Poetry of Issue #1                        Page 14
Click page 1 Click page 2 Click page 3 Click page 4 Click page 5 Click page 6 Click page 7 Click page 8 Click page 9 Click page 10 Click page 11 Click page 12 Click page 13 Click page 15 Click page 16 Click page 17 Click page 18 Click page 19 Click page 20 The Blog Bog The Mag Rack	THE WAY YOUNG WRITERS DO Oh Frank, we are at the beach, exchanging hypotheticals with our notebooks and the sun is a net that we swim in and I'm thinking about how a writer feels the need to remove herself (like it's happening but I'm not going to feel it because I'm going to make it something else) like an article of clothing, from the moment to not forget the story, the poem, the flash of fiction (the gall of that!). Like the one you told me about a man who falls out of the sky or off a bridge thinking about the velocity of numbers and lands splat next to her, you, or me while we are writing, while we are sketching a circle of minnows underneath that bridge carving shadows into cement and stone with our fins the shape of ouroboros, the borough eating its tail. The young man next to us thinks that it might make a great tattoo and writes that down. We don't even notice the act. We don't even hear the bones break, one by one, every day. Instead, we are encased in the light. Instead, we catch the glide in mid-flight and dream of flying fish on the way down from a morning drive, freedom instead of fright.                            Alan Semerdjian	YOU'RE LOOKING GOOD LIKE A WAVE and a gust of wind comes in from the north when the lights are low and then recedes. Your breath is like this, like the sea or wind or a gull. You pull the world in with all its heavy air and bushels of gold and blow the ghosts out of your attachments.                            Alan Semerdjian	WHAT IF, BLUEBIRD,             after Bukowski the sky were a nest for it, and it nested? What if your chest opened and it spilled out of your heart, finally air, finally? Or what if it's two bluebirds in your heart and not one, and what if the bluebird isn't blue at all but red, ignited, ready to burn, and what if one of these birds is perched to fly away and the other is motioning for you to stay, come closer so I can see you better better to smell your strange feathers, better to sing you sad bird songs, better even to bludgeon your sad heart looking for a few scraps of birdseed some sustenance for the coming seasonÉ What if that bird bludgeoned your heart because it mistook you, too human, for a cat about to pounce?                            Alan Semerdjian