by Daniel Edward Moore We could have brought an expensive Merlot to the supper called his last, …
by Morrow Dowdle There is another story behind the tree,a second fruit eaten at the snake’s behest. First there was the apple, pink and sweet,yielding to my perfect teeth. I was naked and free! And then the red pomegranate,more difficult to access, but I did, forced it open in my two fists, its blood coveringmy…
by Nidhi Jha I am midair in an escalator between the country that named me and the one that mispronounces it. Sunsets reversed themselves. My shadow lagged behind. Alienation said hello as if it had always owned my name. I rolled up my sleeves as if blood could testify. Alienation does not travel alone. In…
by Lawrence Bridges We work for Kronos Seam Captureand Affiliates, specializing in bending timeinto a line-chasm where responsibleand opportunistic adults and teens falleach workday. The seam looks like headlightson trees in an early morning January commuteor postponed and frozen home tasksfor the remoters when they finally smell the coffee.Harrowingly, artists play the falllike a rack…
by Zixiang Zhang walk your shadow across the feldspar of our mother’s orogen,her grits beveled, though light softensa tine fracture— i am worn with pleasures the old continent sheds.massifs rise & sink for wear & i, seeking orthogneiss despite lava sheddingcrysts & crypts making their nudes undress, want into telling; i walk past facies of…
by Mark Brazaitis My mother is making eggs and chicken sausage in the kitchen. She died a month ago. It’s eight in the morning, and I am waking up in a second-floor bedroom of her house in Washington, D.C. Even after I remember she’s dead, I smell the eggs and sausage. I wonder if I’m…
by Clint Martin I saw my friend last night. And boy has it been a while. The moment I spotted my man my mind went to calculating calendars and figured we’d circled the sun almost five times since I’d last stood in the shade of my friend’s shadow. That’s just too long. Especially for a…
by Marlene Olin They were stranded in space. Somehow an eight-day test run had turned into a nine-month ordeal. Butch and Suni weathered the circumstances as best they could. But sometimes events spiral. Sometimes the joystick falls out of your grasp. Home or the heavens. Did they have a choice? This year I turned seventy-two.…
by Joe Woodward A mother, an elephant’s gray belly sliced pink, green sludge spilling out, grasses half-digested puddling in the midday sun. Violet shuddered remembering it from the television. The men waving their machetes over their heads. Somewhere in a jungle this was happening, or an abandoned zoo on the edge of a municipal park.…