Two Serious Ladies is named for the 1943 short novel by Jane Bowles.

“I have my happiness, which I guard like a wolf, and I have authority now and a certain amount of daring, which, if you remember correctly, I never had before.”


― Jane Bowles
Two Serious Ladies

 

The Creator has Given the Maximum by Caroline Crew

Hey are you guys holy? I saw the street burn
blue beneath your feet, you were heavy clouds
weighted like rock salt. I mean azure, as in
I don’t speak Russian but it keeps blue
and light-blue as separate brothers, and truly
who wouldn’t follow a flock like that?
Withstanding major storms I’d keep following
you anywhere. Hey guys, did you always
blaze with such precision? I don’t want
sob stories. I want to hear how you took classes
dissecting Crayola crayons and damned
those that wouldn’t display their origins.
Bittersweet is something like coral, nothing
but compound and coral is a composite
of its own being. I don’t know how to explain
Fuzzy Wuzzy, and maybe you don’t either.
Maybe you march so serenely because these
are concrete like the sun, how you shatter it
in your wake. To say blue isn’t enough. Say
azure. One can say bright blue sky instead,
but the sky is just a metaphor for the parts
of earth we cannot burn.

   

Caroline Crew edits ILK journal. Her poems have appeared or forthcoming in Bat City Review, PANK, Cream City Review, and Salt Hill Journal, among others. She wrote the chapbooks 'small colours like wild tongues' (dancing girl press, 2013), and, with Chris Emslie, 'Your Stupid Fortune Gives Me Stupid Hope' (Furniture Press Books, forthcoming 2014). Currently, she lives between Old England and New England.

 

1 cup lets (sewing) by Emmalea Russo

Three Poems by Elizabeth Whittlesey