Lisa Fay Coutley Careo Which means I’ve started watching YouTubeclips from the local dog shelter in the cityI was sure I’d burned behind us. Familiarnever pushes in its chair or leaves the table quiet. We live in a box. At night, I lock usinside & hope no one breaks in, or out.Sometimes, pre-sleep, I spin […]
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Nathan Logan – Things Really Went to Hell
Nathan Logan Things Really Went to Hell Everyone in your house had a beard,even the smooth-haired dachshundwith the wheelchair attachment.Her name was Margot, you said. You asked about my trip. Bus travelwas invented for the fashion depravedand those who enjoy touring historical sites.I am neither of those kinds of people, I said. I was forthright […]
Portia Elan – What The Academic Does In The Library Stacks
Portia Elan What The Academic Does In The Library Stacks The easiest part of being me is probably all of it but somehow I keep finding it hard. Especially the folding of clean laundry. Especially the throwing away of old flowers. I carry death on my shoe. I keep pebbles in my pockets—small ones of […]
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Brianna Noll – Resonance
Brianna Noll Resonance The split hive buzzeson its own, the bees long dead. Colony collapse.It’s the echo of the swarm,a lingering song, the honeycombsa lattice of nerves, pulsing.If you touch it, it will flinch.It’s an oscillating force,an electrical force, a force of life.The hivematter is organic— It’s more than wind.We learned to hum soour lips […]
Samantha Deal – Twenty Miles Offshore
Samantha Deal Twenty Miles Offshore I remember walking out into the field behind our house the winter afterI almost lost a leg to an unfortunate arrangement of old pine barkand truck engine. The world is full of legs—I thought. I’ve never been sure why hospital rooms keep cold the way they do—I think maybethose machines were […]
Eric Paul – The Man Who Can’t Say No
Eric Paul The Man Who Can’t Say No She lost her father to a city he founded in his brain.He built disappearing streets, littered withyellowed newspapers, bills, and love letters towomen he’s never met. Bus stops, skyscrapers, andautomobiles made from books he’s never read.He’s sculpted statues of his children and ex-wivesout of canned goods, stitched […]
J. Scott Brownlee – Hill Country Elegy
J. Scott Brownlee Hill Country Elegy Let the division of light be the barbed-wire fence line. Let it divide up everything. Let it determine wherethe boundaries of the day and the first darkness are. Let the beef cattle enter and exit the pastureas they each see fit, licking piles of salt from the round, […]
Gerardo Mena – Ode to the Enemy Sniper
Gerardo Mena Ode to the Enemy Sniper Searching for your definingmoment, you’ve come to dancein our little war. Life is nothingmore than a turn of the windage knob, a slightadjustment for distance, a tightlungful of breath, a sightbearing black reticle, that crosshair etched into your lenslike a crucifix, reaching for the edgesof your omniscient circle, […]
Allegra Hyde – How Not to Have a Threesome
Allegra Hyde How Not to Have a Threesome Be only two people. Be two people who can’t help looking at each other out the corners of their eyes. Sit in a coffee shop longer than planned, holding your newspapers upside-down, and try to think of things to say. Say the things. Then run out of […]
Amy Rossi – Whole Trees in Motion, Inconvenience in Walking
Amy Rossi Whole Trees in Motion, Inconvenience in Walking According to the Beaufort Scale of Wind Force, a light breeze blows at five to seven miles per hour. Conditions on land are characterized as wind felt on face. Flags have not yet extended, though; that’s another category altogether. *** We walk, Stanley several paces ahead and […]
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