Author: The Editors

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I guess I’ll go to Hell if I have to- Gale Acuff

I tell my Sunday School teacher after
class this morning, she tossed me for chewing
gum and blowing bubbles out of it which
isn’t easy to do, it’s not bubble
gum and the bubbles I blow, I blow small
but it was the best I could do and why
couldn’t she see that but she said she saw
and that my skill was not in question, just
my seriousness about religion
–there’s a time and place for everything, which
I guess is true and I don’t want to die
and go to Hell and then have the Devil
laugh at me for being stupid and yet
talented. God would say the same damn thing.

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Reed, Poet Lore, Chiron Review, Cardiff Review, Poem, Adirondack Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review and many other journals in a dozen countries. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives. Gale has taught university English courses in the US, China, and Palestine.

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How the Invisible Go Blind -Robert S. King

If I am not seen,
I also cannot see
myself and all the bright lights,
the stars my dark fingers long
to reach and might snuff out
one by one until everyone is blind.

Invisible, untouchable,
I take care not to touch,
not to change the world
as it has changed me.



Robert S. King lives in Athens, GA, where he serves on the board of FutureCycle Press. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published eight poetry collections, most recently Diary of the Last Person on Earth (Sybaritic Press 2014), Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014), and Messages from Multiverses (Duck Lake Books, 2020) His personal website is www.robertsking.info.

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XIUHTECUHTLI

I want to be somewhere
where the ground is green
and black and orange
and swells and ebbs
like an ocean of dirt.

I want to found
a retirement village
on an island of the black
amidst the green and orange
so we can sit and watch
the sunset be indistinguishable
from the ground.

I want us all to take up metalcraft
and sit on our porches and make
jewelry with the fire in the ground
and the fire in the air and the fire
in the oven and the fire in our blood.

I want us to forget what we know
and only use what we learn anew.

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Stone of Madness, Thirteen Myna Birds, and Caustic Frolic, among others.

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The problem with Villanelles by Zebulon Huset

The problem with Villanelles

is the repetition of sound,
like alarm clock beeps—
depressing, as the day’s crowned

with sounds bound
to meanings that repeat
the repetition of sounds’

redundant mound
of blah-blah-blah-bleep!
Depressing, as the day’s crowned

with less and less profound
combinations, as linguistics seep
from the repetition of sounds

we’ve come to frown
upon as the daily grind, the common, cheap
and depressing as days crowned

with sameness. The villanelle’s fault is it rounds
up meanings and sounds, familiar as life’s retreat
into the repetition of sounds,
depressing as the day’s crown.

Author Bio
Zebulon Huset is a teacher, writer and photographer living in San Diego. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Meridian, The Southern Review, Fence, Atlanta Review & Texas Review among others. He publishes the writing blog Notebooking Daily, edits the journals Coastal Shelf and Sparked, and recommends literary journals at TheSubmissionWizard.com.

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It’s Official: Hedge Apple 2020 is Live!

If you chose to peruse the pages of Amazon whilst in search of new reading material, and then decided to enter in the search bar, “Hedge Apple Magazine,” it is entirely possible that our Spring 2020 issue would come up. That’s right, folks – it’s live!

I want to once again thank everyone who submitted their work this spring, especially those whose pieces made our print issue possible. This was not my first time as an editor, but it was by far my most integrated and expansive experience with the position thus far, and that has a lot to do with the submissions we received, all of which were special and enlightening in some way.

So give yourselves a pat on the back – we have all created something wonderful here (and in the time of a pandemic, no less)!

Thank you for everything, and may summer treat you well.

Sincerely,

Lucy Kiefert, Spring 2020 Editor – signing off

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An Afternote to a Book Without Us – Holly Day

An Afternote to a Book Without Us

Cockroaches raced along the ground here long before

there were dark alleys and rancid dumpsters,

truck drivers and greasy spoon diners, old hamburger wrappers

to curl up inside. Before we were here, cockroaches

scuttled in the nests of dinosaurs, fed on the sticky albumin

of newly-hatched eggs, dug tunnels in massive piles of fecal matter,

were old even then. They lived through

the asteroids, the second and third great extinctions,

left petrified footprints in the mud

alongside our first bipedal ancestors.

They will be here to see the last flower of humanity

wilt in the heat of cataclysm, will polish our bones

with their tiny, patient mandibles, will lay their eggs

in our shirt pockets and empty hats. There will be

no great cockroach takeover,

no post-apocalyptic ascension to superiority—

they will always just be, chitinous wings fluttering,

scurrying, squeaking in the dark.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press).


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I Will Not Be – Holly Day

An Afternote to a Book Without Us

Hand in hand, fingers turn to claws and I

still know you inside that mask of anger, I

can still see the person I will always fall

in love with behind those bright eyes,

am I going to die tonight? I wonder.

Walk with me softly past the corner

where we first kissed. Here, under the street lamp,

the exact spot where you said you loved me

over and over again, do you remember?

I do. I do. This is us, so many years later,

and there is only ice when we speak,

but do you remember? I wonder.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press).




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Another Woman Talking to Herself – Holly Day

This is the first of three poems by Holly that we will be posting, which should be the last three pieces we share with you all this spring. Our print issue is currently in the process of being approved, and it will be available to all of you very soon! Keep an eye out for any further announcements on that front. Without further ado, here is “Another Woman Talking to Herself.” Enjoy.

Another Woman Talking to Herself

Overcome with regret, she cradles him in her arms

before reluctantly devouring his headless corpse. Later, she will lay

a clutch of white, oval eggs, knowing

her daughters will eat her sons someday.

The mantis has no voice for her sorrow, her grief at the loss

of her brief love affair. The crickets take up her song instead

a chorus of chirps that fills the night with shadows.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press).

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The Dreaded Blues – Fabrice Poussin

Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, San Pedro River Review, and other publications.