2017 Online Preview

*The full journal will be available in print October 2017*

Terri Miller --For The love of…. (poem)

Sneha Subramanian Kanta—Immigrant Tongues + Shell Shock (poems)

Ellen Evans—Elisheva Requium + Last Call (part of the Elder’s Tale) (poems)

Alexandra Melnick—Mouth of the Void (prose)

Marleen S. Barr – Vampire Mermaids (short story)

Marianne Peel—Night Before Your Mastectomy + Black Ice, After the Crash +

     Daughters, What I Want You to Know (poems)

Linda Crate – You Never Could + Imbeciles Like You + Not as Pathetic as You (poems)

B. Elae – The Question + Untitled + Fatal Substance (poems)
Dionne Lausberg -- Untitled (artwork, oil on canvas)

Maxine Kollar – Waffles (short story)

K. D. Rose – To Someone + O. Aleppo (poems)

Kristy Gherlone – The Falls (prose)

Cathy Clay  -- Hiss + On the Mend  + Plateau (poems)

Jade Wallace – An Abundance of Cake (non-fiction)

Susan J. Anderson – Ripples (non-fiction) 

Marjory E. Leposky—Through Words (essay)

Terri Miller

FOR THE LOVE OF…

Never have I witnessed

such a love;

so tender and sincere.

My mother's eyes

so quick-tempered

had turned cheering and dear.

I shiver when I think

How CPS

forced to let her

children go

To send away

her children

their fate

she will not know.

Her only consolation

found in thoughts

of their next meet.

It keeps her going,

motivated,

for she shall see

her children soon.

But all the while

she bears the pain

of being lonely and confused.

Cause whose to say

while shes away

her children are not abused.

Frustrated by

ever present helplessness

she feels.

This woman of fury

loves her children

and

from this loss

she reveals;

If given a wish,

two

or three,

she’d wish to have

her children back.

Forever and ever

without being

taken away

and miss

the joy of days to come.

Her struggling battle

marches on

her goal to win

the fight.

Its so unfair

she doesn’t care,

her meddling,

neglecting grandmom,

of her children.

To her mother,

her daughter's children

mean money

an excuse

for finer things.

As days go by,

she cries inside,

and the villain

teasingly sleeps.

Copyright © TMC 2016

Terri Miller was born in Central Falls, Rhode Island. She was born and raised in Rhode Island but now resides in the country part of Florida. She has been writing since grade school and has been published in the Awakened Voices literary magazine and Silver Birch Press.

Sneha Subramanian Kanta

shell shock

electric shocks: physical

psychoanalytic: theory

hooks of disorders

lined in public domains.

emasculating marginals

difficult to pigeonhole

the distinctions belong

everywhere: on streets.

they weep for our world

this, and the other ones.

Sneha Subramanian Kanta believes all writing is a form of dissent. Her work has forthcoming in Fallujah Magazine, 7X20 mag, In Between Hangovers Magazine, Sahitya Akademi, Noble/ Gas Qtrly, Epigraph Magazine and the print anthology of Peacock Journal. Her work has been published in poetry anthologies such as Dance of the Peacock (Hidden Brook Press, Canada), Suvarnarekha (The Poetry Society of India, India) and elsewhere. She is a GREAT scholarship awardee pursuing her second postgraduate degree in literature in the United Kingdom.

Ellen Evans

Elisheva – Requiem

A son, a daughter

then six more sons.

Mom used to joke

she’d keep trying ‘til

she had a second daughter.

Thing about jokes,

you shouldn’t, with peoples’ lives.

Had her second daughter, was sick

and couldn’t nurse her. Baby cried

all

the

time.

Allergic to the

formula.

Go figure.

Figuring up to mom.

Doctors on strike?

Who lives in such a place?

Days, nights, weeks, still

cries. They call it projectile

vomit. Something very

wrong. Not growing,

development behind. Still

cries. Finally, sleeps

through the night,

hope wakes from quiet.

New day dawns to peace.

No vomiting all day.

Mom sleeps. Baby sleeps

until she doesn’t.

Early morning from

across the room

she is still, too

still—and blue.

Exists a sound unique

to mourners

rises from center

of the body, shreds

it’s way up and out

unbidden keening howl,

savage—the soul’s sole

recourse.

Thing about joking

with a life. Had her

daughter, couldn’t keep her.

Finally, at peace,

was lost to her mother

who still cries every once

in a while prompted by some

random thing, these

twenty-five years later.

