Between Cars

Zebulon Huset

Like a punch-drunk boxer, the rabbit
that darted with reckless abandon
from Home Depot’s overgrown bushes
far too late in the day to safely cross
four lanes, maintained its feet after
its head conked the Civic’s axel.

I was a lane over ignoring a phone
buzzing in my pocket as my foot
left the gas and my focus left the bumper
a couple car-lengths ahead, eyes wide,
brain conjuring sudden prayers
for the fluffball between speeding cars.

I didn’t see if its wits returned
quickly enough to retreat
into the undergrowth. Traffic
and its dozens of vehicles hurtling forward
on one unhinged hurry or another
had no care for the small life in jeopardy.

It had missed the Honda’s tires,
a small blessing that might not
have been repeated once my vision
returned to the many tons of metal
and plastic and rubber that seemingly
constantly endangered my life.

However long that lupine
lived in the ‘real world’ so filled
with and divorced from abstractions—
its lifespan of maybe a decade would fall
far short of the nights I’d eye popcorn
ceilings, wondering if he’d made
the shoulder as I rushed to somewhere
completely unimportant in such a hurry.

---

Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer, and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest, and his writing has appeared in Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, Atlanta Review, Texas Review, and many others. He publishes the writing blog Notebooking Daily, edits the journal Coastal Shelf, and recommends literary journals at TheSubmissionWizard.com.

The good thing

Rose Auslander

As I head past sixty-six, I practice saying hello goodbye. The good thing is, it doesn’t take long if you don’t think about it & who has time. The good thing is when you say it, the sun looks like the moon floating silver behind the clouds & the moon never sets, gliding slowly all day long for the next sixty-six years & hey, maybe we’ll be happy. We’ll go on picnics every day. Hair shimmering in sterling light, we’ll unpack our hamper, spread gingham napkins on our laps, eat my mom’s deviled eggs & your mom’s potato salad & wash it down with the vodka my grandpa carried from Russia for luck. Sitting there on sea-soaked rocks, swallowing the last drops of liquid fire, eyes almost closed, we’ll wave at kids casting their lines past the jetty. Not taking time to recognize ourselves gliding past goodbye, we’ll say hello.

---

photo credit: Liz Hanellin

Rose Auslander lives on Cape Cod. Obsessed with water and poetry (not necessarily in that order), she’s written the book Wild Water Child, chapbooks Folding Water, Hints, and The Dolphin in the Gowanus, and poems in Berkeley Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, RHINO, Rumble Fish, Tinderbox, and Tupelo Quarterly.

The pacific kisses the sand

Kay Lee

my aunt has many treasured memories
that she never fails to tell me, eyes crinkled 
in corners
fingers pinching skin gently with
an age-old fondness.
 
one of such, she says
with a measured glee,
is one of ten years ago as
my uncle sat with a new 
speaker, a saxophone blaring
through the halls-
the low 
thrum of jazz twirling through
the walls to grip my small hand-
guiding me into a waltz
across my pororo
baby mat.
 
i remember long car rides through
winding california highways the
tide kissing the sand with a quiet
rhythm as 
ed
sheeran belts a high note 
against the leather of the backseat-
half-mumbled lyrics tumbling out of
sleepy lips and into strands of hair
whipping in the salty wind and out
into the embrace of california-sun, 
the cold touch of the 
pacific.
 
i remember listening to 
coldplay start the drums,
guitar taking the stage to
divebomb through the clouds-
and the plane hummed a lullaby;
something low and droning
against the melody of a child’s wail
and the chatter of the flight
attendants
for some reason i can’t explain once you
go there was
never...
my mother snores next to me,
and the guitar picks up as i wave
goodbye to the california
sea.                                                      (it does not wave back.)
 
japanese and korean drift
through song-
i remember writing
english-fied lyrics on the palms of
my hands on
the sides of math textbooks-
writing
            yumenaraba dorehodo 
yokatta 
deshou
rolling unfamiliar syllables across 
my tongue until
letters sound like 
words sound like
lyrics that i never bother
to understand but in
half-sewn sentences winding together
far too late;
            wouldn’t--- be better--- if---
            was--
            a dream?
missing california-sun weighs
like an ache
but perhaps someday i will
understand the
letters-words-lyrics
that i write in fading ink 
on the wide expanse of my too-tan
skin.
 
the guitar drums again-again-again
but i am not ten- not
anymore- and it
bangs against the too-tired edges
of my brain, drowning out
thoughts and so i
pause and i tell it 
            thank you
and
            goodbye
in the same breath
and i listen to the silence echo before
my skull can shatter and
my heart beats hard enough to
break my ribs.
 
the silence holds my hand
and it does not try to
lead me or
bring me into dance.
it 
stands with unblinking eyes and
breathes next to me-
 
-and it lasts until it
doesn’t until
the silence
arranges my bones in
hollow space between
burnt stars so
i find small gems in between
the cracks of famous singers-
aching songs that
slip through fame-
 
            are you lonely?
 
they ask me,
 
            if you’re lonely come be 
lonely with 
me
 
they say, and
they play the guitar but it
thrums like the quiet kiss
of the lips of the pacific against
the sand,
the touch of california-sun against
skin,
the fading sounds of
a lone saxophone
drifting like a ghost through
empty halls. 
 
ultimately
            i believe we’ll be 
okay…
 
they take my hand,
they do not dance,
do not simply stand,
but instead they take my hand
and gently,
 
they tug me 
home.

---

Kay Lee is a tenth-grader attending Korea International School in Seoul, South Korea. She is currently putting together her writing portfolio and was recently accepted into Juniper's Young Writers Program.