Dinosaur Bees

Migrating to Portland
Steve Subrizi

I stood up to introduce myself without a finger’s grasp of the language being spoken at the table:

HELLO. MY NAME IS [Thumb Sawyer]. I HAVE BEEN A MEMBER OF THE ANIMAL DEFENSE LEAGUE FOR [an amount of time too short, from an evolutionary perspective, to be said to have transpired]. MY FAVORITE ANIMAL IS [the hedgehog].

But the group had begun to bristle. The wood duck asked me to leave.

Out on Twelfth and Stark, the night was brisk and milky. The shape of a well familiar hedgehog emerged from the park across the street and I crossed over, hoping she would recall nibbling from my hands, but she must have hopped that cage long ago. She had grown seven feet taller and may never have seen me wearing glasses. The hiss she let out deafened me for an amount of time during which no evolution was likely to have occurred. Back into the brush she fled, the newly wild hedgehog of my past.

Next time the question arose, I decided, I would say “manatee,” or possibly “wood duck.” Every time I say the word “hedgehog,” I instinctively leak (admittedly toxic) ink from my (admittedly dead) eyes.

STEVE SUBRIZI sometimes co-hosts the Wednesday night poetry mic at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has performed his poetry at lecture halls and dive bars across America, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in NAP, The Scrambler, Muzzle, PANK, The Legendary, Phantom Kangaroo, Ramshackle Review, Breadcrumb Scabs, NOÖ Journal, and Monday Night. His latest chapbook, Newly Wild Hedgehog, will be available from NAP on July 15th. He plays in a band called The Crazy Exes from Hell.

Chad Redden ::	Growing Up Baptist

Sherri Marilena Pauli ::	Translations in Rainstorms on Salt Flats

Megan Kennedy ::	Afraid

Jenni Lord ::	Five paintings

Steve Subrizi ::	Migrating to Portland
	Backstroke

Ben Segal ::	Tell It Again From Your Mouth

Russ Februaryy ::	I Put My Fingers In Your Eyes

Elizabeth Glixman ::	American Cats Are Overweight Studies Suggest
	Why Did Frankee Stein Become A Free Market Capitalist?

Nick Sturm ::	The Fences
	Three erasures

Andrew K. Peterson ::	Language, An Actress
	Steve McQueen’s Lines in The Blob

Rich Ives ::	Anatomy Lesson

Gabrielle DeMarre ::	Stan

Kristen E. Nelson ::	Song of Praise i. Him One
	Song of Praise ii. Him Two
	Song of Praise iii. Him Three
	Yvette

Acquanetta M. Sproule ::	A Nursery Rhyme