by Anuja Ghimire A wintry Texas morning, I wait for the sunThe full moon, a star, or two by the windowGolden Pothos I’ve tended to since JulyLeans closer and closer to me by the windowA quiet neighbor’s roof is a leaf’s fall awayI never see her when I dream by the windowThe tips of leaves […]
Electra Rhodes Mam was laid out cotton-starched on the bed. The stillest I’d ever seen her. She’d not like to be known this way so I made a bit of busy noise at the door. As if I’d only just arrived. She struggled and gained no real purchase against the slip of the sheets, so […]
Laurie Marshall While it is true I did not accept his proposal, that did not prove that I did not love him. I was raised by an independent woman raised by an independent woman raised by a survivor of war and famine and things that may or may not have been true but which were […]
by Rebecca Ruvinsky A sense of living alreadyin the past. He is lookingat a dying woman whileshe is breathing. Eating.She can only eat soft food,but she tries some of his.Chews. Spits out what shecan’t swallow, but she livesoff of the flavor. Jokes, I don’t needthe calories anyway. Five years after the funeral, herson wonders if […]
Frances Gapper Skipping most stages of poultry production including death, he’d blagged a ride in the delivery truck. He was free-range organic, farm fresh. Howdy Ma’am! We often danced in the kitchen, a wild whirl we called Rooster Booster. Laughing our heads off. We cried cock-a-doodle-do! As he was pecking morsels of oat crunch from […]
Rebecca Ruvinsky The audacitywas circumstantial: we didn’t know we wereflying until it was toolate to stop. Then, we’re hopeless, trippingover each other, fawn-like with our fresh wings. Gangly never suited youso well. We got used tothe shedding, to waking up with feathers in our hair.Your head was always upin the clouds in those days, and […]
Jared Povanda With angular gaps in the branches. Light everywhere. In my hair, on my skin, claws of it and petals. A bullet went through a person last night, exit wound in the back, and as I walk the quarantine weight away day after day, I think of the fragility of bodies. I think of […]
Sutton Strother On the album cover the Rock Star reaches out, so you take his hand and pull him free, out of the picture and into the rose glow of your bedroom. He coaxes you into a sloppy slow dance as he sings along to his own music in an off-key slur. His hair is […]
Jesse Millner Once I saw a man punch a homeless guy in the face.It was afternoon. It was the mid-1980s. It was a baron the near West Side of Chicago. It was Charlie’son Randolph. It was winter and when the homelessman walked in, the cold followed him the way it does,bringing that brief shiver before […]
by Jesse Millner It was cold then, mid-1980s, Chicago—authentic winter with below zero daysand the wizardry of turquoise ice alongthe lake, shaped into sheets and bergs,rising and falling with the water’s rollingbreath. A walk along the Lake, northboundon Sheridan Road, ice-glazed and shiningwith the light of that distant late 20th centurysun. A treacherous walk past […]
Tania Hershman Butch says I need to watch everything you do. I say, But he’s just sitting there. Butch slaps my back. Exactly! says Butch. He brings me pens and notepads. He moves my chair to the window. Butch says it’s like spying. He says I have the skills for this. He says it’s not […]
Wyatt Winnie Saturn ringsaround cul-de-sacs,adhesive radio wavesjamming, jamming transmissions fromNeptune to Mercury searchingfor staticky reception andconfirmation of alien life. She’s wrapped hertentacles around hisenchiladas, somethinghis friends can’t believe, not on Monday or Tuesday,despite the Wednesdayproclamation of his love. They’re just feelings,he says.They’ll go away. But on Thursdayhe’s swimming onhis motorbike ina giant spacesuit and eating […]
Wyatt Winnie They’re out of horchata againand I don’t know how to tellthe othersI’m not Corona legal,at least not in this state anyway, seeing ashow I’m the only 17-year-old chillingat the adult school. But Laura knows,all 23 years of candy appleMexican lipstick and single-motherhoodpushing her stroller down Alhambraavenue with the vatos cat-calling herdespite her Gerber […]
