by Elizabeth Christopher Sylvie’s done with worry. She clicks off the ten o’clock news, thinking what a relief it is to be done with it, like a cool current rolling under the skin. Their kids are grown and gone. Their youngest didn’t turn out to be soft in the head….
by Nadja K. McGlinn The nurse in the cubicle where my husband and I got our second shots of the COVID-19 remarked that everyone she’d injected that day had the scar from a smallpox vaccination, meaning we were old—old enough to have still gotten them as children. She noted I…
by Peter Breyer Who loved me more, Sita or Govinda? The thought consumed me as I exited the Pan Am Clipper in Bombay. The air was so thick that it smelled. I walked into the terminal with large, swirling fans hanging from the dirty ceiling above. Counters were piled high…
by Jonathan Cooper In the laneway’s narrowing lightrestaurant workers clutch at coats,plastic bags sagging with personal effects.The doorman curses and fretsat the forgotten family photo, taped insidehis staff locker, smiling into the darkas men pound nails into plywood,closing every way in—every way out.
by Steven R Weiner You are in a room where machines chirpLike chicks in shells who will never peck free, Machines too sleek and modernTo be birds, with spikes and curling tubes Arrayed around small screens trainedTo display your cells in codes, finding patterns Of polarized cells and their magneticEnergy…
by Kaitlyn Badger-Turner It was fall of 1944 in Auschwitz Birkenau when Joseph’s will to live was almost completely snuffed from him. He collapsed face first in the thick mud, barely registering people shuffling around his crumpled figure. A young woman with shaved hair and sunken cheeks eventually turned him…
by Emily Eddins You could have gone on indefinitelyIf it weren’t for usAll you seals, sea lions, walrusesLooking for the melted iceYou used to breed on, sleep on, nurse onWe took thatConsider yourself evictedIt won’t be coming back Sorry we didn’t invite you to theclimate change mitigation conferenceSorry we forgot…
by K.A. Wright Lie to me in the daytimeTell me you don’t recallBut tonightfor one nightI am your tasty truth Disown the weight of my nameDiscard me somewhere darkCut your eyesTurn your backclose the doorthen open it again tonight Lace my drink with poisonDestroy any guilty dropsbut tonightthis nightI’ll bleed…
by Regina Thomas We’d needed a trip to get away. From what, I’m not sure. But Geneve said we needed to get away, so we got away. The first night I was the one who made the mistake of discovery. I’d been looking around for any possible entertainment after determining…
by George Freek The generations come and gowith endless repetition,as people travel along the roadand pass away in due time,as spring flowers or winter snows.It’s something we all know.In a few hours I’ll be sitting withanother woman, drinking wine,trying to make new memoriesto forget our past.Perhaps it’s not tragic,but it…