DW McKinney The Girl and the Haint But they say that Hairy Man is still deep in the swamps somewhere. Say he is waitin’ on the right time. -Virginia Hamilton, The People Could Fly The haint watched me from underneath my grandparents’ house. Her sanctum was cut from the concrete foundation and sealed with leftover […]
Category: Winter 2024
Marlene Olin – Little People
Marlene Olin Little People The mailbox sat on a freshly mowed lawn. Beyond the lawn, a handsome stone path led to a white clapboard house. Dormer windows. A bricked chimney. Neatly clipped hydrangeas hugged the porch while five acres of forest lunged in the rear waiting to be tamed. If you looked closely, as many […]
Chloie Piveral – Feeding You What’s Left
Chloie Piveral Feeding You What’s Left The trash is rank with the smell of decay; full of fluid-soaked chicken wrappers, moldy burger buns, rainbow-colored slick flecks of pungent tuna. My stomach growls, but I’ve lost my appetite. I made a list, fifteen pages long, trying to remember our last meal together. Tuna casserole? Burgers? Moroccan […]
Teresa Milbrodt – Cookies
Teresa Milbrodt Cookies I wasn’t hell bent on saving the world when I became an epidemiologist. I also hadn’t thought the job would involve so many tissues or cookies, but it did during those years when I worked the night shift at the mobile VD clinic. It was little more than a van with a […]
Lexi Pelle – Ode to the Way We Move
Lexi Pelle Ode to the Way We Move in the inpatient eating disorder program.Caroline G taps her foot to the tune ofpasta night. Sara takes four separate tripsto get a pair of scissors, two markers, a sheetof paper and Scotch tape from the craft basket,and Amanda, who signed herself in,just admitted she’s been doing cruncheson […]
Carly Joy Miller – Epistle on Desire
Carly Joy Miller Epistle on Desire Men in the air. Long days long days. My retainer’s tang bookends them. Sweat and showers turpentine the last kiss. To remain sweet: Apples and walnuts for breakfast. Vanilla ice cream, coax for sleep. To be pined over. Pinned. Repetition, a stigmata: I tried, then tired, of the larger […]
Brittany Micka-Foos – Our Lady of Sorrows
Brittany Micka-Foos Our Lady of Sorrows The Virgin Mary cradles her miraclein the courtyard of the Holy Cross.Automatic doors part for usand I confess: I’m not even Catholic:I’m an atheist. It’s a good hospital, you say as we passthrough the doors, past the chapel, dimmedlights and hard pews—a place to prayfor the sick or dying,not […]
Anthony Thomas Lombardi – the wolf will live with the lamb
Anthony Thomas Lombardi the wolf will live with the lamb it’s dark & i am listening & somethingis listening to me. i don’t whimper. i cross my chest & place my hands on the choppingblock but it’s my tongue God wants. i figured this a decent compromise the way i pick-pocket the prophets each time […]
Read More… from Anthony Thomas Lombardi – the wolf will live with the lamb
Sean Glatch – Lepidoptera
Sean Glatch Lepidoptera Mothman took my photograph in Southern Tennesseeso I fell in love with him. That’s what I told myself, anyway, to get throughthe soundless months when an empty bed was jagged ice & I needed a bodyto hold to, to thaw through. Mothman pointed his camera at me & I loved his angles, […]
James Champion – Leaf Between
James Champion Leaf Between for Riki I’m walking with you and without you.The between follows us, a wild glimmer. The sky,too, wanders whitely throughthe birch trees like an abandoned thought. Then, it’s as if the geese overhead said, “Oh,a meadow,” and let one fall feathery from their wings,golden and rippling. This meadow, this is the […]
