Brendan Dacey

Brendan Dacey

Kia Pantaloni

I asked the black and white girl

with the tangled mane

and the broken garters

What's the price for the soul

of a whore?

She looked at me and said,

The price to dunk a fool

at the county fair

into a freezing tub of water

What would happen if I

placed my arms around you?

She lifted her shirt up,

displaying grotesque burns

in repeated imprints

of spreading hands

What would happen if I put 

my lips to yours? I replied

Your lips would seal shut with

the black cum of one thousand

wretched men

What would happen if I put

my hands around your throat?

She crooned, Instead of screaming

I would sing.

What would happen if I put 

myself in your mouth?

She answered with a boney

hand to her breast, Your member

would cringe from the ancient gin

that burns my throat.

I looked her in the eyes and said,

What would happen if I put

myself inside of you?

Then I'll never let go,

she said as the liquid rouge

melted off her lips

and she came apart one by one

like cigarette ash to the wind

Ulises Garcia

Matthew Cox

Remembering, Reliving: Anti-Fading

Matchbox rooms

stood erect above a 

half hanging rail

that watched my

bumpy laundry basket rides.

The markings on the doorway

told me the previous family

was much taller than mine,

and I admired them.

My father spent weeks

making the shingles blue,

and I spent weeks

covering them with circles of dirt

in efforts to be

Cal Ripken Jr.

I heard the neighbors fights

the same time I realized

crawdads don't

live long in a glass box

full of sand and water.

My father chewed the peppermint,

so I chewed the peppermint.

We planted rows

of something beautiful.

My mother taught me

to fold socks,

and praised me when

my clothing matched.

We made giraffes from

paper plates,

and I always hid behind her.

Today I told a girl

that it would rain.

I really thought it would.

I wanted it to rain

because I know how she is

when it rains.

Today I was a genius - or a child,

because I believed it would rain.

And the same way

my grandfather died too soon,

not from cases of Natural Light

or cartons of cigarettes,

but because I stopped

tying his feet in the sailor's knot

he taught me long ago.

The simple pleasure of 

untying the knot

made him a child.

And unlike a Navy tattoo

on freckled weathered skin,

and the paint of the ship

he sailed,

a child's spirit never

fades.