By: Ed McManis Sometimes I see her ghosts before she does. She’s always looking for light, the outline of miracles, a familiar hand on our shoulders. I don’t believe in what I can’t kill. Division is my religion. Sometimes I have t o lie, tell her that earthy, graveyard smell is from my side of the bed, is my new after shave. Sometimes I tell her we’re the only living ones in the room. Ed McManis is a writer, editor, erstwhile Head of School, and father. His work has appeared

By: Grayson Thompson (thank you Ben Barlow for keeping punk rock alive, being my quarantine preacherman, and for writing “A Part of Me”) my astigmatism scatters the light of her body across the night sky he hits like planets aligning in slow motion each graze makes it hard to breathe without it, I feel the cold of the infinite stars I hope you’re somewhere in the corners of my consciousness softening where the shame lives from there I hope you can see I’m stumbling toward you

By: Jim Zaferopolos Somewhere in Kazantzakis’ work—I can’t now quite remember where, I read “In climbed the mountain to look upon the face of God; but, when I got to the top, the face I saw there was my own!” [paraphrased] Weed scraggle in the scree, the dross Of life, the man-made slime and rubble Of a life-time’s discards, O, mine uncle, Mountain would have cluttered you, Had you not mind and fortitude enough To overcome the craggy edifice of fear To frailty of the human se

By: Alan Hill Thirty thousand years of human existence mutation, progression, of culture has led to this you on a sea wall feeding fries to a Racoon to this gnaw of jealousy as you look at the firm bodied young roller skating, biking in their entitlement, vanity, happiness. If you want to help do something sensible, good stand mid span, on the Lions Gate Bridge on the arch of its back supernatural float of metal plate that staples the city’s mouth, gives lips to a hard imperi

By: Russell Sebring let us not dwell on guilt or the daily massacre on which it feeds men love revolution for the revolt not the utopia of their realization an extraction that dares speak names conceived as a bounded whole an automatic vault their approximation existing only on a pristine scale sacrifice and cruelty the illegible reproduction (x marks the spot) of a motherless gangbanger it seems the desire to profit is stronger than horror or disgust far from the slaughter t

By: Graham Murtaugh My friend has taken to sleeping in his unheated workshop. He dreams among his many planes and gouges and knives. The tools of shaping. He wakes at five-thirty, makes a fire and sits with his breath. His blade-nicked hands run over and over the strange end-grain of his marriage, searching for splits. The new Mr. Coffee 12-Cup Programmable Coffeemaker gurgles while the Cubs lose quietly in the background. A lit American Spirit cigarette trails incense. Leane

By: Lina Buividavičiūtė Translated from Lithuanian to English by Irma Šlekyte. Potiphar’s Wife After a time, his master’s wife looked at Joseph with longing and said, “Lie with me.” The Bible, the Book of Genesis I cling onto Your robe, boldly tear the seams apart, rip up my pride to pieces with my teeth, though You arrived at our home a slave. You said You’re acting in his name, the one who never abandons, gives strength to resist the forbidden bodily orifices. My desire ent

By: HR Harper At the base of tall redwoods I stop thinking about thinking. I wait in the space between tall words. It’s October and the late afternoon light rests on its side yet wavers from the wind. The wind’s too much for words I have remembered or found. The only song now is up in the crown. There’s room between the song I want to hear and what keeps singing up there. There’s a distance between the right word and me. Sunlight diagonals fall through tall pillars o

By: Amelia Díaz Ettinger the marcescens of leaves in an early afternoon makes for a cup of tea to seep bitter on dry lips they part in acceptance nature roams her steady flow but where is the resistance from leaves, from lips? why must winter rob green-lush? does it steal the pigments for lack of warmth or covetousness? Crushes the mirth of flowers softly balancing the edge? why does it render the tenderness of petals to be burdened by the coming snow already withered, wrink

By: Raymond Byrnes 05:34 04 JUN 42: After long, patterned days of stale gazing at a blank, sunglass-green sea, a U.S. Navy patrol pilot radios his estimated map coordinates for a miles-wide Japanese aircraft-carrier fleet. Navy dive-bomber, torpedo-plane, and fighter-escort pilots take off and circle into formation high above their carrier, each one aware it could take half his fuel just to find the enemy 150 miles out. One fighter group, its search futile, heads back to refu

By: M. Shayne Bell I At the Landing I watched Persephone descend through throngs of dead— dressed all in white, as if to keep sunlight with her in a fabric. II One Obol She would not ride a half-filled boat. She brought on dead who could not pay. She let the dead crowd near. III On Styx Islands mar that sea; rocks; but to a pebble— one dead: flood-swept there, or overboard and left. He grabbed her outstretched hand. She pulled him in. IV Docked Hellside Sh

By: Alex Wells Shapiro In the next yard over, honeybees swarm and their sound is huge. I mistook the drone for road work until they organized in the shape of a face. Its kind eyes coax a smile from me as dawn reflects off the Public Storage sign and catches its vibrous brow just right. Buzzing wafts thru my apt; one attracted to the Splenda clumped at the bottom of a mug or candy melting in my bag. They sting only under threat, but how can I signal passivity? At our statures

