CYNTHIA ALESSANDRA BRIANO   _________________________________________       The Mouth-Carriers     We carried the gold between our teeth, the silver beneath our tongues, the treasure in the pockets of our lungs.   We passed it on to each other from breath to breath like oxygen—the fireflower kiss,   the […]

Adolfo remember that night of the Bandito Wind swindling             a live oak out of a few of its leaves, the rest hanging on, to life presumably, and a scent             in the air, wayward, like a fragrance with a name like Risqué or Rogue, tempting            the last saints to […]

Bare-Handed Unclothed by night and by noon hour, bareamong strangers, on the street, either inor out of the bath, in the rain, the handsgo around naked as faces, but unlike The Face they conceal nothing—unlessthey’ve got something to hide, a trick up the sleeve, a palmed card in a gameof […]

Bad Gun                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Bad cause it’s cheap, cheap and bad. Saturday Night Special they call it, Trash Gun. The slide. The bullet can get caught between the nowand the split second later, between the Here and the Hereafter. Hard. A thick, flat, gun-shaped weight that gets harder in your […]

SUZANNE LUMMIS ________________________________       Jump     So what’s it like   to jump from the Golden Gate Bridge   he asked—my brother asked—into   the face blown wavy as spit salt   and foam rinsed sand.   Hardly anyone lives he tells me,   my brother the […]

CONNEY D. WILLIAMS _________________________________ you are los angeles complicated as construction on both the 405 and 5 freeways necessary and tangled you script yourself anew, daily peach stucco, beach, and celluloid breathing like skyscraperabove the colloquial & CO2 red rock mesa rising pacific you basin beauty with the subtle calico […]

CONNEY D. WILLIAMS _________________________________     you are los angeles     complicated as construction on both the 405 and 5 freeways necessary and tangled you script yourself anew, daily peach stucco, beach, and celluloid breathing like skyscraperabove the colloquial & CO2 red rock mesa rising pacific you basin beauty […]

RON KOERTGE _________________________________   “Jagged Blade Found in Cake        Destined for Inmate”     But a wily guard probes. Carries everything   to Warden Hardin                                           who closes the door   so they can take turns licking icing   off the blade, imagining that inmate’s wife:   recipe on the […]