Line of Men

The line of men who stand before you

link arms through time and ocean

over one Earth-sized planet away

Digging deep enough you’ll be back

in the country your parents escaped from

Opportunities split evenly like rations

in non-war time, peace sounding

more imaginary with each life crisis

Minutemen awake, too excited for

glory through death or freedom

No time to dream of the America

where sons don’t understand fathers

except through stories like how the

family Zhao ruled Song dynasty

Creating gunpowder and making paper

Money never growing on pig farms

Royal blood diluted until your father

pulls his family tree roots up by the straps

of his own making, powerful friends

placing jobs for cousins and daughters

The son twenty-eight and still dependent

Three generations supported by one man

and his transactional holding company

so what do we become besides the vision

our fathers have of us distorted through

petard smoke and hoisted to the sun

Daedalus playing airplane with baby Icarus

Atlas walking Calypso down the aisle

Might as well marry before the apocalypse

because falling skies doesn’t stop love

when love is all we have, we hang tight

and we try to keep what we can, the rest

we let go.

Matthew Zhao is a poet from Michigan, now a PhD student at Florida State University and an Assistant Editor of Poetry for Southeast Review. He was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Mississippi Review Prize, and a semifinalist in the Longleaf Press Book Prize, Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, and others. His poems recently appear in swamp pink, Four Way Review, The Indianapolis Review, PRISM international, Pinch, The Louisville Review, The Offing, Reed Magazine, and elsewhere. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cashew_pow/

Outside Garcia's Panes

The bawling leaves

Don’t wake him,

Nor slanting rain,

Incessant patter

Accusing him

Of being dead

But he is not that,

Just passed out

On the carpet—

His mouth inhaling

Blue smoke swirls

From a candle

Left unattended,

And now flames

Splash everywhere—

Nightstand, curtains

And he crawls,

Like an infant,

Into the hall, his eyes

Refuse to open.

No more lonely

Night, no more

Emptiness beside.

No more missing

Arms, watery warmth—

Panes, doors sigh open.

Mario Duarte is a Mexican-American writer and an Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Fish Barrel Review, Huizache, and Penumbra. He is the author of poetry, To the Death of the Author, and short stories, My Father Called Us Monkeys.

On the Actor or His Magnificent Face​​

Gaunt in the desert, at a diner, he picks

at prop food, assuring his companion

he’ll be dead soon. Michael Shannon

deep in ruts of makeup artistry, dusty,

dressed up like a vigilante, and I’m waiting

for a flu shot at the Minute Clinic,

two blocks out of LA county.

Fifty years ago, my father powdered his face

for the stage, painted lines around his eyes,

shellacked his brows. Expressiveness a virtue,

subtlety another, like playing drunk

by playing sober in a suburb kitchen, calm

and crazy, telling truth but out of turn.

I’ve become obsessed, working through

my daddy issues and his resume:

Michael Shannon in a suit, gender theorizing.

Michael Shannon on the industrial kitchen floor.

Michael Shannon in red lipstick, in a beard,

a cardigan, a motorcycle jacket.

Michael Shannon with a cigarette,

a scowl, with sideburns, with a bowtie,

with a baby, a guitar. Undercover

in a magazine, posing as himself. The drug

store nurse removes her syringe.

Michael Shannon on his knees,

squibs burst open,

buttoned down and crimson soaked.

Squeamish! – I’m collapsing toward the carpet

by the spinning periodical display – what

engulfs me, or my father

who monologized. Forgive the intrusion –

Michael Shannon,

when you wash & dry your skin tonight,

will so many faces fade eventually to one?

Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Tampa Review, Nimrod, and other literary journals and has been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. Grayson is the author or editor of five books of nonfiction. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University and previously worked as a tenured professor of English in the California State University system. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she currently resides in New Jersey.