Bryce Berkowitz Just Once I’d like to be the falling rain, a foggy window, soft eyes, a museum of desire, a damp yard. My mother’s hands are sweetgum leaves. She looks for mercy in the mirror, then disappears into the maw of night. Why debate the subtleties? The other day, I mistook blackbirds for roses. […]
Category: Winter 2018 – Poetry
“The Sugar Shack” – Amanda Brahlek
Amanda Brahlek The Sugar Shack All night, gallons of maple sapare scorched to syrup-steam.My father thaws in the slouched shedamong samaras of menswaddled in maple fogand dripping with stories. These men have been here for yearsamong the trees that weep sweetly,pierced, they bleed their sucrose sapinto metal buckets nailed to trunks—an offering to the […]
“Samsara” – Merridawn Duckler
Merridawn Duckler Samsara The homeless guy lives in my neighborhood, which is the world.He never considers the lilies of the field because that cart has to be pushed uphill. Or maybe he does consider; I don’t know for we never speak.A deaf semiotic, “the homeless,” with its echoes of holes and hopelessness. I am […]
“Auman’s Salvage” – Samantha Leigh Futhey
Samantha Leigh Futhey Auman’s Salvage Spring Mills, PA Wasps churn the air as you searchfor the safety I insist on. Betweentitanium vines, we weave in a valleyof smashed grilles and contorted schoolbus skeletons, scouring the metallic graveyard for seat belts. Twisted gates of stackedcars line narrow corridors of trees,hip bones of the Appalachians.Ferns sprawl […]
“Ephemera” and “Envisioning My Grandfather in the Shadow of Hopper’s Lighthouse” – Kyle McCord
Kyle McCord Ephemera My father wanted golden lionsthe size of Pomeranians to guard the house and he found themon a daytrip to the Ozarks— a roadside stand down the pathfrom a collapsed plantation where manure carried through the wind-break’s teeth through a picturesque graveyard littered with dolls:row upon row of bronzed bobcats chipmunks elephants […]
“Etymology of Absence Ending in My Grandmother Singing México en la Piel” – Brandon Melendez
Brandon Melendez Etymology of Absence Ending in My Grandmother Singing México en la Piel It’s true, Spanish is a language of blood,armada that sacked entire villages& raised an empire from the husk of gutted earth. But bloodalso translates to family—by family, I mean México. By México, I mean a ravineteeming with my ancestors & […]
“Witching Hour, 2016” – Matthew Sumpter
Matthew Sumpter Witching Hour, 2016 In the year of more unpardonable death, my daughter cries in my arms, trying to twist free of her body. Six weeks, and she can feel the world wholly: jagged and close, an ammoniac burning in the light, her blood circulating like spoons in a disposal. I curl around […]
“My China Doll” – Kara Kai Wang
Kara Kai Wang My China Doll I find her on a clear June night commanding bees with her black hair, almond knees. Her breasts are child moons, slant with eyes and half a century of unnamed wounds. Around her a riverbed pummeled by gardenia, imprints of a woman self-taught against man. I am envious […]
