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Working: Volume 2, Number 1 - Issue 5 Spring 2023
 

​January Full Moon Special

Cacophony
Les Epstein
One damned flake descends
From a hasty spoonful
Scraping my wind pipe
Into atonal fits

All through tooth brushing
Its jagged edge
Now long gone to who knows where

Nags me on
In hack and sneeze--
Tears in waves--
I’m my own Vaudeville
Making a highway merge
Between oil tankers
Bolting out of the Blue Ridge
Into our bowl shaped city
​
And I reaching school halls
Enter a shaken cubist work
“Oppressed Hacker Descends a Staircase”
Then yak and yak about Massachusetts bards
With fourteen fourteen-year-olds
Honking, blowing, picking at nasal nuisance
All engaged in Transcendental wheezing
Group debris to Thoreau.
 

​December New Moon Special

The Howling Wolf
Tai Timmerman
Self-isolation and loneliness on the grounds of nature
while your jaw is muzzled shut
The truth spoke to you
Hiked on cliffs to reach out the echos of self-doubt
Everybody hears, but not everybody listens.

Treacherous traumas open the tundra of
old wounds through your fur coat
freezing your playfulness and freedom
Melt the boundaries created through the moon phases
as the sparkly sun protects your instincts.
​
Yelped and stood to reach the Statue of Unity
waiting to be understood by Coeus.
 

​December Full Moon Special

The Dream of Monstrousness
Naomi Thiers
In the dream of monstrousness, I can’t tell
which are my frayed nerve endings, which
your probe jabbing; borders
of who-is-what, who-does-what dissolve.

In this dream, you tell me
you watched me when I thought I was alone,
saw me pull cats out of the TV screen,
cuddle and talk baby talk to them,
then put one in my mouth as if to eat it. I know
this can’t have happened, but your face is serious.
Yet you’re not disgusted; I amuse you.

We swim through what is real, what imagined
like waving sea plants; their leaves brush our bodies
in the murky water, confusing us in the dream
of monstrousness--and we are both
monstrous.

And all this dance is, is two sodden people
trying to be close, to know each other, to connect--

only connect! And we keep trying, upside-down blind through
the wavery borders, we keep reaching.
​
There are bright fish and cats down here.
 

​November New Moon Special

Shepherd
Alexander Etheridge
Flock
Shepherd of slow granite

all night your flock of stars
rove over dark houses
​
and empty roads
Name
​Shepherd of ancient glass
glinting in dusklight

Wanderer in fields of your
otherlife memory

It was scar tissue and
fire that unspelled your name

the day you were
born the day you

died
Now your silence stretches
​
into everything
Eternity
Nomad of snow
hail and freezing rain
the night you died you

led your wayward flock
over black hills and apple trees
as you were born

into another mind
on a path of its own
never-dying

its own forever
Appetite
Yours is the cycle of
desire and loneliness
Yet your stars

never know hunger
as they wheel through God’s
great shadow

Your endless stars
follow you anywhere
sentinels
​
of a perishing world
Heaven
Old listener
bring your herd of blue-white fires

back into warm skies
over a wintery people
out there in lonely paradise
​
of nothing left
too late and
always gone
Valley
Constant walker
with one prayer left
there’s an October creek
running by orchards
​
leading away through its thicket
of dreams

to the half-moon valley where your stars
sleep at last
 

​November Full Moon Special

Heavy
Jessie Juniper
It's dark outside
And inside
Like an endless
And open void and yet
It's so heavy

It's still
And stiff
And blisteringly cold
And angrily painful and
It's so so heavy

It's quiet
And eerie
Like nothing could ever possibly be
But yet
It's so     so heavy

It's empty
Open and distance
Far away and intangible
But
It's     so     so     heavy

I'm dark inside
I'm still
And I'm quiet
And I'm empty and yet all the same 
I'm     so     so     heavy
 

​October New Moon Special

Moonlight Man
Braden Hofeling
In your open palm, I am
waking. Here the sun opens and closes fast
as an eyelid. I am neither here nor there in the dark, an uncoupled quark
undiscovered. The tree rattles against the autumn air, frigid
in its attempt to be let in. I hover, watching the wind wake you, pull
you fast from your trips through starlight. You brew another
chamomile tea and clutch Teddy.

On the streets a mariner whistles a tune
to fog covered light posts, casting twisted shadows like morbid
faces. Is he a captain? Or just another lost

soul. Thoughts can only go so far before reaching Neverland before
washing up on the shores to stand in line -ticket counter-
for the funeral pyre. Monsters endlessly
​
The world blinks and
shudders from a dreamer on the precipice of dream-death,
something bitter, something pleasant
- like rotten strawberries hidden away deep in the field.
Bodies sprouting the sweetest corn-
I board the first train home, but it is raining
handrails slick
I can’t quite close my fist around it
before drifting.
 

