THE SUPREME COURT JUDGES GO TO THE GARAGE

by Gabriella Brand

File Photo from Tumblr

The blue work shirt.
The logo for City Motors.
Then her name.
The name which used to be Jim,
embroidered over the left breast.
The left breast which used to be flatter.
The voice, which used to be deeper
Oh, they teased, those other mechanics,
put tampons in the tool box,
wrote Jennifer in brake fluid
under the lift, on the toilet mirror.
The garage owner ticked off, weighing the trouble
yet knowing Jennifer was good,
better than good, reliable,
on time, quick to figure out
the rattle, the hum, the tinny sound that the
others missed.
Jennifer, not Jim. Now holding up her head.
Doing her job.
The shirt. The name. The breast. The voice.
A turn of the wrench, a law upheld.

Gabriella Brand’s work has appeared in over fifty literary magazines. Her latest poems and short stories can be found in Rockvale Review, Aji, and Comstock Review. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Gabriella lives near New Haven, Connecticut, where she teaches foreign languages and runs a writing workshop. In normal times, she travels the world on foot.

JERUSALEM IN SNOW, 1/10/2013

by Maryann Corbett

Image source: Occupied Palestine

The pious author of the book of Job

lacked maps of isobars to show him where

pressure allows the tongues of wet, warm air

delicately to probe
the hill country, tickling at slippery flows

where winter chill has settled on the height

of Zion. In his poems, only the might
of God breathes down the snows,
pure as surprises. What the psalm observed,

the morning news reveals: a world scrubbed clean.

Changed utterly. Pristine.

The stones of the Old City softened, curved;
old habits stalled; and humankind’s false starts

brought to a standstill. Ancient poets see

how snow grants us new vision, so that we

dream of our own changed hearts.


Maryann Corbett is the author of Breath Control (David Robert Books, 2012) and Credo for the Checkout Line in Winter, forthcoming from Able Muse Press. She has been a winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and a finalist for the Morton Marr prize, the Best of the Net anthology, and the Able Muse Book Prize. Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared in many journals in print and online, including River Styx, Atlanta Review, The Evansville Review, Literary Imagination, Measure, Subtropics, and The Dark Horse, as well as in a number of anthologies. New work is forthcoming in PN Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Barrow Street. She lives in St. Paul and works for the Minnesota Legislature.