WOMAN IN MUD

by Alejandro Escudé




She is trudging
for her own life
through sodden timber
like lice in hair,
and there are others
watching her climb out
like a thin spider
from a toilet bowl,
powerless to aid her,
no hero helicopter,
no rescue roughs
in floaty, neon gear,
only these mud people
she crawls toward,
lying exhausted
on the debris-less flats,
a fallen, mucky statue
of Liberty Leading
the People, fatigued
yet still radiant
in that silt salt, barely
moving, a thing
no more, a monument,
a figure of nothing.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THE SLIDE

by Cally Conan-Davies



When we met the moon was over the house.
Now the house is gone beneath the mountain,
And night drops weeping through the broken day.
On the ground the mired leaves of autumn
move in the drying wind, and blow away.


Cally Conan-Davies hails from Tasmania, and now lives in the Pacific North West. Her work can be read now, or soon, in The Able Muse, Angle, The Hudson Review, Kin, Lavender Review, Mezzo Cammin, The New Criterion, New Walk, Poetry, Quadrant, Raintown Review, The Sewanee Review, Shotglass, Southwest Review, Suptropics, Virginia Quarterly Review.