SASSAFRAS LITERARY MAGAZINE ISSUE 6 - Nov 25th, 2013 CONTENT ARTWORK Emily Strauss (photos) - Covering Fog, Hills and Barn, River Morning POETRY Jon Bennett - AHM#2 Michael Boccardo - What No One Told Me About Autumn, Fable For Boys Who Chase Tornadoes Beth Boylan - The List Micah Chatterton: Self - Hypnosis Nancy Correro - Pursuit of the other side, New Life in the 21st Century Megan Kaminski - Dear Sister Mercedes Lawry - Trends, The Observer Jeremy Nathan Marks - The Conversation, The Moon Dawn Schout - Scablands,At The Royal Palace Emily Strauss - After a While Dumbness Strikes, Night Music FICTION Michael Brasier - Like Nothing Ever Happened Ron Morita - Flight Sherri H Levine - Footbridge Ashleigh Rajala - Coal Dust NONFICTION Riona Judge McCormack - Theme in A Minor Kelly Seiz - Pluck (Sassafras issue 6 as a PDF)
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Sassafras Literary Magazine issue 4
SASSAFRAS LITERARY MAGAZINE ISSUE 4 TABLE OF CONTENT fiction Paul Beckman - THIS IS NOT SELF SERVICE Gloria Garfunkel - Thunderstorms in South Dakota Matthew Laffrade - Choked City poetry Gary Beck - Night Thought, Remote Father Tina Egnoski - Electroconvulsive Therapy;Dinner Guests at the Country House, Apolitical Apothegm Bruce Hinrichs - What seems now, well, only too ordinary Seth Howard - Stepping Through The Door Kathie Jacobson - NEWTOWN Don Kingfisher Campbell – Brothers Maureen Kingston – Threshold Dream, Dementia Aspic Steve Klepetar - A Silence, Laughing at the Leaves Justin Million - Convent, The Fourth Act Gaetan Sgro -Every Night We talk About The Same Thing, Afternoon, June The Coast John Sibley Williams - Beirut, I'm Reading Sunday’s Headlines That Call for Things Like Justice Jeremiah Walton - Road Trips Seen Thru Motel Rooms Jeffrey Zable - Natural Born Killer, Dear Editor/s Thomas Zimmerman - Forget to Die Ali Znaidi – Counter Replica, Australian Horoscope nonfiction Rebecca Andem - Fumes Terry Barr - “Andy, It's Therapetic” artwork Ece Zeber: Self-Portrait, Scene 1 - 6, untitled Sassafras issue 4 - PDF
Seth Howard – Stepping Through The Door
Stepping Through The Door
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Moments before I found myself stepping
Through the door, I find myself, moments before
I’m stepping through, and time holds its breath
I’m holding time, the sound of my breath
Before I step through, holds itself for a moment
Before rewinding time, the motion captured
In the passing through, I’m stepping, while
The captured motion passes for something else
I know, the sound of my steps, as I’m letting go
That vicious circle, follows through, comes
Back around, while something else in passing
Speaks of going where we let ourselves
Let go, when in passing, cease the constant
Motion of the vicious cycle, else we find
In passing something back just moments before
I find myself stepping silent through the door
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Seth Howard is a poet out of New London CT. His new chapbook OUT OF THE EAST focuses on his time spent abroad in Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan where he traveled extensively. His work has appeared in Big Hammer, Burp, The Scope, Elephant, and is soon to appear in Unarmed Journal. Whereas his last chapbook centered on the powers of reminiscence, much of his newer work is concerned with the concept of “disruptive language,” and is more experimental.
Gaetan Sgro – Every Night We Talk About The Same Thing, Afternoon; June, The Coast
Every Night We Talk About The Same Thing
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the lines of miscommunication.
ragged fibers of daylight, fraying.
some nights you simply can’t imagine.
anything so disappointing as a cul-de-sac.
even obvious endings occur suddenly.
memories wring their hands.
take a deep breath and then.
blow everything out of proportion.
let silence linger and it will.
we have so many names for distance.
Afternoon, June
chasing Rappahannock.
anything to shed her skin.
below, a rush imitating death.
clouds of silt blossom and pass.
impossible to sleep without.
always, air rushes in.
stones throw their voices.
and everything is leaving.
the sun on the backs of glacial rocks.
and sirens in the distance.
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The Coast
here, shrouded in pine. days go
into hiding. obscure cafés in North Beach.
muddied glass, and mandolins. every morning,
the trail of pine. and the rise with the thousand steps.
the lean candle in the vast cathedral, leaving nothing.
and in the evening, only silence.
below, in the distance—
white sails.
light tracks at the edge of the world.