By: Amy Claire Massingale He was very nearly gone from this world, And still the nurse Called for an enema. I put a stop to that shit. Just as I put a stop to forced feedings And the drinking of juice, When he shook his head furiously, No. His digestive system was Shrinking slowly, A dry leaf in autumn, Curling in on itself. To abstain was either choice, Or a forgotten skill. It was also His right. We feasted on love. I sat at his bedside and his eyes, So luminous in his gaun

By: M. Shayne Bell Sparrows drop, tumble down the air as if some strength leaned on in flight fails them: they dive, roll— catch themselves before the ground. In swirls of leaves, they rise up. M. SHAYNE BELL received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1991). Bell’s haiku have been published in Blithe Spirit: Journal of the British Haiku Society, Frogpond: Journal of the Haiku Society of America, Haikuniverse, The Heron’s Nest, Mainichi Ja

By: C. Henry Smith The night is the least round thing Moon faced Cancerians, Gomorrah lights fading I consider a black hole, I consider a void still linearly A place for the angels in all the tired this Bathsheba in the bathtub, queen mother on the horizon We start the black miracle out as an ovum To stand, equation-balanced; to last in sin immemorial Monuments grey as an ass’ dreams, ashen as an ass dreams of turnips The turn of celestial bodies is unlike any turn of my own

By: Ed Wade A girl contemplates her breath as it fogs the school bus window on a winter morning. She makes cloud after cloud, and watches them evaporate. In one, she draws a circle. In another, she draws a square. Only to watch them slowly disappear. She feels the shadowy blue bodies of her oceans as another cloud forms from her lips. She draws a rectangle, and feels the moon pull it back. She creates the storm, then the calm. The silence. Then the thunder collapses back into

By: Kelly Easton I don’t really care how intimate the breeze over this slanted lake that carries seed and song and breath of summer; summer’s short, in the north and southward, pearls lay thick in the depths, embedded fathoms you can’t escape for a summer’s lapse of fate Autumn waits, its ginkgos ready to burst into winter’s crackling fires, late. Icy fjorded schisms melt into spring’s forgotten lakes, winged tidings of late, late, late Summer sighs, over bent horizons cricke

By: Dick Altman Northern New Mexico Four days into winter – and I languish/ yearn for spring – Rage/grieve to start over – plead the fates not to burn/drown/desiccate high country – as they did last year – leaving behind vast/storied ruins – Skies billow yet with vacant promises – Winds leap our ridge – never lingering long enough to treasure us – however little – their cargo of rain/snow – gifted – or so it seems – always to the valley blooming next to mine Indian Country th

By: Holly Eva Allen I knock over one of those saccharine, smiling cereal faces and the box tumbles down the aisle into the February air. So, then I say it and my aunt replies with “God doesn’t appreciate his name being used in vain.”, her George-Creel-tongue eager blubbering, her Rex-Stout-teeth critical-white. So, God is like Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, I think in my chapel-lobe of happy echoes where Leopold goes all red in the face over “masochism” even as his detestable dar

By: Judith Mikesch-McKenzie “A table without bread is not a table but bread is a table on its own.” Scottish/Gaelic Proverb Just down the street is a bar where we gleefully joined up with a wake for some guy’s cat - Around six or seven long tables pulled together, singing, drinking, telling stories about cats with men and women we didn’t know at all. Not you-and-me “we” but the “we” that I built my life around before it dissolved like sugar in water. Blocks away (or

By: Valyntina Grenier. forgotten burgers/ lost theatre tickets our least fortunes last laugh to dis to leap a human genus/ genius wittingly advancing life too devoted to semper fie population never never grant it had Diana ocean or pursuit in a hydroponic closet exactly heaven broke free halcyon still like some kind of broccoli party pushing scientists to garden wildness Consciousness doesn’t take the desire between give-in-and-take-out the dialectical intoxicating survival o

By: Harry Bauld Yesterday is not ours to recover. –LBJ, Thanksgiving Address, 1963 No turkey, this or any year. An Italian house, for god’s sake, an Italian neighborhood, as-yet-unhyphenated Americans. First as always two platters of antipasto big as manhole covers with provolone sharp enough to make you bark. A lake of escarole soup. Then the deep casserole like the blue catholic bathtub in the postage stamp of a front yard, the Virgin of Lasagna. In the ricotta

By: Julie Benesh Freezing today, and I’m a little numb looking out the window at billows of steam that keep my body warm, but not so much the rest. I have a to-do list but it’s not written down and I’m not the type to write things down just for the satisfaction of crossing them off. I’d rather make a not-do list, but hoo-boy, that’d take a while. Some say winter is not, contrary to popular belief the season of repose; that under the snow is a gathering, even an orgy. I see po

By: Cameron Atlas Chiovitti When astronauts cry in the sky, Their tears turn to Jell-O. Stardust is only unwished powder. My synthetic orange tongue anchors me in the sky. I don’t know if anyone’s wished me better. Only romantics tend to stargaze, And it’s been years since we camped out on the fire escape. When was the last time you promised someone the moon? I’m gelatinizing with every cosmic chasm in my chest. Can you hear this from your lovers’ arms? Or are you sleepily ma