Cloudbank 8 includes poetry and flash fiction by Rebecca Lilly, Jake Young, Deborah H. Doolittle, Bill Brown, Dennis Saleh, Barrett Warner and others. Even So: New and Selected Poems by Gary Young, Animism by Dennis Schmitz and Floating Heart by Stuart Friebert are reviewed.
PRIZE WINNING POEM
“Tanya, Tanya, Tayna” by Barrett Warner
Florida. Know it well. Drank kerosene there in 1970. My father wanted to know why I’d drink kerosene. I was thirsty. Looked like water.
Did it smell like water? No. Was it a fountain? Were birds bathing in it? It was a tank drum, I said. Skull marked with an “X” right above the word kerosene.
He hauled me to the hospital to have my stomach pumped. The next day we visited the Execution Museum and saw an electric chair from the 1920s.
Last night, Tanya called from St. Augustine to say her husband was sleeping in the garage beside the Mercury. I listened and closed my eyes and sucked air through my teeth.
I was so thirsty, lying next to my wife who was plugged-in to a book about Flanders, the cries of the wounded, mustard gases.
I thumbed an atlas, scanning varicose highways. What could forty years have done to Florida? When my wife asked me for water I reached for the bottle, drained half, and gave her the rest.
I wanted to say, because I’m a mean bastard. Instead of asking why I had done that, Lisa stared at the ceiling. The rain hammered our tin. Lisa said, Who’s Tanya?
Poets and writers in Cloudbank 8
Ray Amorosi
Jene Beardsley
Hannah Mae Bissell
Kathy Brisker
Bill Brown
Christopher Buckley
Chris Bullard
John Davis
Deborah H. Doolittle
Jennifer L. Freed
Stuart Friebert
David Lee Garrison
Anna Halberstadt
Maya Hickman
Henry Hughes
Tim Hunt
Charlene Langfur
Richard Michael Levine
Rebecca Lilly
Richard Luftig
George Looney
Kathleen McGookey
Val Morehouse
Jed Myers
Leonard Orr
Aimee Penna
Maya Polan
Lee Reilly
Marc Rosegold
Russell Rowland
Lex Runciman
Dennis Saleh
Dennis Schmitz
Jeanne Shannon
Marc J. Sheehan
Marc Tretin
Diane Vreuls
Jeanne Wagner
Barrett Warner
Tom Wayman
Matthew Westbrook
Helen Wickes
Francine Witte
Gary Young
Jake Young