Issue 25 | Fall 2021

Thralls

Kevin McIlvoy

Look what we’ve done,

my mother said, her

chill voice barely

emitting sound. We were

lost – lost just two

blocks from home

because our unfit

brains had overbrimmed.

Our migraines synced so often

that by routine we could

find each other in our flares

of pain. I could take in

hand our most dreamlike

enigma. She could do the

same. We could walk

like crystallizing blazes.

We could travel the streets

into darkest space’s

dire coldness, we could weep

together and say nothing.

Could continue walking.

Mother’s grandmother called

them “thralls,” told her that

God sent them. If

you asked her why, she

smiled, explained that

God does not explain. If you

persisted in questioning, she would

say the ten words she and all

her forebears had learned to say:

Why don’t you make a little poem of your self-pity?

Cold helped her and

her daughter cope, so, in

winter thralls they walked

outside lightly clothed, their

bare feet, head, hands exposed

in order to feel relief

from the electrical discharges

subvisible to everyone but them.

One early morning after

a cyclonic snowstorm, the old

woman was found dead,

her hands and arms and

hips embracing the slender

trunk of a red oak ten feet

away from the front

door of her home.

And? And? What happened to her

daughter who went with her? What?

I asked. I knew the chill hand in

mine remembered her mother’s

hand and the hand of

her mother’s mother.

I knew the ten words of censure that would come.

Lightning and lesser lightning, we

walked. Apart. And with each other.

About the Author

Kevin McIlvoyKevin McIlvoy’s novel, One Kind Favor, has just been published by WTAW Press. His newest poems appear in Consequence, Willow Springs, Olney, Barzakh, River Heron Review, LEON, The Georgia Review, Still, Humana Obscura, and other magazines. For twenty-seven years he was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine, Puerto del Sol. He taught in the Warren Wilson College MFA program in creative writing from 1987 to 2019, and as a Regents Professor of Creative Writing in the New Mexico State University MFA program from 1981 to 2008.

Issue 25 Cover

Prose

Bomarzo Cecilia Pavón, translated by Jacob Steinberg

Sister in Basement, Manny Again Elsewhere Robert Lopez

Visitations Caroline Fernelius

Solution Linda Morales Caballero, translated by Marko Miletich, PhD

Auditions for Interference Theory Emilee Prado

Life Stories Robert(a) Ruisza Marshall

Out There Daryll Delgado

The Embassy Khalil AbuSharekh

Shaky From Malnutrition Mercury-Marvin Sunderland

Weatherman Gillian Parrish

The Taco Robbers From Last Week Steve Bargdill

 

Poetry

Epigenetics Diti Ronen, translated by Joanna Chen

i once was a witch Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi

Thralls Kevin McIlvoy

Mine Brian Henry
Catastrophic

marble chunk Shin Yu Pai
shelf life

Rebirth Tamiko Dooley

Before the Jazz Ends Adhimas Prasetyo, translated by Liswindio Apendicaesar
After Jazz Ends
Scent of Wood

 

Cover Art

Untitled Despy Boutris

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