Winter 2016 Season

Work from the Winter 2016 Season of concīs.

Winter 2016 Seasonal Anthology!

The Winter 2016 Seasonal anthology is out, featuring Alexander Dickow, Allison Adair, Amy Jo Trier-Walker, Annie Grizzle, Bobby Fieseler, Brad Rose, Brian Clifton, Caitlin Scarano, Caitlin Vestal, Catherine Rockwood, Cutter Streeby, Danny Blackwell, Derek Mong, Devi Laskar, Eric Pankey, Gerard Sarnat, Hilary S. Jacqmin, Ion Corcos, Ivy Alvarez, Jaime Garcia, Jeanie Tomasko, Jennifer Fliss, Jessy Randall, Kyle Kinaschuk, Matthew Johnstone, Melissa Mercer, Merrill Cole, Sarah Jane Sloat, Seth Copeland, Simon Perchik, Sonja Johanson, Steve Gilmartin, Tammy Peacy, Theodore Worozbyt, Thomas Snarsky, Tracy Mishkin, Vicki Iorio, William Cullen and photography by Jim Judd and Galen Lott!

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Silverton

Allison Adair

It doesn’t matter who answers
the phone, it’s the same forecast:
snow following snow,

road closed followed by Jessie
returning to John, wrist healed
and you can hardly tell anything

went wrong, until she waves hello.
Or is it goodbye. You know, this much
cold, this high, batters the eye

until all it sees is warmth. The girls
lining up crayons before dinner.
Coals orange as a daffodil’s trumpet.

So easy to forget tomorrow’s ash.
In a ghost town, bowls of thin soup
steam on every edge. Nothing

can hurt us. The pioneers. We forget why
we came—but look at that mountain.
Was anything ever so new?

Self Portrait through a Photographer

Cutter Streeby

and you tell me you take your men from different

angles and catch them in your frame and gather

them in your drag : and I imagine you make them

like fish of the sea : you see : natural like this : and

you show me images and images and images and say

look : they are beautiful here and the meat of this

city is plenteous for me : and I ask if you’ve been

captured before : and you show me yourself hung in

the black ropes and dancing and say : this is aerial

silk : the art of suspension : and you read these lines

over my shoulder and it is dark in the city and your

studio is cold tonight and the light from my

computer is blue over us and alma inversa you say :

alma inversa : these men are not animals ayes : but

people I love in the moment I am with them :

te ves en mis llamas : you see yourself in my flames

Portrait of Jan Peart

Cutter Streeby

and if : at the foundation of all there lay only a

wildly seething power which writhing produced

everything that is great : if a bottomless void : never

satiated : lay hidden beneath all : what then would

life be : like Feynman said : nature uses only the

longest threads : : and your passion in this image

tells me take Isaac to Moriah and leave him as a

burnt offering on the mountain : : his body a

question : do all of our dead cease to exist in the

head : in the heart : in the hand of the living : and

the answer the same : unequivocally : no : : a

woman told me once : camino bailando y con tus

palabras : I walk dancing and your words surround

me and turn me and turn me around and around :

vueltas y vueltas y vueltas y cuando paro : and when

I stop : ya no se donde estoy : I can no longer say

where I am : : you told me once : if you’re

passionate burn it : be good at suffering : and after

this flower I can say only one thing : we’re at the

very beginning of the human race : and the sky is

black for a reason

Unanswered, Untranslatable

Devi S. Laskar

On her mother’s tongue, the word is “andho”
blind unseeing, blind’s undoing. Blind blind.

In her mother tongue, the word’s embedded
in the dim, inside the well deep with night.

“Andho-kar” is darkness, synonymous
with a sky scorned by stars, emptied of moon.

Memory is praised and plundered, rued, like
a yew tree fallen to blight. You see our

weather as foregone conclusion but berth
is not a birth except when it is one.

Dirty Bits

Merrill Cole

No, it’s not pornography.
The suture hardly holds.
It sags like old glass.

Cut in half,
A smile becomes sellable.

No, not ghosts.
The laundry of the dead,
Listing in the wind.

Stains quiet in early light.
Among the eyeless dolls
And unpriced socks.

Hit with limbo,
The body grows damp.

No, call it a garden,
Where sallow flowers bloom
Like low wattage bulbs.

Io

Catherine Rockwood

No dignity for you, Inachus’ daughter;
come early-modern times you’ll be a byword
with hooves flailing in air, always embarrassed.
Down the long centuries your spectators
will watch you plunge and wave that unkempt arse
at Heaven. They sit gravely, reins in hand,
these equites. How equable. You veer,
and see a polished steed prick up its ears.

Misery 31

Sarah J. Sloat

Misery 31 by Sarah J. Sloat

One

Jeanie Tomasko

anno Domini: as in the ever-after that came after the before or literally; in the year of our Lord
        (in the Year of Our Lord Remember When, I knotted for you an)
annulet: a small bracelet

annotation: by the way
        (by the way, it was a remarkable year, as in it was)
see: mirabilis, sp. summertide mirabilis: a remarkable and notable season (where)

anti-gravity: a suspension of rules, existed
        and, an
alteration: in the usual rhythm as in

arrhythmia: awry or
anno arrhythmia (in the Year of our Sudden Alteration) or
anno ardor: in the summer of the year of our un-doing, you

Five six-word stories

William Cullen, Jr.

Blinking First
  A doe stared down two barrels.

Postcards from the Edge
  The fisherman’s memorial overlooked beached driftwood.

Telling Her Doctor
  Divorce was rebirth by cell division.

It’s a Hard Life
  Night sirens kept the widower awake.

Nameless Perp
  The orphan only spared faceless pumpkins.

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