by Derek Updegraff She imagined Harry, Hermione, and the rest of the gang squealing as the flames colored the gray sky. Her mom had said, “Toss them in. Go on, Becca. Toss them in.” So she tossed them in seconds ago, not hesitating because she knew better than to defy her mom. Her hands stung…
by Angie Macri Race through the language, a circuit of lawslike men hunting for brides, rosein their teeth. Girls line up in white, bits of bonefitted as hourglass. The sand runsuntil it’s done. They cast their fathers’ names asideand take the new, covered by the title, Mrs.now. They never have to use their own name…
by Annie Przypyszny about the woman who lives in an open grave. She’s not crazy. She’s versed in Edith Wharton, Emily Post, the final poems of Keats. Her Anne Klein dress is only slightly soiled, only a tad moth- nibbled. The oak leaves in her hair appear intentional. She adorns her rich brown walls with…
by Nick Visconti Here is the river no one owns, claimedby runoff sediments innervatingfloodplains. I look north and see jets,international, kipping above the clouds,banking on ground-level trust, the pilotshave eyes good enough to count seeds,the absurd amount of seeds lemons house,or the thread counts of a motel’s bed sheets.I’m here to search, and it only…
by Dale Going Disinclined to dredge up the old efflorescence, my heart, a relatively lucky bauble, operated this trenchant December independent of drenched weather less photogenic than snow. Awakened in whether nor’wester by the Bay’s first-ever tornado warning, we wafted through the cellarless house like Balanchine’s La Sonnambula searching for safe ground: pirouetting remnants of…
by Robin Gow Along Route 29 I have seen a dead self standing on the side of the roadlooking for a ride home. I keep going. There was a moment when this farm was vacated.When a body grabbed all her bones and disappeared. Then the ghosts came. The thing about death is thatit is not…
by Alaina Hammond I was in you from the very beginning, though it took me years to fully emerge. I let you have your childhood in relative health. I even let you have your daughter, sparing her in every sense. You staved me off as best you could, to starve me even as I starved…
by Mark Brazaitis The first time one of Adrienne’s boyfriends ended the night in a dumpster was an accident. His name was Rupert, and besides his talent for riding a unicycle while wearing a Cat-in-the-Hat hat and his ability to speak spontaneously in rhyme, a quality Adrienne at first found charming, he wasn’t good…
by Joseph Mollica Politely as though being watched, Oliver shoved in the same poor excuse for lunch he’d been shoving in for a month, a mostly salad-filled pouch, plus or minus some condiments. He licked the familiar trickle of neon-green dressing clean off his thumb, still unsure that none of his colleagues were watching. But…