By Patricia Ljutic (This story contains suicide.) My friend Lila had an ever-present yearning to be somewhere other than where she was, as if emotional burrs lodged under her skin and began pricking her before she could settle anywhere. She spoke about changing where she lived, but had such a…
By Jim Speese Songs were in his head. Constantly. It was a problem and he supposed it wasn’t unique. Given the hegemonic presence of advertising jingles and TV show themes and music pumped into grocery stores and pharmacies and hospitals, it seemed quite likely that the fact that songs constantly…
By Maggie Kennedy “The orange tastes like a refrigerator,” my son says,spitting out his bite and pretending to gag,and though I have never tasted a refrigeratorI know what he means. The orange tastes like the plastic it was wrapped in.And though I have never eaten plastic,the conjured smell fills my…
By Ruby Peru When, at ages twelve and thirteen, Maureen and I were deposited for safekeeping on an Arizona horse ranch for the duration of the summer of 1980, it was very much as if we had both dropped from outer space, but from completely different spaceships. The ultimate tomboy,…
By Angelica Whitehorne My mini skirt, a metallic shield. My martini in hand,a weapon with its tiny spear. I glory cry to a last generation’shomage of song, remember the fallen, the now mothers withwreckage hips bound to their front porches. I don’t belong to anyone, least of all myself.I open…
By Loren Mayshark A blustery, white January day on Dutch Hollow Road in western New York. I was a benchwarmer freshman on the junior varsity basketball team in a school with about two hundred students. This meant the team was composed of both freshman and sophomore players, and I’d had…
By Mary Warren Foulk One weary pandemic day I found myself returning to Mark Doty’s Still Life with Oysters and Lemon. During my second semester at Vermont College of Fine Arts, my faculty advisor urged me to read it, and within the first few pages, I understood why. I was…
By Phibby Venable All my mother’s words live around here,and I am always placing them in whatever orderI can remember.They hold the door open each morning, and suggestI have a better gratitude and attitude,for being aliveI stretch my eyes all over the sky, I lean upand look over the mountainsMy…
By William Reeves It was always about the eighty-eight black and white keys, the foot pedals, the rhythm, the synchronicity between the left hand bass clef and the right hand treble clef notes. It was about the chords, the sharps, flats, naturals and the time signatures. It was never about…
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…