The bout between Lefty Louie and Brainbasher Gordo was a week off. Brainbasher was a vicious fighter, with a brutal right cross, a devastating left hook, a chin of granite, and a 15-0 record, all by KOs within the first two rounds. Louie’s record was less distinguished. He did win his last fight, although his opponent collapsed in the fourth round, the victim of a sudden, violent stomach virus.

In the practice gym, his manager, Mel, called Louie over from working out on the heavy bag. As far as Mel could tell, the heavy bag was ahead on points.

“How do you feel, Louie?”

“I’m a little tired, Mel… But I think I can make it another round with that damn bag.”

“Good, Louie… But I wondered how you felt about Brainbasher?”

“Who?”

Mel sat next to Stan, the corner man. Stan removed a cigar butt from his mouth, shaking the ash onto the cement floor.

“Gordo, Louie?… Mel and I want to know how you feel about Gordo?”

“I’ve been practicing positive thinking, Stan, just like you explained. I’m going to bust Gordo’s chin in.”

“That’s what I call positive, Louie. I’m glad to hear it.”

“Why’d  you ask, Stan?”

The corner man shoved the cigar back into its place, the way a sheriff in the Old West might reholster a smoking gun, except the gun would smell a lot better. He could talk, smoke, and spit tobacco juice pretty much simultaneously.

“Well… Mel didn’t think you’d make it past the first round, Louie. But I bet him you wouldn’t be knocked out until the middle of the second.”

David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).

The car had been hit weeks before that night. The door behind the driver carried the dent of the collision. It stopped functioning, became impossible to open, rendering the back seat into a prison of sorts.

It was Saturday poker night. Every Saturday was poker night in those days. On our way to the weekly gambling my father stopped — I can’t remember why. The three of us sat in the back seat, trapped as the car idled. It was hot. We got impatient, took turns pushing the door trying to release it. It didn’t work.

It was dawn when we finally headed home. On nights like this our parents would carelessly pick us up off the floor and carry us down to the car, our sleep barely interrupted. Piled on each other in the back seat, no seat belt, rolling from side to side as the car sped through residential streets.

He was going really fast. I’m sure he was tired and maybe a little tipsy. He took the left turn onto Northern Blvd really hard — he must have been doing 50. I was sitting behind him. His turn jarred us all. I fell on the immovable door and both my sisters piled on top of me. The weight of three bodies and the inertia of his accelerated turn managed what we hadn’t just hours before: the door flew open and I rolled out into the middle of Northern Blvd. The car kept going, speeding away from me. I jumped up and chased after it yelling. I woke up as if from a nightmare and believed this was it — the finely executed plan of leaving me forever behind. He did eventually notice. Maybe my sisters yelled too. The car came to a jagged halt, he ran out, picked me up and threw me back into the back seat.

There was no asking if I was ok. I wasn’t. We moved on. When it was mentioned it was a thing that happened. I was never the focus of the thing.

I was seven years old, newly in America, still learning to speak English, rushing to catch up to my younger sisters. On Monday in school I tried to explain to the teacher’s aide what happened. I used an eraser and a pencil — the eraser was the car, the pencil was Northern Blvd. But I couldn’t get her to understand. I couldn’t ask for what I needed. I couldn’t decide if I was lucky that it was dawn and this main artery of Queens was desolate. If it had been a different time of day surely I would have been run over. Surely there would have been cars behind us. I knew that much. But I could not convey the scar of this much knowing.

Argy Koutsothanasis is a poet and creative director based in Queens, New York. She is the great-niece of Markos Vamvakaris, the father of Greek rebetiko music, and descends from a family of artists rooted in Syros — her great-grandfather was a poet. After two decades in fashion and sports media, she is returning to poetry and completing her first manuscript.

In the New Country

He needed a new name; his
was too many syllables, too difficult
to pronounce, too easy
to destroy.

Natalie Wolf is a writer from the Kansas City area pursuing an MFA in creative writing at the University of Kansas. She is an editor for One Sentence Poems and a reader for Cottonwood Literary Magazine. She is a big fan of cats, glitter, and anything with chocolate. You can find her on her website (https://nwolfmeep.wixsite.com/nmwolf) and on Instagram @nwolfcats.

