 |
in this issue... |
Personal Essay |
Short Meditations |
| Short Story Monster in Your Forest By Brian Jefferson |
| Social Commentary Behind Closed Doors: The Secret Consumption of Sex By Angela Jones |
| Confessions The Conversation I Will Never Have With Chuck Klosterman By Ellen Killoran |
| Ethnography Selections From the (not so) Secret Life of Blogs By Robin Lester |
| Selected Poems Truth be Told The Plaintiff By Israel Loeb |
Poetry |
| Selected Poems Sky Spot Asbury Park Summer Day I Hate to Eat Fish By Steve Newman |
| Politics & Religion Defining Secularism By Serdar Paktin |
| Selected Poems Ode to Atheism Images of Philosophy, Pt. One By K. Jody Rucks |
| Prose Poem War Porn 3: i like america and america likes me By Roy Scranton |
| Memoir The Russian Army By Justin Wolf |
the madman and the night
By Shaun Nanavati
When the moon is full
And the tide pulls away
Is there a separation of anxiety
or a single tangled lunar sway?
“Come close.
Please dispel this dry ache,”
Says the moon with subtle passes and long glances
As he crosses the night sky.
Alone, he spins, reflects, travels and dances
Unaware of a distant, yearning sigh.
When the moon approaches the zenith
And no longer touches the distant crest,
The ocean wonders aloud with the intent of shared breath:
“Is all this an episode to dismiss
or a prelude to a kiss?”
Now, as the moon descends, the scientists will say:
“The moon has simply shifted from view.”
However, those initiated, intoxicated and engulfed by the whirlpool’s fray
Know - not from deduction - but an experience true
That the moon has dissolved, swallowed by the clearing
And has now entered the ocean’s greater being.
***
Shaun Nanavati has been telling stories all his life. He was formerly the editor of The Catalyst while an undergraduate at Bucknell, where he was influenced profoundly by the beats Ginsberg, Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Paul Bowles. Chasing the ghost of Jack Kerouac, he spent five psychonautically-inspired years in Boulder where he was a journalist for The Boulder Weekly. He is now a graduate student in Psychology at the New School and can be occasionally found sharing adventures from his youth at coffee shops and pubs throughout the West Village.