by Matthew Wherttam Martin hopped on to the back of the camp’s garbage truck, expecting to be riding it all the way to the town dump. But the truck made a sharp turn and flung him against the trunk of an oak tree. He slid down the tree, flapped around…
by Carol Casey The path is trodden, dusty, level.You know it will take youwhere many have gone. Step off—tangles of brambles,sometimes with blackberries,more often with little clawsthat catch on clothes and skin;and tortuous tree roots—inconvenient, sacred data unearthed—subterranean snakelets somehowsifted into snarls for feet to catch.There are stems that twine…
by Carol Casey The August sun has almost spun the straw to gold in the large stack behind the barn. We take turns sliding down its side, whooping in the earthy smell, the scratchy stalks tickling. Not sure why I go down backward, push off so hard. I land with a thump on almost…
by Sarah Carleton They ride the East Coast, up, down,hopping from venue to venue like fingers on a fretboard, passenger-seat sister playing mandolinas they sing to mark the miles, their paired tones woven into road-tire roar.On stage they perform the trick of trading instruments for a tune or two to…
by Shoshauna Shy There’s a calendar on my counter.Now all the boxes are blank.A single cup and saucer sitwhere the toaster used to be.I didn’t get to keep the table either. A stash of unopened mail fills the spacewhere the cookbooks once sat.The cookbooks that went unopened.Become a wife. It’ll…
by Sarah Carleton What if death is just us ready to burstlike a bladder primed after a long road tripor a bud so packed with sunshine it just has to bloom and here we are at the end, flush withall we’ve been given—soft six-pm skies, autumnyellows, day-long rains, endless plants,…
by Reese Bentzinger 1:19, I’m watching the scenein Spirited Away where a creature with a bike in his back, decay on his breath, crawls to the bathhouse he’s got no name and no eyes, just two hollow pits begging for a bath but they won’t let him in there’s no way for him to cry, but I swear I…
by Kashawn Taylor no longer can i surviveon bitter caffeine and self-hatred toppedwith old-fashioned determination sprinkleskeenly aware that my eyes lie, that whati see is / not mewhat I see is not me but i can’t helpthat sometimes eating’s a chore& i’d rather do anythingother than masticate and swallowanything else…
by Jarek Jarvis Morning—gold light saunters through the window— I wake in my old room, where the walls, once sunburst orange, lit my bed ablaze each dawn. I rose bathed in day’s nascent flame. Not a gasp of spark lingers to rouse me. The weather report beats against my door. Dishes chatter in the kitchen….
by Katie Kenney At the doctor’s office the carpet cloudy,matching magazines so melancholy with weepy celebrity stories, watery wallsfor wild vines reaching to nowhere. Curled-up posters of the elderlywith your disease, so happily the mere picture of livingwith a single peppy foot inside the grave. They’re saying the secret of…
by Kashawn Taylor In this big housealone in my own room I hear from downstairs fourteen strange men loafed on couches enraptured by guys in tights running back and forth across a manicured field on this day of Thanks hooting laughing shooting the shit It could be worse Shit, it has been worse much much worse than babysitters in an office under…