by Jason Grant The entire king-sized bed is mine now, but I can’t seem to move from the left side to the right because on the nights you were here—laying there—if I dared move from my side to yours in the middle of the night it was like I-was-crossing-some-boundary you-needed…
by Jason Grant The entire king-sized bed is mine now, but I can’t seem to move from the left side to the right because on the nights you were here—laying there—if I dared move from my side to yours in the middle of the night it was like I-was-crossing-some-boundary you-needed…
by Adeline Macdonald Clean steam iron the linen sheets, white and crisp and beautiful and without fault or fold White walls upon white walls with nothing to upset you or hurt you or make you cry or want to leave or want to think Do you love it? Is it…
by Jason Grant Five kids happily sit togetherfor a photographwith hopes it could stay like this forever. And though I know better,and that nothing lasts—not even laughs,five kids happily sit together. I’ll talk about the weatheror whatever else, if someone asks,with hopes it could stay like this forever but no…
by Anne Mikusinski Life is a pie chartShade it three quarters darkDue to waitingFor newsOr answersOr reasons whyBut keep that one fourth brightFor momentsKept in memory.
by Kimberly Nunes The question was water, how to bring more to our lives.It may all come down to the Western Snowy Plover.City seats and valley farms, ecologists, and native tribes—the thing is water, how to bring it to our lives.Ohlone Esselen Monterey coast, here, where this bird thrives,the size…
by Gil Hoy he was my father. I never knewhim very wellbecause he wasn’t aroundwhen I was born. You wouldn’t know He married my motherwhen she was just 16. That hetook my sister to the park Most Sunday morningsso my mothercould sleep in. You wouldn’t knowa lot about any of…
by James Maynard Once I found a dandelion seed headAs big as a melon. In the gopher-plump grassI thought it was a child’s lost ball.I loved how freely it came into our sphereWithout a wrapper, or preview, or price.Or the soggy afternoon we spent rushingHalf-drowned worms from the puddlesTo the…
by Talitha R. Degraff Gum–unrelenting–on a shoemeltingon the frying pan asphaltstretching endlessly, mutatinginto something Wrigley never intendedbird shit always finds a windshieldto sunbathe onshriveling like worms on smiling hooksGod grants cat hair life eternalclinging to Christmas sweatersand soul-black dressesspiders squat in attic cornerssalt-water taffy tuckedbetween newly rotting teethat the circustrouble…
by Robert Beveridge how the handle of the cheap plasticsuitcase feels against the palmof your hand and how the solesof your cheap Keds feel when youstep off the stoop and hit the road and you swear you won’t come backbut you know somewhere downthere you will end up back in…
by James Croal Jackson Now that I know how to swimI am ready to save every bodyfrom the waves in my brain. The neurological tsunamisweeps me from whatever you are trying to say because I was trying to save myself firstby drifting away.