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CURRENT ISSUE

Poetry

Husband
Samuel Rucks


I heard his voice after getting home from work.  
I ignored him until I felt his breath on my neck 
and his hands around my wrist. 
 
I was already so tired when he came for me.  
I fell from exhaustion, and he caught me  
by the hair and pulled me out to pasture. 
 
I was about to be a mother, and still, the earth skinned me.  
I dug my heels in deeper, and he pulled me harder  
across our farm, until he came to the tree. 
 
I felt the birth of stars in my eyes and the force of hate. 
I felt the ground blanket me, and I wished for  
my bones to grow sweet tobacco and my skin to grow corn.  
Black Tongue
Samuel Rucks


A road outside Amarillo 
that traced the plain land 
has now begun to arch and wag — a pitch black tongue — 
stretching somewhere out west. 
 
A ways from New Mexico, 
a car radio picks up plena and reggaetón  
between bouts of static as the driver searches for a station. 
Over the vales 
 
a dark expanse moans in pain.  
The weight of sky on its back 
stirs hot lashes in the belly to accompany the deep rattle.  
Thin streaks of lightning strike  
 
the ground, catching the driver’s eye.  
“One-Mississippi, Two-Mississippi, Three-Mississippi” 
and the void collapses with a shout 
over the radio’s static. 
 
Rain, sheets making up a black veil,  
pelt the ground. The road begins to lap up the car  
drawing it towards a rolling black mouth of a storm  
just beginning to howl.  
I Wish Birds Had Moral Compasses-
Matthew Hedrick


Between the buildings wires run
Spider webbing across the block
On those wires birds sit watching the streets  
Like little feathered angels  
Hanging by them are tennis shoes from the 90’s
They used to be bright purple and blue
Now you can only make out the colors if you really look
Because like the people bellow the elements have muted them
Those people walk the streets
Moving out of the way of a couch laying out in the street
An old couch so worn you can barely tell it was once beautiful  
Like the old woman who had it in her home  
Until her kids put her in a facility that approximated one
So, now the couch is in the ally  
A homeless man had been sleeping on it
Until the man had coffee thrown in his face
All he was doing was sleeping there
The cup was bought right across the street
Still almost boiling
Steam pouring out like an old smokestack  
When the coffee hit his face the man woke up screaming  
Before his vision unblurred the thrower had ran like a coward
Leaving the still steaming cup on the ground  
That steam floated up towards the sky
Up to the birds who watch like feathered angels  
I imagine that they followed the thrower
Then told all the other feathered angels what had happened
Filled them with righteous anger
Leading them to enact something resembling justice
Chirping in their windows before sunrise
Shitting on all their clothes as they walk to work
I imagine that it is a permanent affliction  
Like the burns on that man’s face
The man who was just sleeping
But I know that did not happen
Like all the people on the street that morning
All the birds just watched
The 3am Train on the Q65 Line
Matthew Hedrick


Their drunken stumbling from a distance looks like ballet  
Exaggerated movements working in tandem
Two partners balancing upon each other  
Each step taken with absolute uncertainty
Trusting the other to keep them standing  
Tied together by clumsy hand holding  
Grip growing tighter  
As if forces unknown attempt to interrupt their dance


One nearly falls to the ground
The other pulls them up  
With this their dance concludes  
Rather than bow they turn to face one another
No longer fighting the Subways unruliness
They sway together  
Movements forged by the trains sharp turns
Eye contact never breaking


I hope their infatuation persevered through the morning

​
The Doll
Hannah Shannon


You sold my Snow White doll, Dad,
the same one you bought for me, but
you’re too drunk to remember that

You said it was because I was acting “bad,”
but we both knew you just needed alcohol money
You sold my Snow White doll, Dad.

You handed a​ ​man in a fancy suit the only friend I had
in exchange for a twenty, but you’re too drunk to
remember that.

The only one that made me feel safe when you got mad
wasn’t as important as whiskey. You sold my Snow
White doll, Dad.

She was fair with pretty blue eyes and never looked sad.
You said she reminded you of me, but you’re too drunk
to remember that.

She was the one that held my hand, unlike
you, who was too drunk to even stand. You
sold my Snow White doll, John, but you’re
still too drunk to remember that.
Hamlet
Ashley Fellhauer

I think Prince Hamlet needed glasses.    
A quintessence of dust, he saw  
Looking out to the blurry lines of soldiers disappearing
Into the faded greens of Denmark’s moors
And mountainous nondescript shadows where castles stood.

What a piece of work is mankind, he said,
Living 
in a haze of not-to-be.
And all the kids reading Nietzsche would agree,
Painting life as an articulate meaninglessness (in grayscale) –
But 
I think Hamlet secretly admired Shakespeare’s deliberacy,
And 
might’ve dreamt in paint-by-numbers landscapes.

