An excerpt from Issue #4:

Happy Birthday
for Matthew Lippman
by Matthew Dickman

Look what I got you! Other people, people you love
I'm sure, bought you socks
and cds and books and maybe an expensive checkered scarf
placed inside a perfect box, secured
with a red ribbon, but I got you this anvil because
it's your birthday
and every man should have one. It helps to keep you here
on earth. I carry mine everywhere
I go. Even to fancy parties
where I have to watch my mouth
and wear a tie. I dress it up in anvil-evening-attire
and dance with all the pretty girls
with silver hammers. Saint Francis had an anvil
and dragged it through the streets of Assisi
looking for god. Christopher Columbus carried his anvil
around his neck like an albatross
when he entered the New World which only made it heavier.
Henry Ford had an anti-semitic anvil
and it was always making him
angry though Einstein's anvil invented
relativity so you never really know.
In our high school production of The Music Man
my brother played the lead role and I played the anvil salesman
which made sense. My brother was full of light
and I was always ripping my jeans or being sad
with a sophomore named Ann. I wanted only to live
in Annville. That and be a famous actor
with a closet full of money.
Money's an anvil and usually bright
green or gold. The Reformation Church had a purple anvil
covered in a shroud while the Inquisition
had an anvil that looked like a bowl with a heart inside it. People
read Don Quixote because he carried his anvil
on horseback. I woke up this morning
while the construction crew was ripping up the street. I held my anvil
in both arms and rocked it slowly back and forth. I make
sorrow out of it and I make joy. That's when I thought of you
and how you probably needed one.
Then again, maybe you're good on anvils.
Maybe you don't know what to do with the ones you already have.