by Mitch Green She stood still – in broken fragments of bleeding glass, Washed into palms of home-grown flesh; Psychopathic, necromantic, romantic – lost in mass. Meddling meaning, mingles with mad hands; Clapping in rhythmic, rhyming pace. In dreamscapes you thrive – Real. Mold – casted to hold. So close…
by Russell Brickey 5 p.m., winter— a man stood before my freshman dorm with a woman in a wheelchair. “I used to go to school here,” he said, “but then I was drafted for the Korean War.” He clearly wanted to talk, but I was young, uncomfortable, not knowing what…
by Christy Bailes Academic Scratch Literary Criticism they call, as I play desert Jenga with Abbey’s books, spurring academic scratch into my elbow, while his words keep piling anarchy blocks that hiss from post-it tongues, charming words on paper. I can’t stop digging Cactus Ed’s life, even though prickly criticism…
by Megan Elmendorf Grey is heaven groaning above; Grey is the heart within; Grey is the man standing here, A woman at his side, too thin. ~ Thin like a kerchief is his spirit; Thin is the woman’s too; Thin is the rose lying there, On a black box covered…
by M.J. Cleghorn Pork chops on Thursday. “She was the woman who always brought pork chops on Thursday”. Some woman. Red hair. Nice camel coat. A woman of a certain age. Classy. The Upper Eastside type. Her grandfather was a tough guy with a gang on the the wrong side…
by Wanda Morrow Clevenger A night wind months before frog thrum rock-a-byes baby, carries on its breast lost Jacob Marley. And little else stirs this chill but ruff and fluting. For two decades an owl waits with me for March tilt and many weeks more before a crisp hoo breaks…
by Eileen Hennessy As to the question of when things took a turn: Maybe that summer when I was edgy, the luminous nights went cobalt blue, the caterpillars stripped the trees of every leaf, leaving me to count the branch-shadows trembling in the crabgrass yard. Since then, closer every day,…
by Kevin Casey For just a quarter, the old man would tell your fortune… Summers after supper — curfewed, pent — we’d collapse in a graceless pack on that squalid house, lost in its cedars. Cracked lath spilled from the kitchen’s sagging plaster, and the stained wall’s sconce made stacked…
by Kevin Casey The winter stays put in its corner — an ash bucket, unhandled and dented, hungering for embers the summer stole to paint that sunrise while you slept. The sun rose like a a child’s red spade, and dug its way through apricot and amber, saffron and sand,…
by Michael C. Keith Our host declares the party started Toasting all with a tequila shot Glasses are salted and then saluted Everyone gulps and lungs grow hot * Another! he wails as we all recover This is for all who bare their asses We drink his spirits with…