Apeiron Review – May 2013

The first step into the third issue of Apeiron Review is Jenny Taylor Moodie’s poem “I Am,” which speaks to not being the “perfect” looking woman, the one “dipped / in smooth cold plaster / filling all [her] cracks and hiding every insolent flaw.” Instead:

The first step into the third issue of Apeiron Review is Jenny Taylor Moodie’s poem “I Am,” which speaks to not being the “perfect” looking woman, the one “dipped / in smooth cold plaster / filling all [her] cracks and hiding every insolent flaw.” Instead:

I smell like my children
their sweet clutching hands
their innocent skin
and the pink lotion I use
to bring my mother back to me—
roses and her soft voice
talking me to sleep

These things I carry like a swaddled newborn
close to my chest

The rest of the issue, too, is about holding those things close, whether it be love, hope, the beauty in everyday, or the memories of the past.

Arina Robb’s “Nameless” begins: “This morning I saw the way fall moves in . . . When was the last time I looked / at green and said it was lovely?”

In Steve Wheat’s “Translating Silence,” a man named Kobi makes art in a less traditional way: “sweeping debris from a gas station tarmac. / His art lies in removing color from the canvas”:

When his brush cannot dislodge a petal,
he bends down, and picks it up with his hands.
He has been sweeping the love from his life
for forty years, smiling at passerby,
with his cigarette stained teeth.

But yet, his memories are still kept, “his mind an attic” where they “hide themselves in blankets of dust.”

Don Kunz contributes a fun poem in which he imagines the characters in the Sunday comics all grown up. He says that again Lucy will try to fool Charlie Brown, but this time “When she pulls the football away, / He will kick her in the teeth.” Also:

In Zits, Jeremy will date a vacuum cleaner,
Pierce will be torn apart in an MRI,
And all the women characters will
Grow smaller lips and bigger breasts.
Mr. Wilson will take Dennis the Menace
To church where he will become an
Altar boy fondled regularly by a priest
Whom he will drive slowly insane.

Vincent JS Wood contributes a piece of fiction in the form of an autopsy report (“No blood remained in the body and no conclusion can be drawn as to how it became absent. The manner of death is determined to be: UNDETERMINED”). Stephanie Barbé Hammer’s nonfiction piece “Conversions” tells the story of a girl maturing, trying to find her footing in religion, faith, and Judaism. In Marisha Hicks “The Comic Book Store,” as a fourth grade girl, Hicks sifts through the comics of big-breasted women for one that will suit her, eventually deciding on an Archie-type comic: “They still had massive breasts, but they wore cool clothes . . . I wanted to read about girls with pink hair and leather jackets who went to school and had boyfriends. After finding out it was about sex, I wanted to read about it even more.”

There is much to enjoy here and plenty of pieces to go back to. Through scribd.com, you can download or print the issue for free. If you have a tablet, you can also experience it through the scribd app.
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