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Gaetan Sgro is a homesick poet drawn to landscapes and negative space. When he’s not writing, he practices medicine in Pittsburgh, where he lives with his wife and daughter. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in APIARY Magazine and The Healing Muse.
Ali Znaidi – Counter Replica, Australian Horoscope
Counter Replica
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Inside a page
there is always
a phage replicating
itself & when it is
destroyed,
creativity,
dreams, &
transgression
bloom—
antiphons to a lingering
restless want for flying
beyond.
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Australian Horoscope
The Magpie, March 21-April 20
The sun will return and engulf your realm with sublime lights.
You have to seize the opportunity and capture the cherry blossom
before the return of the owl. The sun will make you amaze people
with enigma and light.
The Kookaburras, April 21-May 21
The leaves of the tree woman begin to fall. That is a bad omen.
But if you are brave enough, you can bring luck through chasing
the sunrise in Antarctica.
The Bowerbird, May 22-June 21
You can’t imagine how mysterious your life would be
if you dwell in the cave for a period of time just to ponder.
And if you like to cast a spell on the opposite sex, just forget
about decorating your bower because simplicity has its enigma, too.
The Rainbow Lorikeet, June 22-July 22
Just keep looking at the horizons because your luck
is buried in a little cloud that is hiding behind the rainbow.
The day you will shoot that cloud with your arrow,
the rain will fall and fill in your empty buckets with water of luck.
The Kangaroo, July 23-August 23
Your heart is telling you to stand just in the middle and watch.
But your fate is going to be hit by a beefy brawny buffalo if you don’t move.
If you find it difficult to move, just begin with trivial things.
Try to change your pillow. Maybe, a new pillow can make your life start afresh.
The Rabbit, August 24-September 22
Don’t drink water all day not just to experience thirst,
but also to remember that your life is inundated with water.
So if you like your life to be always fertile just don’t deny the water
and grow a rose in the desert to poison any daring snake.
The Koala, September 23-October 23
The crow is coming again cawing to encumber your weary soul.
So just follow that flock of sparrows and listen to their songs—
a panacea for all your aches. Music will fill your termite-infested room with fresh air.
The Emu, October 24- November 22
Never lock your horse in the stable. Just saddle it and start out
trying to surpass the howling wind. When rekindled, your innate power
can grow olive trees in the North Pole.
The Crocodile, November 23-December 21
If you start eating a pizza, just finish it all.
Nothing can infest your life but those crocodile tears.
Don’t play the role of the victim.
You shall overcome all obstacles, if you don’t throw
half of your pizza in the dustbin.
The Turtle, December 22-January 20
Some people with prosthetic limbs did cage the dragon.
So just uncage fear from your heart,
and don’t forget that Venus is watching over you
on top of your shell.
The Eucalyptus, January 21-February 18
Welcome to the wilderness!
Finally, you are going to learn how to sleep
without blankets next to thousands of scorpions.
The Redback Spider, February 19-March 20
If you don’t know the goat’s monologues in the
haunted cave, you are missing out like a crazy.
What you need is some strangeness to spice up
the emptiness of your life.
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(Australian Horoscope was first published in Phantom Kangaroo on 13/04/2012)
Ali Znaidi (b.1977) lives in Redeyef, Tunisia where he teaches English. His work has appeared in The Rusty Nail, The Tower Journal, Mad Swirl, Stride Magazine, Red Fez, & other ezines. His debut poetry chapbook Experimental Ruminations was published in September 2012 by Fowlpox Press (Canada). From time to time he blogs at aliznaidi.blogspot.com.
Jeffrey Zable – Natural Born Killer, Dear Editor/s
Natural Born Killer
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You eat what you kill, was his favorite saying
and when he wasn’t on the phone trying to take
someone away from one job and get a commission
by placing them in another, he would chomp on
this rubber bit that he said kept him from biting
his tongue, and the short time I was there I learned
a lot about what kind of person I didn’t want to
become and eventually went back to school to
become a teacher so I wouldn’t have to compete
for money and work around guys like him who
were natural born killers in the war for the dollar.