Sara Hills After school and on Saturdays we couple up and make-out under the overpass in the middle of town—under shirts, over jeans. Our parents say the tunnels are full of rats. They tell us to take the long way round, warn us about gang violence and drugs, but we laugh them off. The only […]
Shannon Kenny I have a thick skinbut the patriots and bigotsare wearing it thin.The blood of the world is all over my phoneand laptopand my kid’s waking up.Be nice, assholesI’ve got a day to get through. Shannon Kenny is a writer and actor from Durban, South Africa. She and her family love to laugh. And […]
Frank McHugh Universal indicator of right, wrong,good, bad, life or death. Of course,no-one nowadays can make a decisionso the digit wavers, not committing. Hitch-hiker’s appeal, texter, gamer,licked and sticked to seal the deal:pudding-prodder, opposable, appositegripper of handlebars and pushchairs,the more rounded of the brothers,Peter’s apostle, pollex, a page-turner. The mighty thumb has replaced conversation betweenmy […]
Julia Kelly And we ran through the streets, stars like comets streaking the black sky, two girls laughing, pounding the concrete through the ugly beauty of the city, the arcing bridge over the black glitter of the river, breath cold and clear, painless, tireless, high above the pavement now from whatever drug we’d taken, we […]
Nora Nadjarian I’ve spoken to thousands of art dealers listed in the yellow pages. I’ve turned the thin pages and made over a thousand calls asking for art made of plastic, which will keep for a thousand years. The art dealers call back and say the Ocean, the Ocean. I suppose they mean dive in […]
Joyce Wheatley There was the “fall.” “Dropped on her head as a baby,” Mama said. Nothing congenital. Nothing genetic. An accident. Story retold at every family gathering. “Dropped on my head as a baby,” Aunt Vivienne said, twanging like Loretta Lynn. “I don’t remember none of it.” Her caramel voice melted, southern-refined as Blanche DuBois […]
Meg Mulcahy We sit ditch-side in curdled breeze and watch as curlews tango in briar and thorn. Bodies like mine are made of bogland, stacked and drying. Wind song of the rushes tussle breathes for me, stifled lest the world end. The vampire’s disembodied hands tell me nothing except that the curlew dwindles because of […]
Amanda Wilkins Our dirt smelled different, I say.Rust and library paste,Ground up talons and the blood of mice.Sure, it had the same grind, same weight, same color as mostBut,Ah –That distinct smell.“Chuh,” goes my shovel,And that sound takes me backTo the time you tore your yellow Sunday dress on the bridge,Over the creek, behind our […]
Jesse Millner of Chicago back in the 1980s when I drank shots and beers with Polacks and Puerto Ricans in West Side bars, sometimes until dawn licked the city skyline, bringing meaning to the Sears Tower, 1454 feet tall, 110 stories of glass and steel rising above downtown as I lowered myself into the driver’s […]
by Jesse Millner The neighbors are Labor Day loud now that the rain has driven them in from the golf course. Why must they yell and smoke cigarettes? I avoid everyone on my way to my car or the occasional trip to the dumpster where I see discarded chairs and mattresses piled up next to […]
by Jesse Millner Having your wife leave you is exhausting.The moon still rises and falls outside& the Florida heat kicks your ass & allthe lawns are brown with expectationof the next tropical system that mayor may not destroy everything you love& hate & hold onto. Holding on is so stupid.You know that, but you can’t […]
Sidney Dritz Ugly little dinosaurs, thoseprehistoric wonders onthe back porch, thosethree-toed feet pebbled andstrange in the sun, bobbingalong with those stunted,immobile wings, useless untilI open the back doorand the cat bursts outand feathers flutter in eddiesas they scatter and for a few feet, loud andungainly,those chickens fly. Sidney Dritz is (currently, constantly) reevaluating what to […]
Sara Hills Daddy says it’s every man’s right to have a guru, and more’s the pity if you only have one. Used to be that gurus were just for show, perfect for scaring off a snake or rattling your enemy’s chain. Used to be that you had to be close enough to a man for […]
