by Michael Cooney We talked of a single bird, so early that only the shape of her face was visible to my fingers.Not one, but several, were calling. The darkness was too brief.The glass of water was untouched beside the bed.Did we sleep at all on solstice night? Later, hours later,…
by Samuel Goldsmith Best stuff wads of cotton isolation into syncopated caverns so the sound of honey can’t drip through and glue together memories. Such sweet mortar to lick a pyramid a monument for mourn. Mummified remains of muses who once clasped voices like hands. Those without ears can’t yearn for songs past. Instead they hear the lullaby of fear the sound…
by Abigail Cain Mother still doesn’t know about the cans of saliva-soaked scabs despite their five-year presence beneath my bed. When I was fifteen, I climbed the oak tree in the backyard. The branches of the tree rested gently on the roof of the old shed where we stored the…
by Natalia Ortiz Lopez Elisa del Valle walked into town with clean brown shoes and splintered feet. She came from a region in South America whose name English speakers couldn’t spell or pronounce correctly, much to her relief. She liked that nobody could remind her of home. Leaving had meant…
by Amy Parker “I am a writer, not an author,” I explained. “Oh—what do you write?” My voice began to shake as I tried to explain—nothing. Every time this question is raised, I clam up. Normally a well-spoken individual, I cringe inside as my words get twisted up in my…
by Emily Brochu By October, the crows returned. They always did. They came with the cold wind—black flocks swirling above the cul-de-sac like storm clouds too dark for the sky to bear. The air grew heavy when they came, thick with the scent of wet earth and smoke. They clung…
by Ivan de Monbrison The mountain is split in two. On the other side, there’s a path. It winds between the hills. At the end of the path, there’s a burnt-out cross. The sun has been nailed to the sky. Your hand is bleeding from your nails, but you’re not…
by Hayley Russell I come from the hush of cold mornings, the kind where silence grows like frost along the edges of windows thin, breakable, waiting for light. My mother’s voice cracked open rooms, a stormfront gathering in the doorframe, yet she’d pause, let the hinges breathe, and show me how to listen for smaller truths: the house exhaling after…
by Richard Downing “Too creepy for me, Shipley . . . I’m gone.” Once again, Shipley’s face had become a silent movie, a spliced choreography of twists, twitches, and tics, eyes, nose, and mouth unstuck actors blinking, pinching, and pursing from frame to frame. And his face would stay that way until he could summon that one exhaustive snort from an unpinched nose that offered release. His eyelids would then slow, modulate, his nose cease flaring and pinching, flaring and pinching, his grimace-lined lips smooth then part…
by Cainhurst As a kid I cultivated the habit of reading the same poem every morning before going to school. The other kids remained unimpressed by the lines that fell from the burning tip of my tongue, they were only a bit dazzled by my aggressive utterance, they didn’t even know what a poem was. I started then to relish the high solitude poetry seemed to give…