Featured Writing

Empty movie theater

With This Money

by Claude Chabot Lily had found the powder room in haste, and rapidly finishing her customary ablutions before the start of the feature, hurried to the stairs. This was her ritual before every picture she had seen, and though she could resist it, she felt fully at ease only when…

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Poetry Posts

Bed of dandelion

The Spider in the Gnome House

by James Maynard Once I found a dandelion seed headAs big as a melon. In the gopher-plump grassI thought it was a child’s lost ball.I loved how freely it came into our sphereWithout a wrapper, or preview, or price.Or the soggy afternoon we spent rushingHalf-drowned worms from the puddlesTo the…

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Empty asphalt road stretching into distance

Static

by Talitha R. Degraff Gum–unrelenting–on a shoemeltingon the frying pan asphaltstretching endlessly, mutatinginto something Wrigley never intendedbird shit always finds a windshieldto sunbathe onshriveling like worms on smiling hooksGod grants cat hair life eternalclinging to Christmas sweatersand soul-black dressesspiders squat in attic cornerssalt-water taffy tuckedbetween newly rotting teethat the circustrouble…

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Person walking down a road with a suitcase

Six of Swords

by Robert Beveridge how the handle of the cheap plasticsuitcase feels against the palmof your hand and how the solesof your cheap Keds feel when youstep off the stoop and hit the road and you swear you won’t come backbut you know somewhere downthere you will end up back in…

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Large crashing waves

Interaction

by James Croal Jackson Now that I know how to swimI am ready to save every bodyfrom the waves in my brain. The neurological tsunamisweeps me from whatever you are trying to say because I was trying to save myself firstby drifting away.

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Dog carrying driftwood on a beach

Putting the Dog Down

by Kimberly Nunes Though it meant deaththe van pulled up in luminous sunthough it meant death—carried to sand, her final ocean whiffkind eyes on us, haunches stilled,a big heart too large, and all this beauty—though it meant death

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Pond surrounded by trees and a grassy field

Pipedream : County Hwy F36, Newton, Iowa

by James Maynard We lingered four thousand nights beneath an unmoving sky.Rut and root and bark. Fruit bursting from our limbs.And without speech we swayed, a system writtenFor the choirs of leaf we named the shattering.As the afternoon’s white yellow split into blue.As beneath the shards he sang his dark…

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Close-up shot of a line on a sports field

On the Pitch of Life

by Ali Ashhar On a freezing winter nightwhile watching premier league on televisiondad tells me he used to leadhis college team,we sip coffee togetherit has been a whilesince dad has seen his college pals.He narrates me an instanceas he reminisce his dynamic personalityon the field,in the meanwhile Chelsea scoresand dad…

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Pile of cassette tapes

Four Octaves for Cyd Charisse

by James Maynard 1/Particular, with a forty-second street skimmerPendant on the toe of your stilettoWhich lifts, emerald, into the carcinogenic heavenAbove Gene Kelly’s eyes. Yet when you moveCosmic — world & form splashing into singularity.A figure turning a figure, turning.What is seen then not seen, a flash of the eternalThen…

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Close-up of a black snake

Black Snake Wound

by Dee Allen The old Lakota prophesyHas come to passIn our lifetime.As any creatureBound to the land would,A long black snakeSlithers over turf,Then travels underground.Below, it steadlily travelsAnd along the way,It gets woundedBy anything, even byPouring torrential rainsFalling like a guillotine blade,And slowly bleedsOunces of visceraSlick, thick andDeepest of black.Nearby…

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School of fish under the ocean

A Poem is an Ocean (after Charles Bukowski)

by Amanda Valerie Judd a poem is an ocean full of depths and reefsfilled with sharks and sailors and seaweedfilled with plastic and whale spermwhipping up a tidal wave and a hurricanea poem is an ocean working for industriesa poem is an ocean losing its relevance as a living thinga…

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