Ellen Evans started writing poetry in the second grade and has continued off and on for the last 45 years. Her first published poem appeared in the literary magazine of her high school when she was only a freshman. Ellen lived in Israel as an Orthodox Jew, with her (ultimately) nine children from 1979-1991. While in Israel, her poetry was translated into Hebrew, and appeared embedded in a novel by David Ben Yosef. Her work can be found with Lost Sparrow Press and Silver Birch Press.  She currently lives in Providence, RI and is working on a chapbook of poems about migraines, while in the midst of migraines.

Alexandra Melnick

Mouth of the Void

Too big for bones,

The water rushes in between. Women is the shape of the mouth of the void. That’s what everyone’s afraid of, that’s the fear that sets in when we try and write honest poetry. I didn’t write for a long time, said Charles Bukowski. Everyone forgave him. I didn’t write because I can’t find the time, said the woman. You keep locking away personhood through veils and secrecy, productivity apps and digital time. I hope some people will forgive me.

Too big for bones, but too sublime for any sort of stoichiometry, transfiguration, or divine bone casting. All I want to do is write. So I get up early mornings, and I grind myself, I grind my coffee, I try to set things right. This isn’t anything new- women have been doing this for years. The anglerfish have been dissolving into each other for a millennia. How can you even write when you’re in love? You want to keep everything in a close, water-tight system. If you write while in fulfilling love, you end up losing part of yourself and become legion, pantheon in something else.

This year I read legion; I read in a series of lists. It was the year of only female authors, free of contamination or contagion from male eyes. Right as I was graduating college, I realized I really didn’t have a grasp (as much as I wanted) on the body of work by female authors. I wanted to know the real reasons why we make a distinction at all. Women’s bodies of work have part, all, and nothing to do with the physical embodiments of their bodies. I’m somebody obsessed with embodiment, the “what does it mean” to be female and thus inscribed as sexual content and not base note of human being. In a sense, I wanted to see the aftermath of what it meant to be woman in the world, the what comes after. It was the year of Simone Weil and Rebecca Solnit, unlikely bedfellows, sister saints, and sidewalk sitters. It was the year I craved Milan Kundera like a cigarette fix and bit into Ursula K Le Guin instead for some satiation of my hunger. This is the part where I say I learned something about myself, my writing style. The problem with self-knowledge is that you are the self that is giving and processing knowledge so it’s a bit difficult to grasp the shape of your whole while still being that whole. (It seems a bit like writing your auto biography but only writing “I am writing… I am writing….”) I’ll tell you who I am when I am no longer that person. I’ll tell you what womanhood in the age of Trump means when we are destroyed or freed. I’ve learned about science fiction. I think in the end only women can save us.

I cannot step away from the context of my surroundings, but I can tell you about the mouth of the void. I’ll tell you the true weight of the patriarchy when I can walk home at night. You only know a weight by the absence when it’s gone.

Alexandra Melnick is an educator, writer, and tofu scramble lover who originates from Jupiter, Florida. She currently is a 2017 cohort member of Mississippi Teacher Corps, and has settled in the Delta.

Marleen S. Barr   

Patriarchy Submerged Or Vampire Mermaids Make Enormous Sea Changes At The Last Minute  EXCERPT

Professor Sondra Lear, a feminist science fiction scholar par excellence, was vacationing in the Florida Keys. Anxious to take full advantage of her respite from grading papers and attending English Department meetings, she joined the afternoon cruise organized by the attentive staff at the Hotel Gilligan. She walked up the gangplank of the U.S.S. Minnow while enjoying her view of flying pelicans and fisherman angling for a grouper or even a mackerel wahoo.  Suddenly the sky darkened. The weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed. Despite the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow was lost. The Minnow was lost.

Sondra was thrown overboard. She was sunk. As her feet hit sand with a thud, she saw two mermaids swimming toward her.

“Wonderful. Another human is in our midst. Just in time. I’m starving,” announced one of the salivating mermaids to her companion.

“Not so fast. It’s a female human. She’s inedible. Let’s throw her back,” said the other mermaid.

“She could be interesting. Hurry up and bite her so that she can breathe and communicate with us.”

The mermaid did as she was told. Sondra felt fangs chumping on her neck. Relieved that she was miraculously able to stop drowning and start talking, she decided to rely on her scholarly expertise.

“You mermaids can be generically classified as fantasy literature protagonists. But biting mermaids are very unusual. By the way, I’m Professor Sondra Lear.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Salmonella and this is my friend Clamydia. We’re vampire mermaids.”

“Oy, vampire mermaids. I should have known. So, are you going to suck my blood?”

