By Kristal Peace (This poem contains domestic abuse.) My mother holdsMy hand as we navigateThe city’s streets during rush hour,The song of sirens escorting us home.She holds the grocery bagThat yanks her toward dinner. She holdsThe sharp words my fatherFlings at her when she thinksThe day is going well. She…
by Michael H. Brownstein When I pass to the nether world, my dearest, watch for me in the rain. Do not go outside in gentle dress— I will be the acid from hammer fist clouds. When the weather changes, be sure to salt the walkway as you go. I will…
by Michael H. Brownstein 1. The door in the wall led to an inner sanctum and the path through the garden to a paved road narrow and bent, through and over. We took it, step by step, against ancient brownstone, gray brick and rock, until the house we never lived…
by Michael H. Brownstein Everything you wear, you wear to its grave, your gray stockings a small hole near the big toe, its color an undistinguished gray your shirt with a stain your pants frayed at the bottom, a rip in one pocket, change falling freely creating melodies you are…
by Michael Brownstein –after the Shamanistic Theory of Three Souls and the reading of the bones when a ram is sacrificed When sleep is not a promise, and the witness tree fills itself with ants, the break in the collarbone is never enough or it may be as plentiful as…