I go to funerals. The ones with a reception following the service.
The unctuous funeral director greets me with suspicious looks.
He’s seen me many times. Probably recognizes my only necktie.
He used to grease me with a perfunctory, “Sorry for your loss.”
Now he just nods grimly like I’m an old enemy he now tolerates.
I do not recognize any mourners in the church. I seldom do.
After the service, I quickly head to the reception. I go for food.
Not metaphorical food like being fed by a sermon or eulogy.
Can’t recall when one of those fed me anything but cliches.
I go for real food and sometimes murmured exchanges with
strangers who think we share a loss. Of course, we do not.
But I commiserate with them, mentioning the deceased
whose name I got from the bulletin the usher handed me.
While my hopeful eyes assess long tables laden with food.

Mac McLeod is an old man, ninety on his next birthday. A southerner by birth and disposition, he’s had several careers. A husband, father of five, former military aviator, lawyer, insurance agency owner, and Episcopal priest. He has a good sense of both humor and the absurdities of life and living. A new poet, he’s recently been writing sonnets.

Apologies

flutter from my lips
so often I don’t even notice,

hover hesitant around my head,
delicate doves fluffy, fresh, and

waiting to be taken
as afternoon snacks.

Natalie Wolf is a writer from the Kansas City area pursuing an MFA in creative writing at the University of Kansas. She is an editor for One Sentence Poems and a reader for Cottonwood Literary Magazine. She is a big fan of cats, glitter, and anything with chocolate. You can find her on her website (https://nwolfmeep.wixsite.com/nmwolf) and on Instagram @nwolfcats.

Every night, after the stroke, I got her in bed and she asked,
“Is my head in exactly the right place on the pillow. Exactly?”
The pillow is as thin as an envelope, yet it holds the slight
hollow her head makes. I guaranteed the perfect position.
She slumbers heavily, never moving. My sleep comes late.

These nights, I nestle my head in the precise same place
and pat the other side of the bed and say, “Good night.”
Her answer is a soft, thin echo in my head. “Good night.”
“I love you.” Then a weak tremulous “I love you too.”
In the morning, the usual aches as I roll over gingerly.
Her side is empty as a vacant casket. I caress the sheet.
“Good morning.” “Morning. Think your coffee’s ready.”
I head downstairs, using her stairlift with its familiar hum.
I smell the coffee pod and hear its dying spit and sputter.  

Mac McLeod is an old man, ninety on his next birthday. A southerner by birth and disposition, he’s had several careers. A husband, father of five, former military aviator, lawyer, insurance agency owner, and Episcopal priest. He has a good sense of both humor and the absurdities of life and living. A new poet, he’s recently been writing sonnets.

Ed turned from his oatmeal to Mel.

“Are you okay?”

“What’d  you mean, Ed?”

“Well… You just don’t seem like yourself. Look, you barely touched your eggs.”

Ed pointed with his spoon. They were at the counter of AL’S DINER that Monday morning. The oatmeal was glutinous. There was no telling what it might be doing to Ed’s stomach.

“I guess I was thinking about the weekend.”

“Weren’t you taking care of your nephew?”

Mel and Ed launched into a past weekend diner conversation.

“Right, my nephew Mort.”

“Isn’t he your sister’s kid? The one with the rhinestone glasses and gaudy jewelry?”

“No, Mort doesn’t wear much jewelry.”

“I meant your sister, Mel.”

“Oh… No… You’re thinking of my sister Francine. Mort’s Julie’s kid.”

Mel put down his fork. His eggs, which he’d barely touched, reached an unappetizing thermal equilibrium. The diner kept the temperature low to save on heating costs.

“Mort beat me seven games straight in gin rummy.”

“What?”

Ed couldn’t believe it. Seven in a row? Mort?

“How old is he?”

A 10-year-old had taken Mel for all the money he had over the past weekend while Julie was away with three of her friends in the Poconos. AL’S DINER was northeast of Philadelphia.