“Not at all,” answered Salmonella. “We only feed on male humans. The presence of the Y chromosome is necessary for us to derive nourishment from human blood. When our saliva gets under human skin, the human is able to breathe and talk under water. We love to gossip with human women.”

“What happens to the men?”

“Perhaps our leader should explain that to you.”

“Is your leader named Countess Dracula? Does she have large fangs?”

“Although we all have large fangs, our dear leader is most certainly not named Countess Dracula.”   

“Take me to your leader.”

(Read the FULL STORY IN PRINT VERSION Available August 2017)

Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction and teaches English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction
Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction
and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre
Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies. Barr has edited many anthologies and co-edited the science fiction issue of PMLA. She is the author of the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir.

Marianne Peel

Night Before Your Mastectomy

Ever since you told me 

that cancer was taking your breasts

I have suspended belief in my own breasts

shelved all feeling, all sensation

to a place over there, away from this body

I call mine.

My breasts became non-existent

as I avoided mirrors,

wanting to be one with you in this loss

in this farewell to the piece of myself

that had nourished four daughters

in rocking chairs, church pews, toilet stalls.

And I thought what I might do tonight

if I knew of the surgeons coming toward me tomorrow.  

I would spend time with a mirror,

a long, full-length mirror,

admiring the roundness of my breasts,

touching the softness,

reminding my hands to remember.

I am a touchable painting

not in a frame or an album

but in my own fingertips.

I would notice how my breasts 

are only one or two brush strokes

of a Monet impression, water flowers scattered on a pond. 

I would remember my nakedness

in a field of lilies

gently blurred

waltzing to wind chimes

with one soft lilac

between my breasts.

Then I would bathe in lavender water

and build castles of fragrant bubbles

on my thighs, my hips, my stomach,

and my breasts.

I would sprinkle warm, lavender water

over and over again on my breasts,

watching the water cry in rivers,

cry in streams,

cry in farewell.

 

Marianne Peel is a poet and a flute-playing vocalist and budding ukulele player, all while raising four daughters. She taught middle and high school English for 32 years.  She won first prize for poetry in the Spring 2016 Edition of the Gadfly Literary Magazine and won the Pete Edmonds Poetry Prize. Marianne has been published in Muddy River Review, Silver Birch Press, Persephone’s Daughters, Encodings:  A Feminist Literary Journal, Mother Voices, and Metropolitan Woman Magazine just to name a few. She is currently doing Field Instructor work at Michigan State University. 

Linda Crate

not as pathetic as you

i know you chose her, married her; cheated on me; and tore my heart through the most painful hell i've ever endured—i know that you are an uninterested, taken man full of nightmares and darkness and thoughts that are tedious never lending wing to imagination; but i don't want you—i want your body on mine, in mine, by mine; feeding the flame of my desire and my lust and my passion—i haven't had anyone but you and four years can leave a heart hungry for some morsel;

the mind becomes forgetful in it's need—it's true i mostly resent you, but there's a part of me that bleeds for you; mostly in winter when my loneliness shrieks it's loudest discontent and my instinct is to go back to what i'm used to; and the sex wasn't even good, i just want your body on mine until i can satisfy this longing in my bones—i must sound pathetic, but then again; i could be you.

Linda M. Crate was born in Pittsburgh and raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has three published chapbooks:  A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon ), and If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications) and is the author of  fantasy  novels, Blood & Magic, Dragons & Magic,  and Centaurs & Magic.

B.Elae

The Question

And what lasted for four and a half minutes

-or 2-hundred and seventy seconds-

seemed so long...

But no one

ever asked him:

"What did you have on...?"

B.Elae is an author, poet, and spoken word performer from Indiana. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Criminal Justice and a certification in Victim Assistance Training. She is a victim’s advocate and provides assistance to individuals affected by sexual assault, domestic violence, and human trafficking. She has a forthcoming book on the subject. For more information or for any inquiries or questions about human services you can contact her on social media, Instagram and Facebook @B.Elae

Dionne Lausberg

Untitled

 

Dionne Lausberg has a Bachelor of Design from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, Netherlands. She is currently living and studying paining in New York City, NY.






Maxine Kollar

Waffles EXCERPT

I’m lying in bed wondering why the wall paint is bubbling like that. This feels like a remnant of a dream. Something that I tear off and hold tight in my fist while I travel back to consciousness. My eyes aren’t quite focusing yet so I hope it is a trick of light and shadows. Rubbing and blinking, the pattern is still there. Such an odd pattern too. There are little shapes, ovals. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe my stupid neighbor just put up some nouveau wall art or something and drilled too far into the paper-thin walls. He likes to pound things into the walls but mostly just his fists. He has said I make too much noise, even when I’m reading.

