by Carol Casey The path is trodden, dusty, level.You know it will take youwhere many have gone. Step off—tangles of brambles,sometimes with blackberries,more often with little clawsthat catch on clothes and skin;and tortuous tree roots—inconvenient, sacred data unearthed—subterranean snakelets somehowsifted into snarls for feet to catch.There are stems that twine…
by Jesse Breite What could be more radiant, more terrifying than the faces of my friends congregated for me from their odd places, soulful little red dots speckling the globe? Each one yearning more than a torch ablaze in the black cold of December,…
by Jesse Breite God’s broken teeth spit out and tumbled from the bald peak, gurgled from earth’s hot belly. Pinnacle Mountain is the only peak I’ll always climb in silence. The congregation of lizards waits and listens to the shifting stems, the heart’s blossom,…
by Jesse Breite If the fruit tells us anything, it is that we yearn, that the stillness is furious, that the fury is a sacred fire, that fire is a way of breathing, that lungs feed the open wound, but also that color…