by John Grey you speak in lakes and dead mothers the universe nests like water in your head for a swimmer like you there’s no such thing as drowning just prayers for anything floating on the surface of the years gone by the mercy that’s the reason you have eyes meanwhile all you offer me is a shoreline a rock soft sand to run…
by Johnathon Hannon I push the door open. The clang makes my chest seize, like a spotlight just hit me. The bar reeks of stale beer, sweat, and old regrets, tables sticky with history, booths crusted with secrets no one bothered to clean. People stumble, shout, grind, laugh too loud,…
by Rose Mary Boehm Plankter, a word that’s hardly ever used. You’ll never find just one. Plankter. Any organism living in the water column, says Wikipedia, and incapable of swimming against a current is a plankter. Plankton. Food supply for fish and whales. Even sharks like them as appetizers. In the Big-Bang scheme of things, a human must appear…
Pulkita Anand We stop deceiving through language With names and meanings With sounds and spellings With dangling sentences and silent letters With words piling on words With the mob of vandalised words growing With defunct adjectives and rudimentary words With clichéd idioms and repetitive slogans With many languages buried and…
by Kevin B We’d go out around one. Climbing through bedroom windows, we’d try to land softly on bushes and backyard lawns. Some of us went barefoot. Some hid a spare pair of sneakers under porches or tucked under tarps used for covering patio furniture. Some of us just liked…
by Menke Hudzinski-Biewenga Innocence is tending to dust bunnies raising them under the bed; watching them hop refusing to eat your veggies just so you can feed them It is painting a rainbow on the wall for Mommy; a big happy grin proud of your work—unaware you’ll sleep without dinner It is believing daddy is gone on…
by Claude Chabot The people know. I have to be careful—they listen, they hear . . . . . . and I’m afraid for the little girl. And Charlie. They keep me here, but I flee often only to return. Their voices guide me—but they are wicked guides, hateful voices,…
by Rose Mary Boehm I know I have to do some shedding. Can’t go into a long, enfeebling winter with the weight of oceans, moors, beaches, dark woods, and stark horizons. I suppose I ought to shed my lightweight roots and put down the other kind, sturdy and reliable, holding a tree that tries to rise…
by Alex Stolis When I was sixteen, Dad almost sold the bar, I crushed on the buyer’s daughter: nineteen, blond, and way out of my league. I was gone-daddy-gone. She asked if I knew where we could score some kickin’ weed, and I made a joint appear from the inside pocket of my field…
by D.S. Stewart As the cancer worms through his body, Simon Weinberg prays the same prayer he’s made hundreds of times, kneeling, arms outstretched, staring upwards into space: “God, if you happen to be there, grant me the chance to explore your handiwork.” He figures he’s doing God a favor….