By Leila Fortier It is always with me Where I do not know~ Stuck in the Forefront of afterthought~ On the outskirts Of unformed memory~ And I, of the midnight asking~ Nighting of the unanswered~ This brothel of existence~ No longer of you or I- but of poetry~ Sprouting accents…
By John Sweet this quiet knowledge, this unspoken admission, this stupid goddamn truth that all of your great adventures are in the past that nothing can be touched without the ever-present threat of doing it harm not by you, of course, but by 100,000,000 others just like you, which is…
By RJ Traub I am April, green and fair, lilacs tangled in my hair, oft-disheveled, awkward, wild, partly grown but mostly child, hope and comfort in my smile, winter-haunted all the while. Though my daffodils glint gold, I was born of mists and cold, struggling, when my wan sun sets,…
By Carol Hamilton At 34,000 feet or so, I love the little maps that appear on the back of the seat in front of me. They show me where I am, the planned route, the lands and seas easily connected with red dashes and arrows. I read the startling temperature…
By John Sweet An ambulance in the sunlight. An arm, a leg, something missing from the picture, but the picture has no sound. The dog has been shot twice, but refuses to die. Cut its head off and it grows back,…
By April Garcia Middle class. Trailer trash. Stay-at-home mom. If staying home to raise my son, the noblest of all arts, deems me ignorant– then ignorance is bliss. Narrow-minded. Success-blinded. Workin’ for the man. You slave away, –9 to 5 I work 24/7 shaping the mind of an innocent young…
By Benjamin Jackson My daughter Emma was born in the last cold days of December, 2001, unmoving, unbreathing, unable to live without immediate surgical intervention. The very first thought I had upon seeing my very first daughter for the very first time was that I hoped I hadn’t made a…
By JB Mulligan The flat and pallid path to all horizons narrows to the domed demise of an ashen, ill-lit sky. Light breaks through the drear overhead sometimes (enough to remember, anyway), and stains the jagged dirt (that once the sky was washed, translucent, the distant rim aglitter in a…
By Andrew Clark Mr. Philips quietly wrote his name on the chalk board and then turned to face us. Mrs. Fisher, my second grade teacher, had left the classroom just moments before, taking a brief refuge in the teachers’ lounge where all the teachers go to regroup, rehearse battle strategies,…
in memory of Russell Libby, 1956—2012, former Executive Director of MOFGA By Cynthia Brackett-Vincent Paint your nails in the Jeep as your husband drives south. But then you hear rain on the roof and remember his poem—rivers flowing, water meeting. Shop at Toys R Us for your granddaughter’s birthday. But…