FUSION Magazine

More Haiku

by Raffael de Gruttola

Haiku

by Raffael de Gruttola 

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Scrabble

by Greg Hatem

I was walking down Inman Street in Cambridge the other day, from Inman Sq. to Central.  As I approached Massachusetts Ave., I noticed an older woman sitting on the porch of a random elegant old home.  She was looking rather haggard, as if she was down on her luck.  She confirmed this by asking me for exactly 70 cents, perhaps to supplement a bus fare.  I was drawn in by the specificity of her request as well as her seemingly good-natured intentions.  I searched my pocket for the 70 cents, but I came up a bit short. ”Oh, honey, I’ll take whatever you got,” she reassured me.  She stared me down for a second, as if she was reading me.  I started to walk away when the most amazing words came out of her mouth.

“Hey! You wanna play Scrabble or something?”   Read more »

God, Forgive Me

by Dana James

Sometimes I wonder, no, always I do, each time I see that face

Nondescript and plain, but we know her by name, staring at the corner.

She, who carried the world’s greatest prize, praised for her fragile state.

Would she have bathed herself in impure waters if someone had chosen to warn her?

Holy Mary, Full of Grace, forgive me, I find it absurd

Your reward for all your virtues was a life riddled with wounds and scrapes.

It never seemed right and I regret that I might challenge the Sacred Word.

But how can we celebrate on into time this wondrous, blessed rape?

Days in her honor, for she carried the Child, the Man who changed the world.

If the Child had come through non-immaculate conception would the legend fall?

Would He be less worthy if his father was not a light hovering over the girl?

Would she not be held to the highest esteem if she lay with a man after all?

And what does it say about us, now, today that we continue to value this tale?

No woman has ever been sainted for being anything but quiet and stale.

So forgive me, Our Father, if I choose to believe she was more like Me.

Just a woman, a wife, with an inspiring life, and those eyes should hold more than we’ve seen.

The First Thanksgiving

by Luis Lascano

  

Leaves by Elizabeth Jordyn Blakely

 

The doorbell woke me up from a nightmare. Still asleep and confused, I almost stumbled while I was walking toward the door. The only thing I could see through the peephole was the enlarged version of one of my roommates, Vanessa. I remember it was only five days before Thanksgiving and it was really cold outside. But her face and her Home Depot uniform were totally covered in sweat. I opened the door, and I noticed she had at least six grocery bags in each hand– “Help me, Luisillo, this is heavy.”  While I was helping her, I got suspicious about the plan behind that brutal grocery shopping:  maybe Vanesa wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving  ”The American Way”.

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At A Loss For Words

by David Kuchera

Taking a moment to breathe in the freshly acrid aroma of cleaning solution, which is overpowered only

 by dozens of double grande half-calf soy mocha lattes, I step into Boston’s infamous two-dollar amusement park.  Having brought with me no second-hand newspaper, no iPod, and not a single copy of whatever most people are reading in Freshman English this semester, I feel a bit out-of-place.   I find a slightly sticky seat amongst the suits, the studious, and the overwhelmingly sleepy commuters to endure a jerky journey through the city in the belly of this steel beast.

Riding on a train this early in the morning somehow conjures memories of grey-haired sages-asking for tickets and shouting “aboard” with all of their half-enthused fury.  Perhaps I am even sitting in a relatively spacious compartment enjoying the countryside and getting to know my next-seat neighbor on his bi-weekly commute to Tuscaloosa.  This train, however, holds no such romance.  Synthetic sunshine pounds into my eye sockets, making the meticulously framed advertisements difficult to read.  Is it guaranteed Swahili or Swedish?

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Starbucks

Aroma by Allison Healy

by Attilio Foresta-Martin

Every institution with a very strong identity is based on a precise and defined ideology and on an even more precise system of rules. If you want to see with your own eyes the distorted reality of an institution with a narrow ideology you have to devote at least two hours of your time at Starbucks.

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Traffic

by John D. Lippincott

Empire 2 by Alessio Romano

As night drops down his tarnished, black curtain,

And worn-out faces wear the brake light’s glow,

We sit captured in a terrible halt.

Like a heavy rock in a shallow pond,

All hopes tonight quickly sink to despair.

Blistered hands clench a fist around the wheel.

We can only wait to disassemble.