by J. Caleb Thomas For as long as I can remember, Mother rang a silver bell every morning at six. It was small enough to fit in her palm but loud enough to wake the dead. Even when she was bedridden and pale with fever, she kept it on the…
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Cigarette Breaks
by Sam Hendrian Needed to cut her nails For three weeks now But also needed a new clipper And didn’t want to waste the dough. Sat on the curb outside of Ralph’s Dreaming of the afterlife Not caring if it was heaven or hell Since either way she wouldn’t have to dream anymore. Rebuilt her social…
Together You Will Survive Winter
by John Brantingham The first good day of the year finds you sitting on the bench outside the building where you work. You’re eating your sandwich across from the crow who is watching you and having whatever thoughts and daydreams and beliefs crows have on sunny May afternoons. Both of…
Smoothie
by Michael Sandler I usually begin with almond milk(from orchards siphoning the Colorado?)then plunk in yoghurt, banana, a few berriespossibly picked by migrants—I’ve seen them stoopedand wish there was a way of thanking themalso for the kale-spinach-Swiss chard mixof nutrients few of us get enough of,helping me vaunt the goodness…
Idle Flier
by Craig Proffitt Eating lunch in my crappy car. Staring at the Swamp’s glass door with the peeling tinted film. Don’t want to be around my coworkers in the lunchroom. Can’t afford to eat out. So many wrong turns. Survive another day. Is that really a goal? I think another…
5:59AM
by Sam Hendrian Bed sheets wet againFrom tears and solo gearsCranking away at fantasies,The last remaining safe space. Sunrise is mercilessly early—6 AM to be exact—And there’s a suffocating pressureTo start the day off strong. But no one’s ever gotten anywhereOn the strength of a resolution,Since it’s only a brief…
Poverty
by David Armand Most of my childhood I lived in a singlewide trailer,which was in the middle of a clearing in the woodsjust north of a little town in Folsom, Louisiana. But it wasn’t even a town. It was a village,and everyone there was just as poor as we were….
A Moment Depends Not Just on Its Moment
by D.R. James You’d like to move on beyond mean memory,skirt that peopled, hollow squalor, pack upyour numerous mind encampments whose smokycook fires now flicker, now flare on this or thatnostalgic hillside—sometimes like codedreminders, sometimes like brash blazes arousinganything but a simpering gratitudefor a brainscape stippled with so-called love.But then…
Waiting for Hunter
by Jackie Tricolli I am slow to rise in the morning, no urgency to start the day, no task to get me moving. I am slow to rise from a bed I just bought in a home I just made my own, daylight peeking through windows bearing no blinds, a…
A Farm in Ohio
by William Heath I remember Aunt Hazel’s two-story wooden farmhouse by the roadside, the flat fields of northwestern Ohio stretching out in all directions until they hit a tree line left on purpose to cut down on the wind. The barns are a short walk from the house, and a rooster commands the area where we…