May

Gunfire thunders up to the bedroom,
Shocks cats from their soft knolls
Of quilt, rouses us, groggy,
Down to see what’s happened.

The avenue is swabbed white
With a helicopter’s spotlight.
Its corona lobs long night shadows
That widen into longer
Dark up the hill. In minutes
The screeching street is wedged
With ambulance and police cars.

Neighbors emerge pajama’d
To whisper on porches blown pale
By the canopy of droning ghost light.
They squint and puff cigarettes.
Yellow tape scrapes around our old elm
And stretches across the street.
One by one, resigned,
We turn back inside.

In the morning, irises doze and burn
Heraldic purple in muggy sunshine.
Flies weave over crescents
And browning clouds of blood
One would walk on without
Even knowing, except
To stop and look down. A small
White square, a fast-food napkin,
Cartwheels in the breeze and clings
To the edge of a clotted lagoon,
Soaked red at its corner, a dropped flag.

Urchin-spines of tough green weed
Star and spike through seams
Of cracked concrete, each slot
Of sidewalk a flattened headstone.

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New Issue, 133: Dark Things as Bright

In the current issue, Aaron Kelly questions what it means to be “Living in the Real World” in the eponymous article and our prose and poetry contributors offer the chance to sink into the unreality of imaginary realms. Issue 133 is full of fresh and feisty fiction from Ewan Morrison, Ruth Thomas, Glenn Patterson and Gwendoline Riley, poetry by Paul Muldoon, Ernest Hilbert, Jen Hadfield, David Wheatley and many more, articulate articles and shrewd reviews. Cover design by David Gilchrist and image from Finlay Cramb.