In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Hurricane Floyd, and: Countdown
  • Neil de la Flor (bio) and Maureen Seaton (bio)

Hurricane Floyd

He is nonsexually differentiated, a compound of muscles and bones, a boney organism of glands and (fe)male hormones,

the same way the royal palm bends and breaks a tile roof, a Chevy, an airborne baby girl/boy destined for Miami

or Kansas, the inner harbor of Baltimore, Las Vegas. What is a go-go doll doing tied to a weathervane?

There are hormonal magics in storm frictions, there are straight-line wind events—wind moves!

Do hurricanes thrust and bulge, shimmy and hop? How often do hurricanes go off course? I would say,

anyone who has slept with Max Mayfield will tell you of the supine predictability of male to female storm systems

or challenges from God or his disciples. In boxer shorts, the weather tracker urges caution in the eye of the storm.

But I’ve hammered so many boards onto the eyes of houses that, blind, I am left poking a top/bottom with my finger

and pinky toe. Imagine modulating substances in the bodies of ostriches. Estrogens, like adrenalin and firewood, create

the best shipwrecks. I can’t guarantee you won’t die in one, but someone may find you naked and give you a hat. [End Page 18]

Countdown

4

I wrapped my arms around her whole body (she was so small, after all) and picked her up and threw her out the window.

If she’d had a scarf I’d have wrapped it around a pole, half staff, until the neighbors began to question the logic of accessories.

If her little dog came caroling back with her scarf a blotch of red between his teeth singing Sweet Tapwater or if her name (she is

not real, don’t forget) was Tapwater Jack, then the caroling neighbors would stop caroling and get back to what they do best.

3

Sometimes I borrow the names of the dead and project my feelings onto them, their femurs and their feathers.

Often I play projectile posse with my plastic ponies, the ones I bought when I was ten. Years old.

I sat close to myself in the years before that. I was preoccupied with the way lingerie hung in trees. [End Page 19]

2

As if Joan of Arc were a form of geometry, like “love” is a form of carpal tunnel.

I wore a tutu to church, all mangled and promiscuous. Volcano girl. Red as a bat. Lips

1

tattooed with sky and scraper— 90% homosexual and partly cloudy.

Neil de la Flor

Neil de la Flor’s literary work has appeared most recently in Court Green, No Tell Motel, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Sentence, and Barrow Street. He is also the coauthor of Facial Geometry (NeO Pepper P), a chapbook of collaborative triads written with Maureen Seaton and Kristine Snodgrass. He is not a baby boomer but loves the idea of being the son of one.

Maureen Seaton

Maureen Seaton’s recent publications are Sex Talks to Girls, a memoir from the University of Wisconsin Press Living Out series; Cave of the Yellow Volkswagen, poems from Carnegie Mellon University Press; and America Loves Carney, a chapbook from Sow’s Ear.

“I disassociated from the Boomers early on. Unsuccessfully, I admit, but often delighted with life just the same.”

...

pdf

Share