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Editors: Komal Mathew and Jenny Sadre-Orafai Josephine Quarterly (ISSN 2334-5888) is an online literary journal accepting only unpublished poetry and art. This online journal was founded in 2012 by poets Komal Patel Mathew and Jenny Sadre-Orafai in Atlanta. Published quarterly online, the editors are interested in work from both established and new voices. Cover Image: “El Plato Que No Habla” by Laura Vela

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About the Journal 2 Every Morning My Father Walks the Lake Path | Tina Egnoski 4 In the Rendaku Forest | Derek Graf 5 The Great Mosquito Migration | Corey Green 6 The Chariot | Jennifer Highland 8 Old House | Janet LeJeune 9 Therese Dreaming | Elizabeth O’Brien 10 Joshua’s Bright Lily | Derek Pollard 11 Contributors 12

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Every Morning My Father Walks the Lake Path

Tina Egnoski Agitate kingfisher, shoal bass, the lipglossed kiss me, kiss me petals of nymphaeamexicana— native Floridian. Silver-plated minnows and bluegill obey his shadow. Once a boy, he rose at first light, milked Brown Swiss. He collected eggs, snapped chicken necks. On the walk to school another sacrifice: dead racer on pitchfork tines. Instinct—to convey, preserve. To trespass. In stagnate water, the blue heron curtsy, witness.

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In the Rendaku Forest

Derek Graf I have a death that burns inside. Inside, my death tongues my name until it hurts: until I am buried in dirt and dry twigs and the broken limbs of bracken. Here I have this cramped body made of birds, fissures in my skin that glow like moon windows. My arms are ashen how they never touch you, but all the heavy damage of morning is somehow sparrowed now, and the shaken trees stand like thin sentences between us: for you to open the long wings of my leaden hair would be nothing: for you to open the long wings of my leaden hair would be everything.

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The Great Mosquito Migration

Corey Green "The world is gonna end soon. Oh, don't worry. It won't be for a while. Not for like 80 years or so." --Sylvia Browne Deep, seething water pockets, over which pocked air had hummed with no hearing ear or swatting hand, not even a long tail to swish it away down there, brimming pools, unmoved for years, not since fish curled their toes into the sand and gasped but in the heat, even the summer-hot winter, the land dried plain and course, fecund as slate one mosquito said there were pools farther north, an elder flitted to a parched mob his tale of warming shelf ice that trickled a spa, warm enough for a flurry of larvae, all of them to grow full of wing and snout long the story an entomologist recounted on the news He said-- Thus began the great mosquito migration, hunched but eager mothers hoisting their young on their backs for the long haul, fathers talking routes and trade winds They flew for hours at a time, moving like a monstrous dark cranium, but unthinking, this is how people described them, more or less, people in well-vented, but protective fiberglass shelters, replete with canned goods and bottled water, people who feared for their heifers and golden retrievers, scared of these piranhas of the air, as one woman called them, imagined the mosquitoes hovering over their victims, figuring their prey like an equation But feeding is about hunger.

Whole armies were hungry. A mechanic in South Carolina saw his cat sucked dry, its mouth forever yawning, its body prepared for mummification, nutria, dogs of all breed, but especially Chihuahuas, possums and deer, a few bums, even hawks and owls, anything with blood marked a path northward,

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the event was momentous, and those who could see it followed the bodied trail clear up the eastern seaboard, to Iceland and beyond, then the humming stopped soon, soon people knew the meaning Impending death has a particular use, a purge of vermin, unwanted pets, friends locked out and scrambling

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The Chariot Jennifer Highland In the low sweet evening. In the purple evening. In the evening that slides like a glove over the sky’s pale palm. In the carry me home evening. In the rosepetal evening. In the listening evening, the speechless evening. In the coming for evening. In the waiting evening. In the suffocating evening. In the evening of light every candle—but that comes later. In the heavy evening. In the chest-rattling evening. In the evening of lifting up and laying down. In the almost evening. In the breathless evening. In the breath-less evening. In the sing low evening, oh swing low, swing low. In the evening that circles and settles but does not sleep. .

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Old House Janet LeJeune When I cross my kitchen floor sunlight slants my path already headed toward afternoon. Two bowls nested in the cupboard kiss a porcelain heartbeat rim to rim keeping time to my moving feet. It’s almost music, almost annoying. I’d miss it if it stopped. Now I’m pouring cereal into a white bowl and cutting a banana in half the way my mother did near the end when the whole of anything was much more than she could bear. The upper cupboard only pretends to close then comes ajar as I turn my back, just a crack revealing everything I’d washed and blessed and closed away.

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Therese Dreaming Elizabeth O’Brien

I want

undivided attention not chainlink fence or shadow

no childhood memory—

of this

or milk- gulls in the schoolyard

blue faces peering

they say I’m in it but but do they mean

I worry too much

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Joshua’s Bright Lily Derek Pollard A single peacock Feather ablaze in The tree’s winter bran Ches Each shivering Angel the glint of Our desire New year Come sudden, Joshua’s Bright lily verily At the end of our Last dead season This Sky is mine, this dome Is mine, this heart is Mine, even though it Is yours and is a Lone always The sun Brought to the horizon’s Builded slant, two rams Tupping at the bor Der of Heaven, gold So loud there is no Other These are the Names we pass one to Another First the Shiver, then the glint

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Tina Egnoski is a poet and fiction writer. Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Cimarron Review, Folio, Hawaii Pacific Review and Louisville Review. She’s the author of two books, In the Time of the Feast Flowers (Texas Review Press, 2011) and Perishables (Black Lawrence Press, 2010). Derek Graf was born and raised in Tampa, FL. He received his B.A. from the University of South Florida, and currently lives and works in Stillwater, OK, where he is completing his MFA degree at Oklahoma State University. His poems have been featured in The Boiler Journal, Lunch Ticket, and DIALOGIST. His chapbook, What the Dying Man Asked Me, is forthcoming from ELJ Publications in May 2015. With this publication, Corey Green is hoping inaugurate his re-entry into the poetry world. His poetry has been published in Poet Lore, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Story South, and others. He’s currently in south Georgia working on getting certified to teach, but he hopes to get back to Atlanta. Jennifer Highland’s work has appeared in Quiddity, The Quotable, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, and elsewhere. She practices osteopathy in a solar-powered office in New Hampshire. Janet LeJeune lives and writes in a small house on the edge of a large city. Her poetry has recently appeared in Third Wednesday and Zephyr Press. Elizabeth O’Brien writes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New England Review, Diagram, Sixth Finch, NewPages, Carve, Whiskey Island, decomP, PANK, Carve, Swink, Versal, Juked, A capella Zoo, The Leveler, Slice, The Emerson Review, Flashquake, The Found Poetry Review, Glide Magazine, and other journals. She lives in Minneapolis, MN, and can be found online at elizabethobrien.net. Derek Pollard is co–author with Derek Henderson of the book Inconsequentia (BlazeVOX). His poems, creative non–fiction, and reviews have appeared in American Book Review, Colorado Review, Court Green, Diagram III, H_ngm_n, Pleiades, and Six–Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak, among numerous other anthologies and journals. He is Assistant Editor at Barrow Street Press, Poetry and Nonfiction Editor at Witness Magazine, Managing Editor at Interim Magazine, and is currently a Black Mountain Institute Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. More information can be found at www.twodereks.com. Laura Vela is an artist who explores issues of gender, class, race, and mental illness in her work. Her work consists of representational oil paintings, dealing with the female and minority perspective as well as photographic work dealing with the same issues. She is currently finishing her B.F.A at Kennesaw State University, and exhibiting her work in the Atlanta area.