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Dear Editor/s
After careful thought I want to thank you for rejecting my poems for your magazine. At first I was a bit disappointed, but soon I realized it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. If you had accepted some of my poems— even one—and published it/them in your magazine, I could have become famous. Famous in the sense that women might want me for more than just friendship, and given that I’m no different than any other guy, the temptation to take advantage of a given situation might have overwhelmed me. What I’m saying is that I could have easily succumbed to the pressure and done something that I would surely regret. You see, I’m a happily married man who’s never been unfaithful to his wife. If for some reason I strayed from the path and got caught… well, the consequences would be disastrous. I’ve gotten so used to my wife being around that I doubt I would be able to make it without her. Also, if you had published me and I made a lot of money, I’m not so sure that I would have spent it wisely. It’s likely that I would have bought a new, and larger house, and certainly a new car. I’ve always wanted to own a Jaguar convertible and, again, that would have proved disastrous. You see, there are a lot of crazy drivers here in San Francisco and some who even challenge others to race them. If someone had driven up along side of me, rolled down their window, and said, “Hey buddy, you wanna race?” I don’t know that I would have been able to resist. If I were driving my Jaguar convertible what probably would have happened was that I would have accepted the guy’s challenge and in an attempt to beat him, I would have spun out of control and hit a telephone pole. This would have happened because I am not a seasoned race car driver. Most of my life I’ve driven ordinary cars like Chevrolet Corollas and Dodge Darts. I would have been killed instantly in my Jaguar convertible and then my loving wife would be a widow. Yes, I must sincerely thank you for not accepting any of my poems for your magazine. Of course, there are other reasons to be thankful that you didn’t accept any of my poems, but I’ll save those for another letter. Here’s wishing you the best in your publishing endeavors and please pass along any of the above information to anyone who might be in a similar situation. That’s all for now.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Zable
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(Dear Editor/s was first published in SKIVE Magazine, April 2013)
Jeffrey Zable has been publishing poetry and prose in magazines and anthologies for many moons. He’s published five chapbooks including Zable’s Fables with an introduction by the late great Beat poet Harold Norse. Present or upcoming work in Mas Tequila, Subliminal Interiors, Literary Juice, Yellow Fox Quarterly, Boston Literary Magazine, Epigraph, Owen Wister Review, and others.
New Sassafras issue 4 – see you soon!
In about two hours the shiny new issue 4 will be released into the wild. This issue is full of great new writing, some tragedy, some comedy, some storytelling.
Here’s a preview of the all-new filled and expanding issue of Sassafras, issue 4. The number of pages have, ehmm, grown from about 30 to 40, give or take. (Plus five pages of illustrations, cover, content, etc.) For the upcoming fall and winter issues, I’ll be cutting down the page number, to make the reading easier, focusing on a slightly smaller volume of work.
The cover was a nightmare this time, I went through at least a handful of ideas, nothing just right, wanted heavy and strong autumn colors, the result turned out too flat and generic. I tried neon, exclusive fonts, negative spaces – too modern, too superficial, not inspiring, no depth, and so on. The cover that was finally approved is simple and clean, and that will do for now.
Preview issue 4, artwork by Ece Zeber:
Rejected design ideas:
Tom Sheehan – Searching for Mushrooms and Trolleycars
Searching for Mushrooms and Trolley Cars
(Amanita Colyptraderma and Electric Street Cars)
They came out of West Lynn or East Saugus years ago, dark mushroom seekers, with their long-pieced poles, their own language whose word for amanita, to the initiate, would tell where their roots began, whether they were Florentine, Roman, or islander, Piana di Cartania. They might say Cocoli, Coconi or Coccori, the delicacies growing thirty or forty feet up on the great elms in the circled green of Cliftondale Square, those huge sky-reaching elms that fell to the hurricanes of ’38, or Carol in the ‘50s, finally to the toll of traffic demanding the green circle be cut down to size.
Once, in a thick fog, on my third floor porch, the mist yet memorable, I remember thinking the elms were Gardens in the Clouds. I felt a bloom rise in me, a taste fill my mouth. They don’t come for amanita anymore because the elms have all gone, those lofty gardens, those mighty furrowed limbs; now shrubs and bushes stand in their place you can almost see over. Nor do the street cars come anymore from Lynn into Cliftondale Square. They say the old yellow and orange ones, high black-banded ones, red-roofed ones, real noisy ones, ones long-electric-armed at each end, the ones off the Lynn-Saugus run, are in Brazil or Argentina or the street car museum in Kennebunkport, Maine, quiet now forever as far as we are concerned, those clanging, rollicking machines that flattened pennies on the tracks so that good Old Abe became a complete mystery, or the Indian Chief, him and his background, became as flat and as charmless as his reservation.