So Mort had cleaned out Mel. That meant Ed had no way of winning anything from him if they played a few hands of gin rummy in one of the empty booths. And what was the point of playing for nothing? 10-year-old Mort knew that, and had stopped playing when Mel had nothing more to put up.

David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).

Send me the rare the neglected the humble,
the pure immovable stock.
Send the old man with no teeth,
the hidden monument immortal rock.
Send the wretched tolerant barn with no walls but soul to spare,
the crux the core the ethos that shines with no airs.

You see, the wind shaved his face, leaving creases and sunken eyes.
His balance is fragile, falling with each step, letting out battling sighs.
But do not mistake frailties for thin, diminished strife.
The old man is strong enough to show the honesty of life.
He’s shed the tailored bravado for course calluses from his cane.
He has nothing to hide, and only lessons to pass on from crippling pain.

That barn too deserves a pause.
The flecks of paint continue to fall and disappear,
because there’s no profit in repair, no awards for unkept veneer.
But those shaky walls can teach more than any gilded palace.
They outline a floor where dinner fed, and the child played with no malice.

So, remember what matters when you fight for the cause, stirring the dust.
Pass the glitz, exhale…and cherish the rust.

And toss away that Duke of something. This here is true.
If you squint and focus, it’s the marrow there for you.
It’s a farmhand, eschewed headlines, a grunt that can’t be bought.
It’s liege, enduring, and from us it asks for naut.

So, as you drive across corn-ridden fields,
As you travel life with a price tag that’s higher yields,
I know it’s strange that I ask. I know it’s odd.
But do this elderly friend a kindness and send real pictures of the home sod.

Dr. Marler is a defense policy analyst and research engineer. His material has focused on software, mathematics, military training, and emerging technology. It has been published in a variety of books, technical journals, and policy magazines. However, as of late, he has turned to cultural implications. Tech is easy. People are complex…or are they? Even as an engineer, the real gems of value, our so-called competitive value, seem to stem from who we are, not just what we make, and I try to explore this value.

More than five years ago, his young nephew drove across the United States, from coast to coast. He encouraged his nephew to look beyond the tourist sites and capture the soil of the land. This poem reflects that advice and explores the essence of a Sate.

red poppies pierce the dense scent
of unused sky lingering through
the decay of books and flesh
sunburned arms pour into callused
fingers attached to coils of twine —
Clean Monday kites
holidays find little ankles
with frilly white socks
laced tightly in patent leather
men in olive groves
in search of breath & heirs
belong to Clean Mondays


Argy Koutsothanasis is a poet and creative director based in Queens, New York. She is the great-niece of Markos Vamvakaris, the father of Greek rebetiko music, and descends from a family of artists rooted in Syros — her great-grandfather was a poet. After two decades in fashion and sports media, she is returning to poetry and completing her first manuscript.

At 3 AM that Tuesday morning, Ed dreamt of being a duck, while Edna, in bed next to him, coincidentally dreamt of being a duck hunter. He flapped his wings, flying poorly in his dream, as might be expected. He was out of shape. He didn’t exercise. Still he was able to flap his erratic way into Edna’s dream.

She had never been much of a duck hunter. 52 years before, when she was 15, her father and Uncle Mort had taken her with them when they went duck hunting. Talk about sitting around on your ass waiting for something to happen. “Just pull the trigger gently, dammit.” That was how Uncle Mort talked. She used the duck call, but Mort took it from her irritatedly, dismissively. “Blow it like this.” Well-camouflaged, he was a devoted hunter and caller.

But he wasn’t there in the dream, nor was her father. Edna sat in the duck blind and fired as a foolish bird came flapping and quacking into view. Ed was terrified. He’d always had a fear of flying, so he took Xanax before and during plane flights. Now he twisted and turned in the air and in their bed without Xanax, as Edna reloaded.

Would Uncle Mort have been proud of her? Imagine bringing a dead duck like Ed to her Uncle. In real life, she never hit a foolish bird. “What a waste of ammunition,” her Uncle would comment as she futilely blasted away so many years before. If only he could see her now firing at Ed, the flapping duck.

David Sydney is a physician who writes fiction in and out of the EHR (Electronic Health Record).