by Elizabeth Shannon A solitary nail… in a wall where the wasp nest once hung, hardly a sigh from his side of the bed here only holds a remainder of lace woven from mud, a life delicately spun I observed this empty space daily my gray paper palace, our imaginary…
by Amy Covel It was Your work You gathered The stone The metal The tools You worked For days For months For years You created Those walls Those floors Those bars And now You live In Your own Prison.
by Holly Day Every once a while, the black ribbon snakes congregate in my front yard knit themselves into a writhing mating pile, disgorge thumb-sized stones disappear back into the knee-high weeds when they’re done. It’s important to gather these stones as soon as possible or they’ll lose their magic…
by Chris Boucher Following the hollow sound of a bounding ball Into an empty early morning gym, an old man starts to shoot solo. The long dormant floor creaks and moans And the rim rattles in the echoey cold— Echoes like his old skills. He lives with that Like he…
by Lisa Harris Perhaps you see a globe: You think, a world is round; a world spins. Continents are misshapen feet, and all around them lies blue water, the color of a Scandinavian’s eyes. Perhaps you see a million faces, a blur of non-photogenic humanity, a smear of intention, like…
by Holly Day The voices of frogs are coming in through the air conditioner vents so loud in the rain it sounds like they’re in here with us perhaps hidden under the couch, or nestled a comforter clustered in a group of bright skin and gold eyes watching us from…
by Susanna Hargreaves Do my heartfelt words matter and will my children even remember the sound of my voice Will they think of me when they hear the faint keys of a piano or when they smell blueberry muffins baking and when they see the pile of books next to…
by Chris Boucher My pet beagle is expanding my world. One day she sniffs out rabbit pellets behind the house. Another day it’s a freshly-dug hole under the shed – my neighbor says a hedgehog did it. On yet another, she returns proudly with a deer antler in her mouth….
by Holly Day I watched him float away like a single tuft of dandelion fluff out of my arms and out of the house and into his own life and then the door closed and I was alone. There was not one moment in the past twenty years that I…
by Rosemary Dunn Moeller Along Nantucket Sound at Dennisport where Swan River runs out into the sea, I watch buffleheads, far out from shore, who don’t know we’re cold today, the middle of winter, wind chill factor too low to watch for long. Sunshine’s brightest this afternoon when I step…