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 John P. Kristofco Sometimes she remembers those who come;sometimes she does not,her dreams blur with world she really sees: “I made doughnuts at the stove last night, before the men crawled from the pantry with their guns.”She sits inside the complex of a hoarder’s life,storing things forever from the thief who…
by John P. Kristofco Sat there smoking, reading texts,her old black car purring in the chill October air,dark hair swept to shouldersrounded like the hillsidesshaped by years behind that wheel;the wrinkle of her mouth,shadows at the corners of her eyes,skin that caught the yellow morning light,lips too thin, it seemed,…
by John P. Kristofco …when we add up all the numbers, shut the lights, shutter the concession stands, set behind like years, people who have come and gone, seasons we’ve forgotten though once they stirred our hearts, quiet now like baselines, bleachers, segments of our souls subtracted, risen up like…
by John P. Kristofco in autumn clouds above the church, twenty, maybe thirty geese align like praying hands, aimed at something promised by the wisdom of their hollow bones, agate eyes acknowledging the sun; they sweep above our sanctuaries, sidewalks, all the places where we leave our lives behind, in…
by John P. Kristofco what the house keeps secret, things not meant for life outside the walls, only ours to tell, and so we never do: how we look when we get up, stairs we climb, noisy doors, dust and socks on floors, our angry words and soft, “her kerchief…
by John P. Kristofco …lives apart, among us like the silence we all hear, implore, avoid, the face we never see on sidewalks, on a thousand mile hill; …cannot walk in worlds he does not know, except for words he’s taken up like stones to build a wall, a dream,…
by John P. Kristofco He had grown accustomed to the dark, the silence, candor of the rock around him, echo of his sisters’ tears, his friends, promises they made as if to fool the truth, when he heard the stone removed, the wind, the words “Lazarus come forth,” and he…
by John P. Kristofco midnight orphan, stepping like a deer outside the woods, come to taste the buds beside the stream, soften stones, veil falcon’s prey, lay back on the grass and gaze into our souls, skittish at the sun like birds, too light to fall, too soft to…
By John P. Kristofco silent but for wind against exquisite bones, bird that flies alone along the same line as in days of brighter sun, before the coming of the night and snow, before the blue lament of letting go