From my porch high on the square, I’d watch thin long poles extending men’s arms, needles of poles they’d fit together, as they reached for the white-gray knobs growing in cloudy limbs. They wore red or blue kerchiefs around thick necks, like Saturday’s movie cowboys if you could believe it, as if any moment they could slip them over their faces and hide out in such bright disguises. They’d cut or tap loose the amanita, see it fall slowly end over end, like a field goal or a touchdown’s point-after, down out of the upper limbs, cutting a slowest curve and halved orbit, and they’d swish butterfly nets to catch the aerial amanita, or Cocoli, as it might be; or their women, in kerchiefs and drawn in and almost hidden away, faces almost invisible, with an upward sweep of gay aprons would catch the somersaulting fungi, the amanita colyptraderma, or being from Piana di Cartania, calling out its name Coconi or Coccori,
Oh, Mediterranean’s rich song airing itself across the green grass of Cliftondale Square, Brahminville being braced, uplifted. I was never privy to know their roots, their harsh voyages, to know where they landed and why, and now their sounds are lost forever, their voices across the square, the gay and high-pitched yells setting a brazen mist on Cliftondale, their glee as a soft white clump of fungi went loose from its roost, coming down to net, swung apron, or quick hat as if a magician worked on stage in the square, heading for Russula Delica, Cocoli Trippati, Veal Scaloppine, Mushroom Trifolati, Risotto Milanaise or plain old Brodo dei Funghi. All these years later I know the heavens of their kitchens, the sweet blast front hallways could loose, how sauce pots fired up your nose, how hunger could begin on a full stomach when Mrs. Forti cooked or Mrs.Tedeschi or Mrs.Tura way over there at the foot of Vinegar Hill feeding her gang of seven and their guests.
And I grasp for the clang-clang of the trolley cars, the all-metallic timpani of their short existence, the clash of rods and bars stretching to the nth degree, of iron wheel on iron rail echoing to where we ear-waited up the line with fire crackers’ or torpedoes’ quick explosions, and the whole jangling car shaking like a vital Liberty Ship I’d come to know intimately years later on a dreadful change of tide. How comfortable now would be those hard wooden seats whose thick enamel paint peeled off by a fingernail as I left her initials and mine on the back of a seat, wondering if today someone in Buenos Aires or Brasilia rubs an index finger across the pair of us that has not been together for more than sixty years.
But somehow, in the gray air today, in a vault of lost music carrying itself from the other end of town, that pairing continues, and the amanita, with its dark song-rich gardeners, though I taste it rarely these days, and the shaky ride the streetcars, for all of a nickel on an often-early evening, softest yet in late May, give away the iron cries and, oh, that rich Italiana. Once a sheer edge of moonlight, a reflection hung in my mind of a whole night’s vision, the smell and the sound of it all, the touch of things as they were.
(bio from Press 53)
TOM SHEEHAN is the author of Brief Cases, Short Spans (Press 53, 2008) and Epic Cures (Press 53, 2005). He has been nominated for the illustrious Million Writers Award twice and the Pushcart Prize twelve times. He has received a Silver Rose Award from American Renaissance for the Twenty-First Century (ART) and the Georges Simenon Award for Excellence in Fiction. His first short story collection, Epic Cures (Press 53), received a 2006 IPPY Award Honorable Mention. Sheehan served in the 31st Infantry Regiment in Korea in 1951, an experience that forever changed his life and serves to inform his writing. In addition to short story collections, Tom Sheehan has published three novels, five books of poetry, and three books of memoir and nonfiction. He lives in Saugus, MA.
An energetic little beast waiting – wanted: experimental
The Sassafras crop is looking terrific! Issue two will be an energetic little beast.
With less than a week to go until issue 2 is due, the structure is ready. This issue will be different from the first, but in a good way, I hope.
New works are continuously delivered to the Sassafras ‘up for consideration’ mailbox, and there’s a mosaic of styles, voices and themes to consider. I’m enjoying being tossed from one reading experience to another, from the impression of one voice to another, another setting, another pain, joy, memory, concept, construction.
For issue 3, Sep 30th, I would still like to see some more experimental submissions, well crafted but different in form and medium.
How about sending me your (short) audio story? An extraordinary Vine sequence? A mixed media collage, an outstanding game character? A photo essay in very few frames? Anything you made up, if unique?
Sassafras is always looking for writing, words, and words in new arrangements.
PS. A reminder on practicalities, no attachments, please, copy the text submission inside the body of the email. For artworks/other, keep the files small, low res, in your initial query.
PS. II. The site just got a message box saying ‘there will occasionally be ads shown in this space’. In the meantime, there’s always A-d-B-lock.
‘Hare and Tabor’ – The Everyday Book and Table Book, William Hone, 1826, London (CC)
Sassafras Literary Magazine 