by Jason Grant The entire king-sized bed is mine now, but I can’t seem to move from the left side to the right because on the nights you were here—laying there—if I dared move from my side to yours in the middle of the night it was like I-was-crossing-some-boundary you-needed…
by Gonzalinho da Costa For Father Pat Giordano, SJ The moon abides invisibly in a day painted white. At my shoulder a dark green shadow is floating, the sea. Breakers rush toward shore, roaring lions inside a wind tunnel. Peering within myself, I see bottomless water. Stillness enters the space…
by Gonzalinho da Costa I heard a headache Hammering away. Heavy blows broke off Block fragments. Tiny chips scattered, Peas bouncing away. Blast set off so loud I was deafened By noonday light Flashing front, center, Right, left. Beans rebounded Inside my skull. Ball bearings spiraled Round and round Inside…
HERMITS OF BETHLEHEM Chester, New Jersey Beyond the threshold is silence. Stillness suffuses like light. The world outside is spinning. Summer flames at its height. Solitude is a boon companion. Self-knowledge climbs like a sloth. The bed is spare, a thin beard. The rocking chair is a moth. Dig in…
by Gonzalinho da Costa I saw you dirty, sleeping in the street, Your dry hide, carbon smudged ancient pottery, Your fingernails, black as oil pooling in the driveway, Your hair spiked like hawk feathers clumped by doormat mud. I mistook you for an asphalt ball Tumbling out of a truck,…
by Jonel Abellanosa Beethoven knew my life Would take this turn and slow, Seeing me leaning for hours Watching window panes turn White from yellow, then gray, Listening again and again To how he emptied the music Of its vast and endless longings. He waited for night’s sacramental Wafer to…
By James Seals I laugh at the irony as the country music group Little Big Town sings about the boondocks: a phrase that Oxford English Dictionary tells us derives from the Tagalog word bundok which means mountain. Little Big Town sings that they feel no shame they’re proud of where…