Knowing all too well the angst of nondefinition –  
Second 
grade, and “read the next line on the board, please,”
And squinting and shuffling,
And the ruffling and rumbling of my peers behind me
As I struggled to make sense of the ghosts of the lines and scribbles.
My myopic mother didn’t believe the teacher’s concerns –
She couldn’t see that I couldn’t see –
But the nurse signed 
me a bright green note,
And my dad took me to an optometrist,
And I’ve seen the world through something else ever since.

But I’m afraid Hamlet’s dad wasn’t really around,
And the sixteenth century didn’t quite have high-index lenses,
So Hamlet would never see the outline of Polonius behind the curtain,
Couldn’t make out the blooming violets growing among the graves,
And he didn’t see his uncle’s poison on Laertes’ blade
Until it 
pierced him.

I think Prince Hamlet needed glasses.
If only life could have been clearer to him –
If he could have witnessed fully the colors of the players’ crafts,
If he could have focused his eyes on Ophelia’s longing glances,
If he could have actually ​seen​ the heaven and hell of this philosophy –


I think his story could have had a happier ending.

​
Veterans’ Day
Ashley Fellhauer


November winds nipped at her ankles as she
Kneeled in front of the field of
Miniature flags flaunting the icy breeze
In red, white, and blue. Her eyes ran
Like soldiers running from a
Live (American-grade, American-made) grenade,
Knowing that only the fastest
Could outrun the blast,
And praying that they would be the fastest
That 
day.

The flags numbered the deaths, the graves,
Factored by twenty, maybe—
The stiff headstones and unrecovered corpses
Beneath her own homeland’s swampy earth
(Waging its own war against those foreign boots)
She had inadvertently kneeled by one with a dogtag,
Already visited by some all-American family member
Wearing his camo hat and voyeuristic pleasures
On his white skin. The name of a perhaps murderer,
Reified in stolen aluminum,
Glared a white beam of sun into her
Dark 
brown eyes. She looked down.

A perhaps murderer,
Or perhaps a boy
Whose body shook too hard
Holding a match up to his draft card
To resist his blaspheming hand being struck out of the air--
“Ain’t 
no JohnsonPerkinsGunterAbbotSmith gonna
Throw away his Natural honorgloryduty
To America, no sir,”
Said his Uncle Sam, handing him a rifle
Which would later be brought out at family events to
Show to the grandkids  
In lieu of a grandfather.

Perhaps boy and murderer,
That 
timeless folktale.
A whole Western hemisphere of an idea
Of a boy, given a mandate in the mail
By the men in control of the
Mandate of The People. The boy
Mandated to Vietnam, his ill-fitting boots
Letting the rain soak his socks to his ankles
Slowing him down behind his group,
Dragging him under a rapidly-filling ravine of mud and black water,
Clinging to his legs his arms his lungs,
Preserving him as a fossil at the bottom
Of 
the bog.

But not before he could get in his own shot--
He aimed as he sank, his scope stabilized
By the grip of the mud round his waist,
And fired. Stars striped through the trees,
A life for a life,
Or twothreefour, if he could manage it;
He would make his death worth something,
Worth the life of another boy
From a village just to the north of his deathbed
From a family running from grenades, holding
Each other’s hands as they begged for refuge in
Neighboring villages—raped villages,
Burned villages,
Conquered villages.

All collateral for the life of the sinking man
Whose funeral rites had already long been paid off
Burial already planned
And fanfare already guaranteed, all packaged
Under a crisp folded flag that would never know
A 
November wind.

She mourned not for that flag,
Nor the thousands staked for other faceless names in the hardened field around her.
Their loss cleared the skies of another reminder
Of atrocities, of her aunts’ and grandmothers’ screams,
Of her parents’ childhood sprints across bogs swallowing men whole,
Of her grandfather, the target of a sinking, dying American man
American scope American bullet American war
Whose named grave she would never kneel beside
On a windy November morning,
Nor gently honor with a prayer and perhaps
Some 
flowers.
Fragment Preceding a Dream
Taylor Brown


In a moment of lucidity Clarity
                      reigns
I float in the void
            A part of all things

I have fallen out of time
           I see it from without
One end of eternity to the other All
            things in harmony

I am everything and nothing
            Instant and eternal
Ghazal of Hope
​Darla Jirousek


You sat next to me on the couch in that room, with
your arm around me. In that room.

The television was on.
We were the only ones in that room.

You put me on my back.
You started to move on top. In that room.

The door was tightly closed
the curtains were drawn in that
​room.


Your lips were bitter sweet your hands
liked to linger. In that room.

The fear rushed over me I
looked for help in that room.

You did not stop until I
fell asleep in that room.

You made me feel worthless. You
ruined me. In that room.

You will never treat me like that again I
will never let you back in that room.

Darla is now empowered everywhere,
even in that room.

FRONTIER MOSAIC

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