Cloudbank 1 includes poetry and flash fiction by Christopher Buckley, Vern Rutsala, Sarah Lier, Alex Weiss, Jennifer Richter, Tim Hunt, Kimberly O’Connor, Jay Rubin and others. Vertigo by Martha Ronk and Light Here, Light There by Alexander Long are reviewed.
PRIZE WINNING POEM
“Heaven in the Bad Borough” by Sara Lier
When you die in Brooklyn,
you’re already running late
to a party started in 1909
by an obscure Democratic candidate
who bribed his way into office
and died in a drinking binge 2 weeks
later. (They said it was politics
or his mother never taught him
discretion.) When you die in Brooklyn,
he buys you your first beer, then takes
you to see the fire eaters,
illusionists, and the tattooed girl
who turns out to be the one
you fell in love with that spring
of 1967 (or was it ’68?), just before
she caught a plague sleeping in draugh-
ty warehouses by the waterfront,
and you went on and fell for
an art school kid that September, forgot how
beautiful she was with those snakes
up her legs, and the apple tree
calligraphied on the tendons of her neck,
bearing fruit near her mouth like it’s the only
living thing in the whole damn dusty city.
When you die in Brooklyn,
you’ll wish you’d told her that.
When you die in Brooklyn, the first kiss
you get after is moist and
tastes like basement poker games
and sailor gossip. It’ll make you superstitious,
it’ll make you sad, it’ll make you
buy another round, then dizzy your way
past the fortune-teller stalls, where
you give up your last 2 coins
to hear them all say: you’re dead,
you’re here, and tomorrow
you will wake up drymouthed on a pier
you thought burned down a century ago.
Poets and writers in Cloudbank 1
Ron Bloodworth
Christopher Buckley
Don Colburn
Michael Colonnese
Charles Dallmann
Deborah H. Doolittle
Barbara Drake
George Drew
John Elliott
Maynard Freemole
Maralee Gerke
Arthur Ginsberg
CharlesGoodrich
Leanne Grabel
Henry Hughes
Tim Hunt
Kate Hutchinson
Dave Jarecki
Steve Jones
Carole Kalk
Marianne Klekacz
Gary L. Lark
Sara Lier
Phyllis Mannan
Margaret McGovern
Carolyn Miller
D.C. Miller
Abby E. Murray
Kimberly O’Connor
Korkut Onaran
Marjorie Power
Jennifer Richter
Jay Rubin
Beth Russell
Vern Rutsala
M. E. Silverman
Bill Siverly
Lianne Spidel
Jie Tian
Toni Van Deusen
Alexander Weiss
Chad Woody
Jennifer Whetham
Victoria Wyttenberg