LIBERA ME   I.   Pain resur­faced, exit­ing out of my arms. In the dream was the face of your father but not my father. In that way I knew he had tak­en you with him. Music, a tor­tu­ous path. There­fore grief is ascribed to the body. A force fluc­tu­at­ing over time. We believe that when aban­doned, every […]

  ORPHEUS RESTORED. PART TWO.   To write this poem I had to get drunk and also high because it was so scary and I need­ed to take leave of my sens­es a lit­tle and also I had some ice tea.  I am prob­a­bly ignor­ing some red flags as I’m being sucked into the black hole of lov­ing you. You taught me […]

  ATTACHED TO THE SWAN COMES THE WATER   i. Are you will­ing to wake me with your baby? To trust I won’t cut your lus­cious bangs as you rest?  My two chil­dren we send to the school best fit­ting per­son­al­i­ties of orange sheets, news­pa­pers smeared with cof­fee & glit­ter-recy­­cling. Tin cans emp­tied of black-eyed peas & […]

  EXCERPTS FROM WOMEN BORN WITH FUR: A BIOGRAPHY Def­i­n­i­tions Hyper­tri­chosis: An exces­sive growth of hair on the body, pos­si­bly as a result of endocrine dys­func­tion, as in the hir­sutism accom­pa­ny­ing exces­sive adreno­cor­ti­cal func­tion. Hyper­tri­chosis: specif­i­cal­ly refers to hair den­si­ty or length beyond the accept­ed lim­its of nor­mal for a par­tic­u­lar age, race, or sex, and […]

  WHITE SPACE (PDF FEATURE) Next→ Jim­mie Cumbie lives on the north side of Chica­go. His poems have appeared in The Spoon Riv­er Poet­ry Review, The CavenKer­ry Press, Swink, The Edi­son Review, and Spout among others.

  THE ATTIC They could sit in the attic win­dowsill for a clear view. Or toss off bits of ined­i­ble food. Some­times they shared two or three cig­a­rettes in a sin­gle sit­ting. Or bore­dom got the bet­ter of them and they kissed. Or it wasn’t clear. Even dur­ing the day. Some­times the giant clouds of dust […]

FRONTAL A mis­quote dilates ghost-red and hat-black the Krem­lin of impulse. On the spiky chance the thighs are real I am their appetite for polyandry, Dada, booze and spaghet­ti, the unsee­able apart­ments in a dream of hall­ways.         CRIB Soupy riv­er of alt-sex as is mocked by ter­rap­ins and pan­golins and melan­choly aye-ayes drawn by […]

                  Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brook­lyn New York. He is a sculp­tor, painter, book deal­er, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and teacher. His work has been seen in numer­ous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows includ­ing sev­er­al retrospectives […]

FLESH, BONE, AND SONG My father’s bones are a ver­sion of him. The struc­tur­ing ground inside, a con­nect­ing archi­tec­ture. Light­weight, strong, dense, his bones pro­tect­ed his heart, his lungs, held up his bel­ly and all the rest. Bones bind and sup­port, con­nect us to our­selves. They allow us to move, go for­ward, to change. My father’s […]

  WORLD WITHOUT END: A BOOK OF PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS   I   When I was in parochial school, a nun from the mis­sions came to vis­it my class. The nun wore a light gray habit. The nuns who taught us wore a lot of black and a lit­tle white.   Our teacher turned the lights down, […]

MAMBO Papa loves mam­bo! Mama loves mam­bo! Havin’ their fling again, Younger than spring again, Feel­in’ that zing again, Wow! Los Ange­les I didn’t know what he did with his after­noons until I was six months preg­nant and he didn’t show up at home after a week or so. I got a call from his friend in L.A., […]

  NOT NOW NOR NEVER   Not that you can hold us to it but then               E‑roads didn’t exist until recent­ly. Our fin­ger­nails feel Veneered on our fin­gers, sinewy and locked, our hearts await­ing              Erup­tions of light shoot­ing out of our heads: Rags for the rag traders. Who’s been gath­er­ing up              Neo­phytes and acolytes, teach­ing them a few things […]

NIGHT TERRORS (Writ­ten for and inspired by Ryan Jet­ten) Deceived By God A phrase uttered by G.R., a female prone to Night Ter­rors. Her com­ment was made dur­ing a tirade against the mas­cu­line sex–in par­tic­u­lar, St. Jerome and his view that “Woman is the gate of the dev­il, the road of evil, the sting of the scorpion.” […]

SKIM THIS! MY LIFE AS A RENEGADE READER (SO FAR) As you may or may not know, the super­in­ten­dent of the Dronx pub­lic schools, Melville Kelle­her, ille­gal­ly divert­ed fed­er­al funds ear­marked for Head Start to a pro­gram called Slow Start designed to halt the progress of pre­co­cious stu­dents and thus spare them an unhap­py life of achievement […]

  SACRAMENT That win­ter, I prac­ticed say­ing good­bye to you slid­ing a fin­ger inside myself Plac­ing it—knuckle crease to fingertip—down the cen­ter of my tongue. I want­ed to know myself—know the woman you might have known. Not sweet As I would have liked. A chem­i­cal qual­i­ty I might have asked you about, lat­er. That room with […]

IS AHAB, AHAB I am Opal Thorndike and I’m not. I’m a sliv­er of self-con­s­cious­­ness that has nev­er metas­ta­sized into her thoughts, if she has any. I’m inside her and inside a nov­el scrib­bled by an unre­li­able, maybe incom­pe­tent, nar­ra­tor. It’s a pro­tean world of typos. Eyes and hair change col­or from one moment to the […]

THE LESSER SYSTEMS               On this day when the clocks fol­low the con­cen­tric               tem­po of a top and the verb to be               has worn off its cos­tume so the tongue can pick a place […]

  Iuno Eigh­­teenth-cen­­tu­ry Vien­na in win­ter, cart­ing and car­riage hors­es steam­ing under their blan­kets, Stephansdom’s bells clean on the hour, ice floe on the fast Danube, the dry heat of ceram­ic stoves, their exhaust a brown inver­sion lay­er between the city and moon Tonight, here, the Leipzig Quar­tet per­forms Mozart’s C Major, K. 465, Dis­so­nance, as […]

SHARES (Har­lan Coun­ty, USA) In the long descent,/ darkness/ the one true com­pass. The world is not one; there are worlds with­in worlds/ what we know of the world of light is less than the weight of a soul slip­ping from an earth-pressed body. We have lost many a word/ lost many a word/ & […]

CURRENTS Stay, says the moon­light to the snail I would if I could, says its trail glis­ten­ing. Beat it, says the lake to the eels. Will do, say the eels, into wave­form of voic­es of fish­er­man grum­bling. Don’t cry, says the nest to the lake. I’m not, says the lake weep­ing Sty­ro­foam. Gid­dyap, says the horse in its bones. Tallyho! […]