I can’t stay in bed all day because I need to go to my crappy job to pay for this crappy apartment in this crappy part of town. My righteous indignation at what my life has become, through no fault of my own, gives me the strength to cast off the weight of the sheets and the courage to swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand up.

I sit back down very quickly. It looks like each tiny shape is trembling.

Maybe it’s just my nerves. Maybe an optical illusion. I’m going to get up again, just slower this time. I stand up.

The shapes are quivering. They flutter open and so many eyes stare at me. The whole room is beginning to darken and spin and I know I am about to pass out. I sit down again quickly and see all the eyes shut. I am breathing deeply and counting backwards from one hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight… (Read the FULL STORY IN PRINT VERSION Available August 2017)

 

Maxine Kollar is a wife and a mother of three. Her writing has appeared in Mamalode, SpeckLit, Gravel Mag, Route 7 Review, Clever Mag, Funny in Five Hundred, Rat's Ass Review, Gambling the Aisle and elsewhere.

K.D. Rose

 

To Someone

Your poems show that you’re insane.

Do you like that?

Is that the name you call yourself

under your blanket of words

hiding in the dark to write them out

like a blaze?

Because let me tell you—

You’re fucking lucky

that you can write like this

and no one knows.

There are some who have done nothing

yet have endured more.

K. D. Rose is a poet and author. K. D.’s book, Inside Sorrow, won Readers Favorite Silver Medal for Poetry. She won an Honorable Mention in the 2016 New Millennium Writings Poetry Contest. She has a B.S. in Psychology and a Master's Degree in Social Work. She is a member of Poetry Society of America, Poets and Writers and the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry, essays, and short stories have been published in Word Riot, Chicago Literati, Poetry Breakfast, BlazeVOX Journal, Ink in Thirds, The Nuclear Impact Anthology, Stray Branch Magazine and others. Publication is forthcoming in Literary Orphans, Eastern Iowa Review, Santa Fe Literary Magazine, Northern Virginia Review, Hermes Poetry Journal, Maintenant Contemporary Dada Magazine, and The 2016 Paragram Press Anthology. Her latest release is Brevity of Twit.

Kristy Gherlone

The Falls EXCERPT

She pauses to listen halfway into the ascent.

The forest speaks to her in a language that is not at all foreign. She has grown accustomed to its dialect, but on this day, she cannot trust her own ears. They have been tainted by painful words. She is alone. The solitude amplifies the words. Foraging squirrels sound like approaching demons. Dark thoughts fill her head.

Her heart beats out a rhythm of warning. The partridge drum in succession, alerting to a battle that is not their own. There is danger here. There is danger everywhere, but rarely here. She finds solace in the dark places of the wild. Perhaps it is she that is the danger.

The world sways. She drops down and covers her head. Her throat draws in shallow gulps and her hands grow numb. The still air comes to life. The trees sway back and forth in a violent dance. Dust devils swirl into the valley, scattering dead leaves and bending branches as they whistle through the pines. “Go back,” they howl. “It’s not too late.”

(Read the FULL STORY IN PRINT VERSION Available August 2017)

Kristy Gherlone was born and raised in northern Maine, where she attended the University of Maine. She spent several years working on Mt. Katahdin and as an Early Interventionist for children with autism. Currently she resides in New Hampshire and is the self-published author of three novels.

 

Cathy Clay

Hiss

I am neither winged nor hoofed; but small

tan, dappled, and lacking venom. Though

my kind comes in manifold colors, the

faintest glimpse of me conjures the huge

black serpent of nightmare and lore.

My motley skin I shed to become anew,

but I can never eclipse the curse.

I tend to keep to myself. Sometimes I crawl

into the vexatious pit of my kin; though I

prefer adding mystique to the garden.

I slither on my belly in search of some

small pulsating prey then a cool shadowy

place to rest. Most things are grand from

my vantage point since I seldom rise above

the heel. Occasionally, when I inch up a

tree, I wonder what it must be like to roar

or soar from there.

Progress licensed Adam to slay me.

Eve avoids my presence unless I am

couture. Children are taught to fear me

yet some appreciate my beguiling charm.

While too naïve to know that fertility, eternity,

and wisdom I symbolize, the innocent quickly

learn that I am delicate, playful, and necessary.

Camouflaged by nature, I creep to my fate.

