by Gabrielle Idso The cottage perched on the cliff edge like a barnacle. Its walls were a mosaic of shells that caught the morning light and threw it back in a thousand minuscule rainbows. From deep within the walls, a lullaby drifted from a moonshell. The notes were soft and familiar….
by Gabrielle Idso The cottage perched on the cliff edge like a barnacle. Its walls were a mosaic of shells that caught the morning light and threw it back in a thousand minuscule rainbows. From deep within the walls, a lullaby drifted from a moonshell. The notes were soft and familiar….
by Vivian Pearl I see a young woman,A white blond girl with her hair shaved high above her scalp, a holy blond child sitting in her fifteen-year-old lapShe looks over him with pride and joy.He is not the destruction of her future but her future itself, her only future. These…
by Vivian Pearl To get home I have to walk under the bridgeWhere the street lights don’t work The strangers I pass always have something for meThey flick their tongue over their teeth and coo like pigeons in the ragged winter trees I fear that my body will be pulled…
by Peter Hannon A man in blue overalls pumped his gas. His truck was green with a silver stripe and rusted wheel wells. Henry pulled in and glanced at the man as he drove between the pumps. The man picked his nose and dragged his finger against the side of…
by Arianna Taylor Your cat keeps looking at me funny. I don’t understand much, but I know the eyes it’s giving me from across the kitchen—like I’m some sort of sick mammal with silk-spiked teeth. It thinks I’m a lost cause and that I’m doomed. I don’t want to stare at it anymore, but there’s nowhere else for my eyes to go. I prefer something breathing…
by Sean Gutman An Expanded Exemplum of the Master from Walton’s Voyage in Frankenstein I had had my fill of the sea. Have you heard the tired joke about the sailor with the oar upon his shoulder? A man, retiring from his life aboard ship, set out inland until he came across someone who asked of the oar, “What is…
by Sambhu Ramachandran We know the person who peeled an onion for the first time expected some mystery to lurk behind layer upon eye-smarting layer and was terribly disappointed when the bulb revealed nothing. Now, we know the onion does not hide any secrets big enough to lead us naked down the street like Archimedes. We have…
by Sambhu Ramachandran I could never believe in a god rising up from the roiling waters of my identity crisis, my heart gripped around his bulging biceps like a ship saved just in time. But I put my faith in your cooking to clear away the long wisps of fog that curl behind…
by William James –for Manchester, NH [2] Sitting on a graffiti’d stone overlooking the city. Watching jets take off from MHT. Ruiner is in my headphones & hell is empty. There’s sermons to read, lectures to write, & finally a warmth from the sun. All the houses look the same from this height. You’d like it here. I’m out of breath from the climb, but at least I’m climbing. Landing gear stowed…
by william james -for Manchester, NH I drive to the grocery store to relieve my refrigerator of its crushing loneliness. I return empty-handed because I left my wallet on my desk. & Elm St. rages on, all gorgeous cacophony. O Manchester, you glittering rhinestone. O Manchester, you tacky plastic pearl. I love you for your refined kitsch. I love you…