By Steve Fay How to barter wakefulness from the dawn? The sun’s piddling recruits barely fissuring the inky window. Sleep still glacier, carrying red boulders, memory, desire, never ending falls through space, cocoon in alder branches across the river. You drift toward altars: a bowl, a jar, a table, steam crying from a kettle. But first the thistle-like necessity of cold water splashed in...
The Meander
By Linda Scheller —for Ruth Asawa * shadows cast sister structures formed by light through loops * crocheted undulations trace airy pendulous nests * suspended waves reeve through transformational stillness * steel and air interlace an arabesque embrace Reliquary I laid her hands (pale skin and delicate bones) side by side, palms up, in a glass box and on them nested her quiet heart I vowed to...
Souvenir
By Christian Paulisich My grandmother, a traveler before she lost her memory, kept a set of Russian nesting dolls in the China cabinet. I tinkered with the toy I knew boys were not supposed to touch. I would twist and pull each layer loose, noting what was lost as the dolls grew smaller: the scarlet-painted collar...
Junction
By Emma Miller We agree to meet at the next junction, where junction exists. I will look at my trees and you yours. I will look at my feet and you yours. And I will try not to miss your walking company. But here I am walking, And I will relish in that home for a moment. I will look at...
typewriter
By James B. Nicola My grandma’s Underwood, older than she, keeps writing, as if driven by a truth she has to spread. Ribbons, as late as ’90, were even sold at Spag’s. When any key gets filled, we clean it with a tossed-out tooth- brush soaked in warm water and a mild soap. This makes the thing not quite as good as new, but willing to work for another day of words warmed with a...
[blank] as in
By Sel Hartman [ ] as in man as in fitting in for survival, man when pushing open the grimy lavatory stall door, acting like i have to shit, grimacing because they say you look more masculine when youre angry, men are always angry about something, look pissed off and youll piss fine, youll pass alright. woman as in the divine lilt of my voice in daytime, woman when i’m fingering...
Magnolia at henrietta
By Leia K. Bradley Walking barefoot in the rain, asphalt bulging hard against soles, I slick the city with stilettos in hand, one heel broken clean in half, but I’m still the girl who climbed up the magnolia tree and wasn’t found for five hours. Just reading. I remember running fast through the backwoods, running away from rigid rancor I think I’m too good at leaving when things hit their high—...
How we know the Forest’s Name
By Jamil Badi Wind The clouds were leaning upon the night with the threat of a storm, but I did not let them break. Yes, I was thirsty for rain, my barked fingers pruned a dry and brittle grey, but I made the clouds wait. A pair of them, boy and girl, he tracing his fingers along my bones, her kicking the leaves of my dead hair. I told the storm to wait, for I could sense a story in these two...
cradle
By Rich Glinnen Kenny Cradle didn’t know his father, and his mother didn’t seem to mind keeping things on a friendly basis. “I like you, Kenny. Not many mothers my age can claim that,” she said one evening, which is to say she said while drunk. “But love—real love—it doesn’t exist.” She lit a cigarette and sent a cloud under the lampshade. “It was an endangered species. It was rare. But then...
Danielle
By Bryan D. Price There was a fire next door. The neighbors sat around it and I could just hear them through the kitchen window. A woman and a man or perhaps two women and one man or two men and a woman. Some combination intimated by the pitch and depth of voices getting more and more excited as the night grows longer and colder. It was 3:22 and then 3:59. Had I slept. Hard to tell. Had I dreamt...