Eoin Devereux From the rough slanted fieldA streel of a scarecrowBears witness,To a brimful cup left on the doorstep,An extra place at the kitchen table,An empty chair by the fire,A crossed, still-warm, loaf on the slender windowsill,An offering to lost soulsWho sometimes passIn the night,Straying,Between here and there. Darkness drops early,In these quarter days,But, the […]
Myna Chang Every morning, Uncle Leon’s out there baby-talkin’ his favorite gator, Ethyl. “Who’s the smartest girl? Yes, you are,” he coos in his old-man grull. I’d pull the pillow over my head but Cousin Tommy Dob’s already bouncing his dodgeball, boing on the kitchen floor, boing on the porch, boingboingboing against my bedroom wall. […]
Melissa Ostrom Will the child know what to watch forWhen she leaves her tame homeOf rosebud cup, glass ballerinaAnd broaches the forestWith her mission? Or did her father notWarn her, for fear of inciting her fear? Will your wolf exercise his duplicityWith flattery, an eleganceThat invites the girl’s vanityTo defeat her, or will he actOn […]
David Cook The dog had been moulting again, but that was okay because it gave Lily more material to knit with. Click-clack went her needles, stitching strands of hair from Kevin, her bearded collie, to make a scarf for Kelvin, her bearded husband. Kelvin watched her from the sofa. He didn’t want a scarf made […]
Susmita Bhattacharya The lines are drawn with chalkon the tennis court. A temporary pitchis created. Lights hang from bamboo poles.Boys from across the neighbourhoodappear in hordes. Teams are drawn up.The summer of night cricket begins. The lads from Hindu colonyswagger in – defending champions. War linesdrawn with face paint,their bodies like coiled spring,swinging their bats […]
Emily Devane This river is a careless mother. She sets out with good intentions, singing The Hills Are Alive at the top of her bubbling, babbling voice. She tickles our feet as we play, pulls and tugs while we throw sticks from bridges, begs us to dance the time-step on summer evenings. When our feet […]
by Frank McHugh The little burnt hands of the saintheld on tight to the railway power lineshis charred and tatty remains flying out behind himlooking fresh from some Sicilian catacomb,he was laughing and so was I.When I looked across the aisle he was sittingbeside a girl wearing a coat and a crucifixdrawing crosses and butterflieson […]
by Gina Harlow In another life I would have lived in Manhattanpoor but pores oozing with interpretation and trepidation,In exhilaration of the opera singer next doorIn another life I would have been born in Franceand made cheese on a farm,I would have drank good wine at a young age,and foraged for mushrooms and cooked stewsIn […]
Amy Barnes My therapist is a bird woman. When I arrive, a caged parakeet sits in her office. Carrier pigeons arrive and leave with rolled-up charts. The walls are covered with large framed bird prints. Rows of bottles filled with beige seeds march on window-sills. The hunched woman who leaves before me clutches a bottle […]
Stephanie Parent Her cottage prowls the forestOn legs of rubbery fleshClacking bonesPrehistoric claws It leaves footprints large enoughTo swallow a girlHood and boots and all Don’t bother to follow the tracks— The house finds you And when Baba Yaga beckons you insideThe birch tree by the door will tear at your fleshThe dog will nibble […]
Jan Simpson The sandwiches would stink the car up long before they reached the seaside. But it wasn’t a picnic without egg and salad cream sandwiches, apparently. Gave Mhairi the boak. She’d wanted to buy free-range eggs instead of the cheapest, the ones with ‘Eggs from caged hens’ on the box. Caged hens. So the […]
Bayveen O’Connell A mighty grunt, then a smooth slither out. The midwife gasped and in the next breath, giggled. “In all my years!” She cradled the glistening bubble, gazing into the newborn’s eyes within. “What? What is it? What’s wrong?” The young mother, still panting, tried to crane her neck over her belly. “Quite the […]
Kinneson Lalor I’m about to click the shutter when Henry-Robert ruffles his feathers again, the ripple of something in the space where his skin stretches between man and chicken. My wife mused she wasn’t sure if it was sadder Henry-Robert dressed like a chicken to hide who he was or that people wanted to read […]