by The Poet Darkling young crescent moon orange hanging low as Rēgulus watches her dip below the ridge to the west of us. A calf screams somewhere to the south as The Norfolk Southern S-Line whines just north. Coyotes howl ice into our veins we pull our shawl tight then…
by Amy Southard I know when Autumn arrives, Usually early September here. The corn in my garden is ready for harvest, The silks turning brown. The pumpkins are beginning To turn more orange than green. Leaves are turning yellow, orange and red, Falling to the ground and crunching, As playful…
by Ann Hosler Water trailed down the window in rivulets, tracing the contours of my ghosted face. You wished me a happy birthday, nestled in sterile sheets of your hospital bed. Freshly woken from the coma of your surgery, you couldn’t remember my name. The surgeon removed a basketball-sized spleen…
by The Poet Darkling Today was one of those days; one of those days when you realize you shouldn’t’ve waited; you shouldn’t wait; when you discover places people call “Climax;” “Crapstone;” “Cut and Shoot;” “‘Possum Kingdom;” “Rest and Be Thankful;” when you learn these places could quite possibly be flooded…or that they might be heavenly oaseshaving never known disaster,and you might neverhave knownor caredeitherway,but…
by Gil Hoy Last night I dreamed the workers painting my house Brought all of their children to work in the morning With brushes and buckets of water, to wash and to clean To scrub the faces, like paintings on canvas, that had appeared overnight on the walls of my…
by John Timothy Robinson The elegance of light through sconce-dust glass with swirled, transparent fingerprints in grooves is not as pleasing when the chill sweeps past, this image, so cliché, yet still as true. Six tiny candles flicker in darkness as frozen rain hammers tree-limbs to the ground. They said…
by Amy Covel I think we all look back fondly At how naïve we were Starting that very first job. We think: “I look nothing like that ID badge I wear on my shoulder.” And it isn’t even just because You now wear your hair differently Or because you got…
by Gonzalinho da Costa On the photo of Jennelyn Olaires grieving over her husband, Michael Siaron, published in The New York Times (August 3, 2016) He is the poor man unjustly executed by the state. She is the desolate woman of inconsolable loss. He dies sputtering in the darkness of…
by Thomas Griffin If only I could throw myself into this black sleet rushing down street, hugging the lip of the curb, dashing down the hungry mouth of the culvert hurtling through sudden darkness into the roar of a thousand other streams fleeing this steely-eyed November in New England— run…
by John Timothy Robinson In Hard Scratch Hollow beside a cave, there was a rock formation that resembled some malformed altar. Each side sloped up where light, green moss covered the top and bottom edges. This large form was positioned in a gully’s end under trees in cow pasture. Fountainlike…