Genuflection as Visions

By Isabel Hoin

I had a vision of Jesus once— yes, a vision of Jesus and my deceased grandfather and also my deceased twin who I never met but somehow he was my age in this particular vision and in that moment I assumed I had the vision like all the priests and nuns and even the popes and possibly the saints have felt before and then I felt special, somehow, but that was when I was in catholic school for that one year before I left and opened my mind to the many texts it stored and still stores and now I want to tell my past self this: read and 

breathe 

in as much information you can possibly hold; 

the cracking of book spines only brings growth while 

simultaneously crumbling indoctrination you were never aware 

of— and then it hits you 

like the breeze of an opened window, in fall, 

and in this deep, submersive breath of amazement I close my eyes, again, and rethink this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence over and over Sunday after Sunday while seated in the very last pew at 8am and remember to genuflect, and then kneel, and then stand, and then kneel, Sunday after Sunday 

and then today.

Isabel Hoin is a Perry Morgan Fellow (Poetry) in Old Dominion University's MFA program, and her work is already in or is forthcoming in Vagabond City, Door=Jar Magazine, Blue Press Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, Voices/1922 Review, La Picciolėtta Barca Review, and Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts at Northeastern University, among others.

"Nube Nera" art by Federico Federici.

Elephant on My Back

By MaxieJane Frazier

Six muscled litter carriers deposit my sister’s soul-slipping body in her Happy Place of soft bedding, motivational quotes, and perfectly picked wall colors; meanwhile an elephant sits folded in on itself on my passenger seat because we just left the pharmacy with enough liquid morphine to kill, well, an elephant, but she doesn’t mind because her trunk snakes across my Subaru’s dashboard; she rests her dorsal and ventral fingers over my driving hand sounding just like my dying sister when she whispers, “So this is it?” then after we park, she clambers on my back to climb all twenty-four steps to the Happy Place vigil where together we balance on a fold-out out chair, or stand, or stretch together as one weighted being through the night and day and one last long night before my sister’s haggard, autonomic breathing smooths out until, in that only moment when I’m not looking, sometime a little before 3 a.m., she, the elephant, slips down off my back, though I feel her weight just the same, still I turn around and catch a glimpse of my sister riding just behind those gray, flapping ears, through the walls of her Happy Place, astride the elephant’s swaying march over the Columbia River.

MaxieJane Frazier, author, editor, and teacher, cares for geriatric equids and other furry beloveds while writing from the Okanogan Highlands of Washington state where she seeks out perfection, mostly in words.

Art by Evva Durkee.

Indiana Jones and the Giant Pit of Consequences

By Timothy C. Goodwin

In hindsight, my hat looked nothing like a fedora, and the mustache my best friend Charley made from scribbling black marker on paper, cutting out, and taping to his upper lip looked nothing like Hitler's; in hindsight, we should have stayed at the scene of the accident, calling out to my parents for help from the backyard instead of running to get them, so that we didn’t look like we were fleeing the scene; in hindsight, there are plenty of other ways to play Indiana Jones, so taking the swings off the swingset and dangling from the top bar, crossing from one end to the other, hand over hand—Charley chasing me over an imagined, giant pit of lava-snakes—might not have been the best idea, because of course my five-year old sister would want to join us, even though there was no role for a kid like her in our serious pretendification, and—in hindsight—maybe I could have told her to scram, but I didn't think she would follow us up to the top of the swingset, I didn't think she would fall, and I didn't think that landing on her butt with her arms behind her would snap her wrists—all 2 of them—like 2 plastic straws, and after keys were swiped from the table top and coats were ripped from hangers while my parents shouted new concepts like CONSEQUENCES and WHAT WERE YOU THINKING and HINDSIGHT over the sound of lots and lots—and lots—of sisterly screaming, the front door slammed shut and the wailing receded into the distance, leaving Charley and I in (sniffling) silence, together on the couch, his mustache barely hanging to his lip, flapping with each pant, my hat crumpled in my fists in my lap, both of us now aware of how much thinking we have to do in our world, how there are consequences in our world, and in that silence, from the backyard, we could still hear the Indiana Jones theme playing on our cassette player, soundtracking an adventure that, in hindsight, now seemed so childish, now seemed so long ago.

Timothy C Goodwin has work included in HAD, Trash Cat, Twin Pies, Dishsoap Quarterly, JAKE, Maudlin House, and elsewhere; he lives in NYC.

Art by Gary Goodwin.