October 2007

     From the Editor
     Submissions
     Subscribe

     Poetry by
           Julian Jason Haladyn
           Guadalupe Garcia McCall
           C.S. Reid
           Rob Taylor
           Paul A. Toth

     Fiction by
           Elena Kaufman
           Christopher Meades

     Artwork by
           Scott Malby
           Steve Bunyard




     Ian Rose, Editor
     Tom Corcoran, Assistant Editor
     Edie Ferlan, Assistant Editor

     Readers:
      Todd Heckler, Melanie Dempsey,
     and Paul Rabinowitz

The Icons from the Side of the Road
by Julian Jason Haladyn


Road kill are icons
doctrines spelled out      on the road of life
                                           on the road of historical dialogue

Vehicles are martyr-machines
speeding heedlessly       through misty mountain highways
                                          through dirty city back roads

Cowboys walk down the shoulder limping
collecting the fragments      of road kill
         that are signs decorating hillsides
collecting heads and tails   of human belief
                                                of animal carcasses
used for display in outdoor shrines

You must not step off the yellow striped road
for that is where the icons live
not as historical anecdotes or prospective truths
but as the opposite             of growling truck engines
                                               of lanes ending

Fate like a vehicle       finds them in our way
                                       finds them without limbs

Nothing else to understand
nothing else to care about
finally life can have meaning






Julian Jason Haladyn is a Canadian writer and artist, whose poems and short stories have appeared in magazines such as Istanbul Literature Review, Laika Poetry Review, Elimae, Otoliths, Identity Theory, and Nthposition, as well as the collection Nuit Blanche: Poetry for Late Nights by Royal Sarcophagus Society Press. As a practicing artist, he has exhibited internationally.