Should trouble happen my way, my tiny head I will rear

and launch my best defense.

I will hiss.

  

Cathy Clay is a Houston, Texas native. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Houston and a Master’s in English from Texas Southern University. Her scholarly reviews have been published in the Facts on File: Companion to the World Novel (Columbia University Press) and her short story, Cecil, appears in Eclectically Criminal (Inklings ). She is the author of  Agatta, a novel. 

Jade Wallace

An Abundance of Cake (For T) EXCERPT

 A sign saying Bundt Cake Shop was hanging above a door that, prior to being adorned with a large caricature of a Bundt cake, had remained closed for about a year after the questionably useful oxygen bar that previously occupied the storefront shut down.

“They must sell Bundt cakes,” my boyfriend said as we walked by one evening after dinner out and noticed the unequivocal sign for the first time.

“They must sell other things too,” I replied.

“Let’s go in and see,” he suggested. I cupped my hand against my forehead and peered into the window.

“They’re still under construction.” I turned away and we started walking home. “Do you think they know that Bundt is a trademarked name?”

“They probably do and they are using it purposely and subversively to avenge Nordic Ware’s plagiarism of the Bundkuchen cake shape that by all rights should be credited primarily to the Jewish-German women who brought it with them when they immigrated to North America.” 

(Read the FULL STORY IN PRINT VERSION Available August 2017)

 

Jade Wallace works in a legal clinic in Toronto, Ontario. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in The Dalhousie Review, The Nashwaak Review, Draft, Feathertale, A New Ulster, Acumen, Pac’n Heat: A Noir Homage To Ms. Pac-Man, and six chapbooks from Grey Borders Books.

   

Susan J. Anderson

Ripples EXCERPT

My sister buried her first husband a year ago. Her feelings were another matter.

Kathryn called me early that January morning with news of Liam’s death. She’d received a midnight call from the person her first husband’s heart belonged to—Joel the Troll, a moniker she had given her rival because of his compact stature and apparent lack of commitment to proper oral hygiene.

The news stole my words. I held the phone to my ear, listening to my sister’s staccato breathing.

We had just seen Liam at Christmas. He and Joel had come to my home for dinner—a first for Kat’s fractured family since the divorce seven years earlier. It was civilized and everyone seemed to enjoy having all of our grown sons, significant others, and Kat and Liam’s two grandchildren together under one roof.

Joel and Liam came bearing gifts, both appearing happy to be part of this new incarnation of Modern Family. And now Liam was gone?

“I feel like I have an elephant sitting on my chest,” Kat’s voice cracked the silence between us.

“You could be having a heart attack,” I warned. “Do you remember Mrs. Danneker—from church? The one with the doctor-husband and seven perfect children in the front pew every Sunday with no embarrassing incidents?” 

“How could I forget Noreen Danneker?” Kat asked. “We couldn’t get through one service without her turning around to see which one of our boys was causing a ruckus. Remember the time I gave her the finger?”

“You didn’t flip her off. You slid your reading glasses up your nose with your middle finger.”

“That still counts as giving her the bird.” (Read the FULL STORY IN PRINT VERSION Available August 2017)

Susan J. Anderson holds a Master's in Creative Writing from Towson University, and is an award-winning teacher of English and creative writing. She has also worked in advertising, promoted punk rock music, managed a suite of law offices in Beverly Hills, and taught at the Columbia School of Broadcasting in Hollywood. Susan writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She blogs at foxywriterchick.com, and lives in Maryland with her husband and three sons. 

Marjory E. Leposky

Through Words EXCERPT

When I was in pre-school my teachers caught on to the fact that I wasn’t learning my numbers and colors like my classmates. Back in the late 1970s, many children with learning disabilities weren’t diagnosed until high school or college, if ever.  I was one of the lucky ones to be diagnosed so young and my mother was my activist until I was old enough to take over for myself.

In elementary school, despite my disability, I fell in love with reading.  Through books, I was able to travel and meet new people.  Other children were so cruel with bullying. The minute they found out that I was not good at something simple, like spelling, they held it over me. Even today, some people don’t understand. They think I have dyslexia, which I don't.  I just have learning disabilities. (Read the FULL STORY IN PRINT VERSION Available August 2017)

Marjory E. Leposky is a filmmaker and children's chapter book author with more than 10 years of production experience on a broad spectrum of projects including TV commercials, music videos and feature film productions. She has degrees in television and media production from Miami Dade College and Florida State University.

To learn more about Marjory, please visit her Web site at http://www.ampersandcom.com/chatterbox/.