Fox Henry Frazier

Automatonophilia Love of things that falsely represent a sentient being You married a marionette for the lumbering way that she succumbs to teeth. You saw; she sways and says okay. And she admires the daze you move in, hydroplaning days away: exultant accidents. Instead of me, a blissful wooden girl; a wooden knee submitted for exhibit. Deadened trees: the shelter you inhabit. And didn’t we expect it, eking out animatronic epochs on the sofa? Both electric— me with boredom; you ran programs: tricks for trenchant eyes. Disguised, the lists you ticked led straight to this. Your love nest: nuts and bolts, no musts. No lust. No faults, and no one’s fault. from on . ______________________________________________________ Jessica Piazza‘s first full-length collection of poems, Interrobang, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2013. She was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature and Creative [...]

Elegy for a Forty-Three Pound Woman with Mental Retardation Autumn and you are in your mother’s house. __________Plants no longer turn _____but fail down to the soil _______________from which they sprung. To be sure I can’t speak properly to you until Winter _____when the kindly rescuer appeared to find you alive and moving, resuscitating a growing need on a soiled mattress __________—whisper body— one chain away from death in a room you’ve never escaped. _____Thus you, my joyless seed, sprout. ____________________Could you often hear _____the butchers’ feast being torn into by mouths in the outer rooms? Partitioned again the body that is end-stopped. This world __________did not fall from my head. _____An ornate impotence arose with the descent of you, and instead of the too much to say to tell a truth, I’m burdened by a phlegm-thick mouth, my sounds _______________throat bound and the entire vocal __________apparatus breaks at the [...]

INVISIBLE FUNERAL IN ONE ACT A bird runs into a window Enter: A woman (who looks like me) staring at the patterns on a Persian rug __Enter: A stagehand, carrying a mirror The woman tapes black construction paper over the mirror When she stares at the rug and then back at the blacked- out mirror, neon ghosts of paisley fractals squirm A bird runs into a window & I watch It strikes its beak with its own beak Previously Entered: Maurice Blanchot Maurice Blanchot stands by a desk lamp in the corner & notes: __It is striking that at this very moment, when the cadaverous presence is Enter: the woman (who is me) staring at the reflected patterns on her face__ Enter: the television projecting a woman (who is not me) staring at a family photograph and saying ___________& I didn’t ___________recognize Maurice Blanchot scratches his head __He writes: __when [...]

______________________________________________________________ Bradley Harrison grew up in small town Iowa and is a graduate of Truman State University. Currently a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas in Austin, his work can be found in Gulf Coast, CutBank, The Los Angeles Review, Hunger Mountain, New Orleans Review and other journals. His chapbook Diorama of a People, Burning is forthcoming from Ricochet Editions (Fall 2012). Related Posts Poem of the Week: Frank Montesonti Poem of the Week: Sarah V. Schweig Poem of the Week: Stacy Gnall Poem of the Week: Phoebe Giannisi Poem of the Week: Laura Eve Engel

Maternalique Sure as a first balled fist, ____________________it wells you awake _______as from a quake– _____the want _______________to give a swaddled __________star to the night’s arc. You step out _____and the landscape lengthens. Each parcel of dark _______________a mouth to be fed, each umbra hunkered __________to its suckling. The fog rocks the gray, _____loving it with its life. You walk, emboldened as a nova. You unfurl. ____________Half-ready to catch the moon’s fall. ______________________Your hand halfway to the soft part of that skull. ______________________________________________ Stacy Gnall is the author of Heart First into the Forest (Alice James Books, 2011). She earned her undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College and her MFA at the University of Alabama, and she is currently pursuing her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California. Her work has previously appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review, [...]