Alex O’Neil across Issues 1 and 2
Alex O’Neil appears in the first two issues with two poems preserved in full. “A Quarter Moon” turns distance, admiration, envy, dreams, and remembered affection around the recurring image of a far-off smile. “boy or girl” returns to childhood through trees, scraped knees, wrestling, grass, pigtails, gender, and the physical freedom of outdoor play.
Together the poems move between adult longing and remembered childhood. Their strongest images come from weather and landscape: wind carries tears and laughter, a quarter moon lights the heart, clouds gather over a field, and the body learns itself through running, climbing, falling, and touch.
A Quarter Moon
So, you just let me find it out the hard way,
just hear it from any ole body.
Your smile, like a quarter moon, far,
in a place that might as well be space.
In another time, I would have wept,
thrown my tears to the wind
and sneered, “Jerk”
of jerks that dances to destiny’s call
and leaves dreamers sleeping.
(The fools that we are.)
While you, a prince in steeled armor,
risk all to face the dragons.
And in the end
kings and queens will sway to your music
and laud you over the jesters who turn home
and sleep and dream of champagne and paparazzi.
Oh, how I envy and love you for that,
while I hold your face hostage and
release it on my blackest nights.
Your smile, like a quarter moon, lights my heart.
boy or girl
Once I wished I had been born a boy.
I’m lying.
I wished it time-over…
Tomboy’s pigtails surfing the wind,
chasing a posse of boys
sporting scab-medals on ankles, knees and shins.
We kissed tree bark instead of pubescent lips,
curled gangly limbs around the waists of trees
and clutched their tough fingers in our calloused palms.
That first dance a trillion years away.
Smelled like little animals–youth’s perfume.
We wrestled beneath an artist’s sky–boldly blued
and struck with Rubenesque clouds in virgin white.
Arms over legs and melded in sweat,
Heart to heart, pulse for pulse,
fingers risking a tighter hold.
We rocked the grass deep, deeper into moist, warm loam.
Panting, holding, pulling, pushing–then spent.
In a climactic draw, we fell apart spread-eagle
(brows bejeweled under an electric sun)
sucking up slices of wind that caught our laughter
and skipped it through a thousand light spaces,
and across roiling hills of long-haired fields.
“King of the Hill.”
But Mother’s call cracked the wind like fireworks.
And pigtails snapped like whips behind the tomboy
who leapt in ballerina fashion through the grass
wearing new medals proudly earned that day:
dark loam under fingernails and permanent green
in her perma-pressed jeans.
Once I wished I had been born a boy.
The surviving record
Issues 1 and 2 preserve Alex O’Neil’s name and these two poems. The surviving publication record does not provide further biographical detail that can be stated with confidence.