Fantastic Imaginary Creatures

Contents

1GERRY LaFEMINA Introduction: The Prose Poem as Fantastic, Imaginary Creature

4VALERIE BACHARACH Memento Mori

5UJJVALA BAGAL RAHN Just Enough House

6NED BALBO O Christmas Tree That Which We Discard We Also Cherish

8MADELEINE BARNES Key Rock Self-Portrait in My Mother's Closing Lines

10MICHELLE BONCZEK EVORY Absolution Dislocation

11PHILLIP BORDER Darkness

12RICK CAMPBELL Parable of the Forest Pygmy Forgetting the Nicene Creed

15JOSEPH J. CAPISTA Myth Song Room for Error

17GARY CIOCCO Being and Becoming

18TS COODY Mimesis

19CURTIS L. CRISLER A Comforter / A Monday / & Little Bodies

20JIM DANIELS With Apology to The Tom Tom Club ?At Last?

22ANTHONY DiMATTEO Every time

23GARY FINCKE The Hands

24JEFF FRIEDMAN Lost Memory Terrorists Giver of Gifts

26MOLLY FULLER Home Again, Home Again The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies

27JOY GAINES-FRIEDLER The Children's Ward Act 20:14 Traveling With The Band Daffodils

30GEORGE GUIDA Trip Wire The Story of a Life

31LUKE HANKINS A Voice Out of the Ruins

32GRETCHEN HEYER Pasiphae Answers Questions Missionaries Breakfasted on the Word of God Jute, Two inches in Diameter

34JP HOWARD Dress Up

35TOM C. HUNLEY Questions for Further Study My Chili Recipe (An Ars Poetica)

39ANNA K. JACOBSON This is to That

40PETER JOHNSON Vaccination, in the Broadest Sense of the Term Nice Socks Crickets

42RICHARD JORDAN Jesus on the River Mackerel Day With Feathers

44ELIZABETH KERLIKOWSKE Tabula Rasa At the 45th Parallel, Halfway Between the Equator and the North Pole

46NINA KOSSMAN Kharkiv

47JENNIFER KWON DOBBS Note Left at a U.S. Camptown Brothel for My Missing Imo Bus Stop Math

49GERRY LaFEMINA Fantastic Imaginary Creatures Happy Pigs Bad Medicine

51LAURA LAST Sorry

52JOSEPH LERNER Black Egret

53GERI LIPSCHULTZ Aphrodite in Manhattan

54LORETTE C. LUZAJIC Feathers January River

56GARY McDOWELL Prose Poem on the Nature of Things; or, Armchair Philosophy Another Apocalypse

58KATHLEEN McGOOKEY Night Sky with Calculus Worksheet

59JENNIFER MILITELLO Dear B, identifying the pathogen Antidote with Attempts at Diagnosis

62ROBERT MILTNER Hopeless Wolf Dancing 

63ERIN MURPHY Hula Dancer Gerunding Ekphrasis 

65KERRY NEVILLE Decade

68ROBERT PERCHAN The Orgun Box Junkies The Unselfish Elfins with their Trusty Hammers At Home with Marlboro Jones

71RUBEN QUESADA The Cell To Gabriela, In Memory

72CHRISTINE RHEIN Drone Pilot Sunday Night, Retail

74Lee Ann Roripaugh Notes on Dissociation

78JANE SATTERFIELD Abbreviated Inventory Latin 121

80KATHERINE SMITH Crossword Quilt

81JOSHUA MICHAEL STEWART Yellow Book of Love

82VIRGIL SUÁREZ Chinese Weather Balloon

83MATTHEW THORBURN A Hundred Birds How It Starts

85ERIC TORGERSEN My Blindness

86PAT VALDATA Mayfly

87DOUG VAN GUNDY Sideshow, Barbour County Fairgrounds, 1975 To Join the Circus

89ELINOR ANN WALKER Object Impermanence Fugue State

91GREG WATSON Why I Live in a Cold Climate

92CATHY WITTMEYER Max Beckman, Still Live with Fallen Candles, Oil on Canvas, 1929 Otto Dix, Horse Cadaver, Etching & Drypoint, 1924

94GEORGE YATCHISIN Leap Year

95MICHAEL T. YOUNG Sweaty Palms Quoting Blake to Mother

98Contributor Notes

111 Acknowledgments