by Caitlin O’Halloran It was seconds after midnight, and an old woman was sitting on a park bench with a lit cigarette in her mouth, holding a loaf of bread in her lap. She tore off small pieces of bread and threw them to the dozens of birds that had gathered around her. She was alone for many hours, just her and the birds, who stayed with her even…
by Caitlin O’Halloran It was seconds after midnight, and an old woman was sitting on a park bench with a lit cigarette in her mouth, holding a loaf of bread in her lap. She tore off small pieces of bread and threw them to the dozens of birds that had gathered around her. She was alone for many hours, just her and the birds, who stayed with her even…
by Hayley Russell Morning arrives like forgiveness, slow, reluctant, soft around the edges. I wake to the thin seam of light slipping beneath the curtain, a reminder that even closed spaces find their own ways to breathe. Some days, I am all heaviness, a stone learning to speak. Other days, I am the window, open just enough to let warmth through. Healing isn’t the rising. It’s the returning again and again to the quiet place…
by Ophelia Knight In America the pledge of allegiance is godly no man who serves his country will have benefits for life they are fleeting every politician has sacrificed a life written random names of innocent bystanders on stinky notes come back to the scene of the crime and shrugged over dead bodies informed their guard…
by Samuel Goldsmith 243? Is your scale broken? I’m afraid not, Mister Goldsmith. That stress goes straight to your waist. Might I suggest a lifestyle change? I recommend you eat more green food and fewer red alerts. But Doc, I already buried my checkmarks out back. I’m as unverified as a midnight snack, yet I can’t keep from being captive, a captain about to capsize…
by Hayley Russell Behind the old house stood the tree where endings went to rest, its branches curled like open hands, offering and releasing in the same breath. Each fall, I traced the edges of every leaf, memorizing the slow surrender, green to gold, gold to rust, rust to the soft crumble of becoming earth again. It taught me more than anyone ever managed about the art of leaving: that release is…
by Ophelia Knight I / have come to a halt / here the men are thin with yearning / not the kind that you remember the kind that lingers in bones when they are no more / dust in wooden boxes plated in faux silver 6 days I have walked…
by Samuel Goldsmith my mind is listed as two beds two baths but calling that closet a bed is a stretch even when i spend all night there. the square footage includes the basement place to store spores and incomplete ideas dreams and goals sans posts the only quarter of the abode in constant use where the crass cut-grass smell of power can be found. not near enough to nip…
by Ivan de Monbrison I should have died much sooner, right after Dad died. I should have killed myself very quickly, without even taking the time to think about it too much, because afterwards you hesitate, you procrastinate, and it’s already over for good. But my first real suicidal urge…
by Hayley Russell You walk through rooms as if stepping into old paragraphs, edges curling, floorboards breathing cold against your feet, wallpaper lifting at the seams like peeling time, colors fading into the bruised yellow of a memory you never wanted to inherit. Every chair remembers who once sat in it. Every door still holds the shape of how…
by Ophelia Knight In every ghetto there is a being nicknamed SEXY ________ @ 8:30am they rise mixing Florida water and watching as the rhinestones fall from thrifted applebottom jeans they have grandmothers that kneel in church pews & call on their singular version of Jehovah taking baths in milk clouded with lavender bubble bath tendrils of kanekalon dyed…