by Marilee Robin Burton I trekked to Glendale to retrieve a copy of Black Tickets by Jayne Anne Phillips, an intense and dark writer. The book was a collection of stories I’d been wanting to read and had even ordered from Amazon but was too anxious to await the money-saving secondhand…
by Kathryn Brown Ramsperger 1946, Beirut. France grants Lebanon its independence. Today we are to go down to the water. Each trip is a special occasion. I can already feel the aquamarine surf as it breaks on the sand—not quite waves, more than placid ripples. It will hit my skinned…
by Saramanda Swigart Julia used poison the first time. She’d been married to the senator for almost six years. There was a scandal involving a minor tribute, and even though it was easy to cover up, the senator’s reputation suffered. They had a child, but he died. After that, bitterness…
by Cathy Krizik Keandra placed her napkin in her lap. “Can we pray?” Oh shit. Lunch was supposed to be soup and salad. Not this. I clenched my teeth and dropped my knife, the clang reverberating like a spade hitting rock. Here? Now? Really? “Pray—right. Yes, of course.” Keandra and…
by Rebecca Gawron The first blow knocks my glasses to the floor, as usual; like I’m on auto pilot, I immediately search for them, snatch them up, and toss them on the dashboard for safekeeping. For some reason he always gives me time to do this before the second strike….
by Marilyn Ringer It is the season of races where only one can rise and claim the gold while a world of others must accept no less than heartbreak. Who will remember the woman, pulled up lame, her years of preparation spent on one false step, the look on her…
by Michelle Huston I have no memory of the first time I got my period. I can barely remember getting it this past week, although the gnawing feeling inside my uterus reminds me that it did indeed arrive on Wednesday. I do, however, remember when I first learned that a…
By Alison Hicks From the glass door in my father’s room we watched the acorn woodpecker hopping up and down the trunk of the pine. Anne had brought birdseed, stored it behind the door. We admired him. I was nervous about the visit, afraid of Anne. I didn’t know…
by Elizabeth Ivey I didn’t always know what I was, but I knew I was different. It was as though I had simply sprung into existence, sprouting from the gritty front steps of St. Agnes’s. The matron found me pounding on the dense oak door in the driving rain, drenched…
by Josh Medsker (A note on the text: This text was taken from Adolf Hitler’s notorious book, “Mein Kampf.” This poem and the others in the series are all found poems. The words do not belong to me, but their current order is my own. –JM) FROM—LOVE POEMS I FOUND…