Hawk Entering Hemlock, by Eamon Grennan

Sudden, a plummet, the marsh hawk enters a hemlock
and stands, steadying himself, stopped not far
from my head, on a branch too thick to shake or sway much

so I can see the hook of its beak and the lethal black
and yellow target-circles of the eye he turns on me,
a laser graiping my grounded bulk into the meltdown

his brain is. Stays there, out of the crows’ way
that heckle, harass. Alert to every twig-snap, footstep
and the strung silence into which a squirrel’s just crept,

heart heaving, to shiver there, sheltering. So I learn
how heart pounds, how flexed muscle keeps
leashing and unleashing in a book of feathers, how tongue

must wonder at hawkstand, squirrelshiver, crowclamour, now.

Sex With Strangers, by Dean Young

I was having sex with a stranger
when I realized this was no stranger,
this was Eleanor Roosevelt,
wife of the 32nd president of the United States.
Of course I was shocked
but it seemed rude to stop having sex
so I went on having sex.
Her hair was getting quite deranged
and she was concentrating hard
like a person trying to move a paperclip
by force of mind alone
which brought out the equine qualities
of her facial structure not in a bad way.
One reason to have sex is to help a stranger
get in contact with his or her animal-being
even if it’s a crayfish.
In the kitchen the rotisserie was laboring,
either the chicken was too fat
or it was just tuckering out. Oddly
I didn’t feel bad for Franklin Delano
even though he looked jaunty and vulnerable
in his wheelchair in the margin of the dictionary.
In general it’s difficult to feel bad
about anything while having sex
which is why it’s such a popular activity
and the church is against it
except in primarily utilitarian instances.
That pretty much covers the facts of my life.
I’ve never been in much of a car crash.
When I walk into the mirror of the high grass
under the tired suicide note of the setting sun,
I’m never gone long. Once I was stuck
on an elevator, all of us strangers
gasping at once but there the resemblance
to having sex ended because it only took
35 seconds to get going again, each of us
off at a different floor: cardiology,
oncology, psychiatry, the burn unit,
the solarium.

Cover Art for Issue 3, by George Boorujy

Brandt’s Cormorant, by George Boorujy

Townscape, by Retsu Takahashi