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      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
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      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
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      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
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      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
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Maureen Seaton

Unsolvable

                                                   Hey kids, plug into the faithless

                                                   Maybe they're blinded

                                                   But Bennie makes them ageless

                                                   We shall survive, let us take ourselves along
                                                                 —Elton John & Bernie Taupin, "Bennie and the Jets"

I might be getting your funeral mixed up with Mom’s, when an old stalker
of Zoe’s came to the cemetery and we told him to leave and he did. No
drama, although we were prepared, in our grief, to kill him.
 
Not everything I say from now on will be true, but that is. I can’t
remember taking you to the cemetery in your green coffin, but I know Zoe
wasn’t there this time. You’d fucked up once too often, she said,
 
and off she went. Remember when I asked you if I could sit next to you
and you checked out the chair that was occupied by one of your
hallucinations? "Well, you COULD," you said, like a prizefighter
 
who'd been hit in the head too many times but hadn't lost his ability
to make a fist. Without an autopsy, the facts are blurred and sloppy,
monstrous or c'est la vie. Some days this matters. Others,                   
 
you’re at ease behind the wheel of a yellow Pontiac convertible. Now
you sit beside me and say, "Hey, kid." I think it was the end of all music
that killed you, the din of departure, that solid wall of sound, dissolving.


Dune Buggy


Two French sisters die

on South Beach. One is napping,
one is reading Proust.


Bildungsroman


Chapter 1:        Lucie went off to a dance in Connecticut where she met a boy who could
                          slow it down just right. Lucie was boy-inspired.
 
Chapter 2:        More! she thought and went on meeting boys of different heights, hues,
                          and dancing abilities, from New York and Connecticut, from Massachusetts and Vermont.
 
Chapter 3:        Once from Jersey.
 
Chapter 4:        Boys, she thought: fun but fidgety, graceful but slow on the uptake.
 
Chapter 5:        Lucie didn’t give the two co-eds with rumors flying around their heads
                          like sandflies, who remained nameless except for the name the other girls
                          coughed into their hands, a second glance.
 
Chapter 6:        Why would I, she thought, appearing in her dancing shoes at the Ship
                          Ahoy, the Barge, the Straw Hat, the Buckboard Inn.
 
Chapter 7:        She was just seventeen. (You know what I mean.)
 
Chapter 8:        Her options were as narrow as Scarlett O’Hara’s waist, although some
                          form of discontent was already brewing below the belt.
 
Chapter 9:        Thought Lucie: It will be years before I begin my search for meaningful
                          existence within an unbending society.
 
Chapter 10:      What a long, arduous, and gradual journey! (She almost thought.)
 
Chapter 11:      Then she kissed the girl who had traveled all the way from Brooklyn to
                          take her for a ride on her motorcycle.
 
Chapter 12:      The dim values of the social order failed to manifest in Lucie and she  
                          stood unaccommodated into such a silly, prehistoric, gender-bland society.
 
Chapter 13:      The Beginning.
 


--
Maureen Seaton has authored numerous poetry collections, both solo and collaborative— most recently, Fibonacci Batman: New & Selected Poems (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2013) Her awards include the Iowa Poetry Prize, an Illinois Arts Council Grant, e Society of Midland Authors Award, the Audre Lorde Award, the Lambda Literary Award, an NEA fellowship, and the Pushcart Prize. She is Professor of English/Creative Writing at the University of Miami.

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  • Home
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025