​October Full Moon Special

Socializing
Alivia Knight
​I haven’t always been so awkward
Or maybe I’ve always been this awkward
Or maybe we’ve all just gotten awkward
But I swear I just asked for a muffin
And she’s looking at me like I have something in my teeth
Did I ask for it wrong
Does she want to be my friend
Did she say something to me
 
I’m sorry?
I like your shirt
Oh, thank you, I like your hair
 
Was I supposed to say something else
I’m leaving
 
I wish I had more friends
 

​September New Moon Special

to watch
Salma Mohamed​
to watch the pain of words 
cut through you like a blade 
sharp and cutthroat 
it becomes 'painful' to watch 

socializing becomes a mission 
something i wish to do 
but to watch it unfold 
something i cannot do 

to watch others, do what you cannot do 
the fear of being "cringe" or "loud"
so i just watch 

to watch is comfort even from a distance 
your place is still here 
even when you're watching
 

​September Full Moon Special

Laundry
abbigail
i am a wrinkled shirt
and you are in dire need of clean attire.
i sit crumpled in your hands,
creased and waiting.
but you bag me up like dirty laundry
and throw me over your shoulders.
rinse my flesh of this stick and sweat,
slick my hair to my temples
with your soft hands,
freshly washed in lavender hand soap.
set me straight,
unravel my folds,
iron out my stiff limbs,
so that i might hold you with my warmth.
for five minutes you’re pulling me close,
arms wrapped tightly around my torso,
unwilling to let go.
as if a shirt can move on its own.
i let my heat dissipate into your skin,
and though i grow cold
you let me stay close to you.

i enjoy this moment,
for it is just a moment
until i become laundry again.
 

August New Moon Special

Thursday
Megan Lolley
On Thursday, I was holding a cup of coffee.
Little tongues of heat swept through my palms,
and steam curled past my lips.
Not that I was cold, but that human hands need warmth,
and after you left it started to rain.
The drops settled into my coffee like tears.

“Don’t you think the raindrops look like tears?”
You’re foolish, thinking you know the rain.
You sit and sip your hot coffee
folding and unfolding your cold palms.
Human hands need warmth.
“That coffee burned my lips.”

When you cried at night, I kissed your lips
so they wouldn’t need to explain the tears,
and I remedied your sobs with warmth.
I told you we needed to talk over coffee.
You said nothing, but covered my palms
with yours. It had started to rain.

On Tuesday, you sat outside in the rain,
and I sat inside to watch you. I remember—your lips
are blue. Why don’t I move? My palms
are sweating, and there are tears
dripping down my cheeks—numb. I pick up my cup of coffee
and throw it against the wall. I am appalled by warmth.

“Don’t you know that human hands need warmth?”
Wednesday screamed a scream that curdled the rain.
We didn’t drink coffee
that morning. I wished you would open your lips,
but you said nothing. Behind the bedroom door there were tears.
The pills slumped into your palms.

They didn’t cover your palms
with their white sheet—I thought human hands needed warmth.
I can’t cry—my tears
After I left the rain,
I found nine little pills forgotten by your lips,
and now they laugh at me through this rain-colored cup of coffee.
​
It’s Friday, and this cup of cold coffee is still between my palms.
My lips never brought you warmth, but
I hope you’ll tell me if raindrops are really tears.
 

August Full Moon Special

Washcloths
Natalie Schaffer​
She was on her knees in your bathroom
Matriarch and healer
Stitcher and collector
But here she was
On her knees in your bathroom
Kneeling to her father
I imagine she was also kneeling to her Father

She got upset when I told her I didn’t want to say grace at the dinner table anymore
But I think
She just doesn’t understand
Communion has always tasted different in my mouth
But in this moment I would almost relent
And say grace- for her
But what I really want is to say grace to her
Because god is something, sure

But right now she is on her knees in your bathroom
She soothes your confusion
She speaks all the skinned knees of your pride to sleep
She says “it’s going to be ok”
You and I are not so sure
But before my eyes she makes it ok
You couldn’t make it
But she makes it ok

There is no dignity in dying
But Jesus Christ is there dignity in daughters
They will wash away the worst
Forgive the facile friction of family
And the aches of old and unintentional alcoholism
For your sake

At least they knew you always sent up ramshackle prayers with their names on them
Whenever you remembered what they were
But
I think it was that week
You started to tell them you loved them
For the first time this century

They showed you the same with washcloths
Or words
Or wishbones
Or daughters
For years
For years
 

​July New Moon Special

The Greatest Race
Pauline Aksay
My mama said that when it rains
it is the world crying in pain

she’d watch the raindrops take their place
as they’d fall down in a Great Race

and catch the drops before they’d break
returning them to where they came

her work would take the pain away
it’d make the world whole once again


but mama said she was okay
when dad got gas but never came

tears were running down her face
like rain but in a different place

I couldn’t see her in such pain
I vowed that on that very day

I’d catch the drops ’fore they’d escape
I’d embark on the Greatest Race


the teardrops went down from her face
past her pillow and bed duvet

I tried to snatch them, but they laced
’round my fingers, under my brain

travelling on the carpet laid
squeezing through the hardwood aged

I almost lost track of its place
then refocused and quickened my pace


down the stairs, dead living space
past the kitchen dinner plates

funneling into the cold base
-ment, into the crooked foundat-

ion, and soon, beyond the crawlspace
scavenging under the estate

six feet down, I undertake
the chase, but the drops still don’t wait


and after leeches, then the lakes,
years of sediment displaced

nestling in tunneled cityscapes
past wonky tectonic plates

swimming in the mantle, grace-
fully, the teardrops still don’t brake

but I know that I have an ace
I’m so close now, I can almost taste
It, and at last I reach the core
My head and limbs are all so sore
The cornered drops can run no more
I’ve got the tears I’ve been chasing for--


but when I resurface in haste
my humid heart, it starts to break

’Cause everything around has changed

Nothing
              has
                     remained
                                       the same...

My mama’s gone and I have aged
I don’t know when she passed away

The Greatest Race that I had played
was over, and I won first place

I looked at the heavens in space
and let her teardrops evaporate
​
returning them to where they came
it’d make her feel whole once again.
Copyright © 2022 Empyrean Literary Magazine, L.L.C.
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