Stuart Greenhouse Aphelion Let’s say you are a cometon the far swing of your eccentric orbit, just coming home to the Inner Oort Cloud,gravity desert of your birth where, like you and unlike you, sparse suspension of ice chips miles or millimeters wide,infinitesimals and planetesimals in elliptics unperturbedsince the solar system formed, tend each to […]
Category: Summer 2017 – Poetry
“A Woman Desires an Origamist” and “A Woman Desires an Out of Practice Cellist” – Alexandra Barylski
Alexandra Barylski A Woman Desires an Origamist He smooths bare palmsover the paper; smoothpaper is required for folds.He experiences textureand considers the weight of soft threads, their originssourced from shared soiland mailed to him in a letter.A gift too profligate for return.Uncommon occasion. Fingerslong since lost their desireto press, to crease, to exacta shape […]
Jessica Fordham Kidd – “Under Granny’s Wings”
Jessica Fordham Kidd Under Granny’s Wings Half-drunk, blood slowing in the cold,Bad Jamie wakes sprawled on a schist outcrop.Tiny grains of mica shine on his face like magic. He slips out of the mountain’s arms—pine trees withered with disease and chestnuts bristling—to find warmth in the bedof a rusted-out pickup.When the pickup gets […]
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“Welcome” – Lisa Dordal
Lisa Dordal Welcome Flipping the remote, I keep landing on the hotel’s Welcome Channel. Hello, a woman says. White woman,pretty smile. May I have a minute of your time? Be as alert as you are at home, she says. Pretty woman, concerned for my safety. She keeps walking toward me—there,behind everything else. Like […]
“Bathsheba Speaks, a Butcher Instructs” – Mariam Williams
Mariam Williams Bathsheba Speaks, A Butcher Instructs That night indeed I was a lamb slaughtered by the king. Shepherd’s hook round my neck, he pulled mefrom Uriah’s home. One hand under my jaw, the other at my tail, he took me Beautiful lamb, soft black fleece.Never grab it by its wool;you’ll bruise […]
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“Church Camp” – Brandon Thurman
Brandon Thurman Church Camp i.The boys bunk in myth, in holy ghost storiesslick with gore: a putt-putt club striking a boy in the eye, orb hanging from bone socket by mess of strung flesh. My eyes throb in time with their words, every tendontight as I fall asleep & slide into a blurred, […]
“Frankenstein’s Monster Describes Resurrection” – Kirk Schlueter
Kirk Schlueter Frankenstein’s Monster Describes Resurrection His first lie was that I was beautiful.As beautiful, he said, as the waspsthat groveled above the candles, their bellies blushed in black gouts of flame.As if the stolen blue of my eyes couldn’t see the crude stitches that suturedmy limbs like needles in broken compasses.As if […]
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“Future Design” – Joshua Johnston
Joshua Johnston Future Design The construction crews work so quickly now. I can remember when it would take months just to erect a single building – the entire summer would pass, and by the time the kids arrived back in town, the men would still be out there with the ungodly racket […]
“My Father’s Rituals” – Carl Boon
Carl Boon My Father’s Rituals I rise and rinse the coffee pot, I look for a spoon. I wonder who’s died in the night and hope the phone won’t ring. A pair of winter cardinals rises in the pine, squirrels brush the awning, then scatter—a man coughs in the street. He or I […]
“Ode to a Vibrator Left On All Night” – Xandria Phillips
Xandria Phillips Ode to a Vibrator Left On All Night In her absence, my hunger for humand throttle was enough to deal a cool -girl parlor trick. An active shotgun,I drove a stick through the yellow veins of Accra, while a man’s feet pulsedthe gas and punched the clutch. I knew the sound […]
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