Witnessed:

Mission and A St.

Yes, the light had turned green,

And Yes, the white-haired passenger

Was looking at something,

Pointing it out to

Her husband,

The driver,

Who tried to see

Where she was indicating

Instead of

Burning rubber

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A Portrait of Captured Wind

The brightly-hued sails of boats leaving

the harbor overlap inside my vision.  They merge

into mobile art, each curve an elaborate ribbon

of road to an undiscovered location.  Direction

changes, they collapse inside themselves

for a moment,

a breath.

I hold

mine, waiting

for the inevitable expansion, the replosion

of fabric straining against mast, attempting

to control a natural force in order to share its flight.

Hearing Sanity

The silent cacophony of the beach

at sunrise is my center

of solace.  Erupture

of waves slowly erodes

the pressures of the previous

day.  Crunch of sand and shell

echo the progression, my mind

moving towards semblance of peace.

I face the golden orb as it breaks

through cover of midnight

cloud, open my mouth

to praise.  Lone seagull

interrupts.  I allow it to speak

for me as I exit, prepared, once again

to face reality’s blight.

I Lie at the Water’s Edge

in order to touch two worlds I do not understand.

One whispers in waves of destruction, pushes

me back while devouring the ground beneath me.

The other rages in electric bursts of sound

that have shaken me numb, erased my ability

to decipher junk from gems, bombarded me

with banality until I can no longer see any

line of propriety.  I am manifestation of point,

a crossing plane they battle against.  I have no favored

victor.  I fully understand I am a pawn being moved

along overlapping boards of despair.  I am simply

sacrifice, waiting to be slain.

A.J. Huffman has published seven solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses.  Her eighth solo chapbook, Drippings from a Painted Mind, won the 2013 Two Wolves Chapbook Contest.  She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation.  She is also the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. www.kindofahurricanepress.com

Cleft Heart, Chasing Normal

by Karl Schonborn

review by Bruce Roberts

Cleft Heart, by Karl Schonborn, is a multifaceted memoir, covering his life in great detail, from birth to adulthood. In the process, several different themes interweave to create the whole of Schonborn’s experience growing up in the 1960s.

The main theme, which underlies all the others, is that he was born with a severe cleft palate. The resulting heroism of his parents—especially his mom—in dealing with doctors and hospitals and operations for decades to fix this problem, is amazing. And since memoirs are written in first person, readers also learn of the mental stress all this put on him, and how well he coped, how well he made decisions—even as a kid—to deal with the bullying from others, and the intense frustration from knowing he looked different.

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Mostly Water

From a womb of seawater we glide to earth

On a river of salt and blood. In life

A river of salt and blood encircles our hearts

And the moon speaks to our bones.

Our bones pass from the earth and are gone, but the water stays.

When I die let me climb the veins of an oak tree

From the veins of an oak tree let me pass into air, into cloud

Let me fall over cities and towns

Over rivers and streams let me thrash in the rapids

In a clear glass bottle let me cultivate stillness

Let the eye of the sun find a clear glass bottle

Let it turn me into a pillar of light.

Jenny Williamson’s writing has been featured in 24Mag, Wild River Review, Poetic Voices, and in Philadelphia’s Writing Aloud series.  She has also received recognition from the Academy of American Poets and NPR’s Young Poets Series.