by Craig Fishbane Before Enrique was deported last month—if he did, in fact, get deported—I liked to joke that he was my one student who did his best work when he was not on Earth. I remember how during his last day in school, he leaned across his desk, gawking…
by John P. Kristofco …when we add up all the numbers, shut the lights, shutter the concession stands, set behind like years, people who have come and gone, seasons we’ve forgotten though once they stirred our hearts, quiet now like baselines, bleachers, segments of our souls subtracted, risen up like…
by David Armand Every weekend my father sat on the sofa all day watching movies like Lethal Weapon, Platoon, Lonesome Dove, Tombstone, and all five Rockys back-to-back. His favorite one was The Abyss with Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and sometimes he’d watch it— rewind the tape he’d rented…
by Amy Covel I’m not here To be a hero Just a world-shaker Here to erupt As a volcano A ticking time bomb Whose time is up Remembered only For that one sudden Explosion.
by David Armand My brother and I are playing outside while our dad nails together the frame for a rabbit cage. It’s for our sister who’s out at the store with Mom. They’ve taken the only car we have: a blue Pinto we rent for sixty dollars a week, a…
by John P. Kristofco in autumn clouds above the church, twenty, maybe thirty geese align like praying hands, aimed at something promised by the wisdom of their hollow bones, agate eyes acknowledging the sun; they sweep above our sanctuaries, sidewalks, all the places where we leave our lives behind, in…
by Gil Hoy When you’re a bottle 29 years go by fast, Not necessarily so for a little girl. Through Hurricane Hugo The whipping winds The crashing rain The stones that missed You, you survived intact to tell the tale of an 8 year old girl who walked along the…
by Elliott Laurence She’s closer to ninety there she is though this sunny morning making her way Hitch in her stride cane in hand. years of osteo’ I’d bargain have left her hunched over. Past the used car lot. Pushing her way past the H&R Block. Never seen her turn…
by Betsy Martin One sits reading, his face a meeting ground of several tectonic plates that collide to form his private himalayas. Another sits in the bedroom and sews. She tries to stitch past onto present by making for her daughter a pair of neon-orange- and-brown checked bell-bottoms, this being…
by James Jackson Sweet-suckled Slovenian lips– Cleveland where I found you, Columbus were you lost. Some days a black blanket we would lay under to seek stars seeking something cold & how our temperatures dropped over the years. We’d burn nights matchstick young, whiskey and coke, peel clothes to cool–…