play after miles of wheat and Milo
and dust billows from the siege of tractors
chugging fall planting furrows across the dry plains.

I join them squeeze through bottom silt with them,
peek under lime-colored algae bend together in depths
which sucks all that is living down into it up I feel
the urgent sun soften feel my skin swallow then close

it seldom happens a respite like this pulled from time
the children recognize this rake their fingers purposefully
through the slowly eddying afternoon drag for tadpoles
newt eggs ideas filled with unfathomable possibilities

###

Devin Harrison has published poetry in numerous periodicals throughout the US and Canada. These magazines include: Contemporary Verse Two, Grain, Event, The Amethyst Review, Kansas Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Passages North, and others.

Freda Kahlo’s Cry

by Laura Solomon

Today the ghost of me attended
My own exhibition at the Tate Modern.

All those paintings on display,
The ones that I laboured over for so long.

The sickening part was the merchandise.
Coffee mugs, calendars, prints, clocks
all with either me or one of my paintings thereupon.
Somebody’s making a pretty packet
and during my lifetime, I was as poor as a church mouse,
living hand to mouth.

At least I have achieved a form of immortality.
I hang on many walls.

Nobody ever seems to bear in mind,
the price I paid during my lifetime;
my nerves of steel
my shattered spine.

 

###

Laura Solomon has an honours degree in English Literature (Victoria University, 1997) and a Masters degree in Computer Science ( University of London , 2003). Her books include Black Light, Nothing Lasting, Alternative Medicine, An Imitation of Life, Instant Messages, The Theory of Networks, Operating Systems, Hilary and David, In Vitro and The Shingle Bar Taniwha and Other Stories. She has won prizes in Bridport, Edwin Morgan, Ware Poets, Willesden Herald, Mere Literary Festival, Proverse Hong Kong and Essex Poetry Festival competitions and was short-listed for the Virginia Prize. She has had work accepted in the Edinburgh Review and Wasafiri (UK), Takahe and Landfall (NZ).