by Shannen Barrow Smoke and dust fill my lungs like silver needles edging on my itching throat. Now holding a blackened hand to my chest, burning. Every time I breathe in smoldering air, sweat sticks to my skin and blurry eyes. Tossing my head in sunken cotton threads, here my nightmares are unable to sleep as horns…
by Diane Webster I am a 69-year-old woman who sleeps on Garfield sheets. I am a 69-year-old woman who hangs a poster of a crabby cat that states, “I AM smiling!” I am a 69-year-old woman who has a samurai sword mounted above her bed and who no longer has to sleep with a kitchen knife resting on her night…
by Diane Webster Day by day my pills leave their tiny doors open attesting to the fact that I swallowed them. Week after week I fill the compartments with their allotted pills and snap the doors shut. Only to start Sunday through Saturday time after time, faster than a week used to last.
by Jon Wesick How much does anarchy weigh? Is the State of the Union Address on Elm Street? Do penguins cheat on their income taxes? Does the aristocracy make good bookmarks? What about elephants? Did telegraphs cry when Inspector Morse died? Are mountains safe to machine wash? Do giant sequoias shop at big-and-tall stores? What color socks…
by Sonnet Mondal When I read a book of poems I try to think of the moment when the first flow of thoughts gushed through its pages. When I hear a music album I try to think of the moment when the first note of the first track in it kissed the muse of its roots. When…
by Rob McClure Didn’t mean to leave you lost in the corn mazeso long,didn’t know the gown of moonlightcould come caress your candy-bonesand bathe you in milk cherry blood.Didn’t mean to set the cornrows ablaze,make you ghostwalk through the smoke,didn’t know the emergencypath lighting failedairy hostess you,dry-ice starlet with a…
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…