by Kerri Vasilakos I felt the oceans rhythms and listened to the waves crash against the shore like a heartbeat, you didn’t know my body was part of the sand. I would hear your footsteps approaching and pray that you’d walk all over me. I was there for all your…
by Brian Reickert When I was thirty-one I learned the difference between casket dead and hospital dead. There was no composure, only a profusion of absence and that which accompanies it. My father’s eyes were wide and yellow, his face whiskered and sallow, lips cracked, swollen tongue, mouth agape. The…
by Kristal Peace What is the length ofHeartbreak? The colour ofDespair? I will tell you:The length of heartbreak is The story of the dayYou left me. The colour ofDespair is the pool of tearsDancing in my bewildered hands. And The sound of guilt,Does anyone knowHow decisive and sureThe sound of…
by Gwenn A. Nusbaum Bobbing, in the language of hunger, they hover over what isn’t given.
by Richard Jacobs They were approaching the bend in the creek that afforded the prettiest view. He would stop her there, draw her away from the sunlit path—it was the first day without rain in a week—and they would have their talk, long delayed. His heart jangled at the prospect…
by James Croal Jackson My excuse for a poor score:the frisbee has teeth. And a mind.It chose to rebel inside the wind– I agree, of course, when you sayour food delivery job is temporary.We have hours before we need to clock in– an ordinary morningstraddling the Olentangy river.Any way to…
by Paul Hundt I often walk through Manhattan’s Central Park, usually from East 96th Street to my club at 59th and 7th. It’s about two miles in all and, about half way, I sometimes pass a solitary boulder just south of the Rumsey Playfield between the Mall and The East…
by Daria Smith Giraud You See, this trauma is branded, #BlackLivesMatter— co-opted, a corporation with corporate donations. Ablack girl like me, will never spend or touch.You do, however see and feel its binding residue its Black Magic Matter surging the well of tears frommy mothers’ mothers’ mothers’ injustice. Blood-borne lipsof little white…
By Jane Finlayson “Arils.” “Arils?” Deb stopped digging the flesh from the out-of-season pomegranate imported from god-knows-where and held up sticky hands in surrender. The juice dripped and wound around her wrists like a henna tattoo. She squinted up at Doug sitting on the porch. “That’s what they’re called.” He…
By Jamie Dill “Will that be all?” says a voice that hasn’t decided if smoking two packs a day are doing it any harm. Is it a man or a woman? I can’t decide, then conclude that it could be either. In this moment, the voice is everyone and everything,…