By: Steve Penkevich I. I salute the efforts of trees Stretching towards a sky always out of reach, Disrobing from their gold to Stand...

By: Alexandra Umlas As I finish the final weeks of the MFA program at California State University, Long Beach, poet and professor Charles...

By: Amber French bad partner before: the water never got hot deluge of silence until you arrive without reason claiming repose among the...

By: Lisa Flynn At a Reading A cocktail crowd competes with the poet’s voice, and I’m lost to where words start and end. I cup my hand...

By: Andrea Clark From a seed (a seed!) I ripened into a majestic softwood tree fallen flattened ferried sold I surface as your surplus...

By: N. Cuzzi Don’t read about misery in paradise. The dilation of the sky             the split of the storm I almost fell into it with...

By: Giles Goodland You probably won’t remember this but the barista showed us his tattoo, an intricately calligraphed couplet about how...

By: Brooke Baker Belk The Jumper Hitting the water, he’d shatter a cascade of fish and keep falling past thin-slit lungs and fronded...

By: Gina Tron A corset around my throat binds my breathing. There are moths in my lungs eating my wool heart. I wanted to be a...

By: Emily Patterson Remember when we pried open oysters by the blue water, white wine in paper cups? We had been married seven years...

By: Clay Steakley Mountain Laurel Mountain laurel, poplar, sycamore, persimmon. My father names the trees as we walk uphill. “I think all...

By: Josh Pryer Nothing happens. Nobody comes. Nobody goes.  —Waiting for Godot I. 4 Only an ugly tree rises above the snow, and every...

By: Daniele Spagnolo Directions for When You Leave knock into comets with all hard skin, you are mixed of clay and dirty water. what a...

By: Hussam Jefee-Bahloul Severed How can I explain to my mother that solitude is unique too? how can I explain to my brother this...

By: Kathryn Ward I remember a butterfly who lands on my dress because it has a flower on it. Somewhere else someone is crying I remember...

By: Bobby Williams Selfies in the Sun My eyelashes are vibrant. I’m driving. Skin-silky/satin. Blinking and laughing. Bitch don’t look at...

By: Jake Bailey Shaved to the scalp, I               free my head of its adornments, electro-chemo littering the floor in white          ...

By: Gretchen Gales Humans grow gray, ladybugs orange. One takes its last flight around my night side table lamp, cracked window...

By: Allen Guest The bugle call of thunder, the cannon flash of lightening, and a line of rain charges up these summer slopes like...

By: Olivia Pierce flash photography here you are, woman the first moment of the way things were supposed to be painted canvas backdrop...

By: Maggie Dillow He towed his feet, like dead bunnies, slightly, on a still day. He never tripped. He never quit smoking. He never...

By: Terry Bodine Which jars hardest—your swarm of expletives, or the flat of the broom—as I sweep the knot of bees from low porch eaves...

By: John Miller All around us, near-misses all morning – a parked stranger’s car kisses our rear bumper; across an intersection an...

By: Jessica Tan We will help you lose ten pounds and get your honey back. We’ll break bones and stick plastic glue. We’ll give you pink...