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Rectitude: Why I’m Pro-Life
by Day Sibley Artist: Evelyn Hockstein Hello Friend, Is it okay to call you that? Before you cancel me, at least hear me out. Yes, you read that headliner right, I am pro-life. Even writing this feels foreign to me, let alone admitting it. If I could rewind time and speak with my younger self,…
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Ne eligat is qui donum accipit
by Andy Betz I sat in the driver’s seat waiting. She sat in the passenger seat watching me suffer. The rain took its cue from her success and began a slow trickle, just enough to make it excusable to remain with her, not enough to justify leaving. I should have departed nonetheless. Her perfume became…
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Time, Down, and Wary
by Moiya Gooden Mona sat on the floor collecting her small stash of freshly washed baby blankets and arranging them into neatly folded, color-coded stacks beside her. She looked at the little black trunk, gifted to her by her grandmother at her baby shower a week earlier, and opened it and placed the stacks inside.…
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Three Poems
by Carla Sarett Artist: Eduardo Argoud Self-Portrait as Shostakovichplays stud pokersmokes a packtap dances on pianosleeps in unlit stairwellvalise packedprays not yet not yet Self-Portrait at Dinnerone person hereone person missing Addendum for Healthcare ProxyIf I lingerbefore dying Know I’m readyfor what is next. But before you setme free, play the Brandenburgsto the last note,…
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And…
by Richard Ankers Artist: KC – Khings Collage And… I loved her despite the tales, those fabricated fantasies. There was never a why, not from me. I accepted her as she was, like the clouds accepted the rain, in misery made manifest and melancholy downpours. This was just the way it was. Initially, I drove…
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These Words Are For The Eyes Of The Dead
Austin is a formerly homeless, queer student originally from Las Vegas, Nevada. He currently works as a tutor at his college’s writing center and drafts grants on the side. In the past, Austin has worked as a homeless shelter organizer, a janitor, and a dishwasher. His work has been most recently published in the Works…
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Renoir, Apprentice
a golden shovel after Wendy Xu’s tiny palace by Danielle Page breathe into me allthat you once knew, ofpottery and porcelain, thisbrush stroke and this line takesits shape just so, master place-ment of figures and marvel, inside,at the marbling of hues on skin, adetail lost on ceramic, how mysteriousthe vibration of each color tinyappears on…
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Not
I cannot write/ Do you understand what I’m saying?/ I cannot bear to write/ Is today/ Is my wife/ Dead and gone?/ Yes, she is…/ Marc Isaac Potter does not have a dog named Wilbur
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Killed Steel
by Carolyn Drake After Cathy’s death, she found me in Hendriksville. Hendriksville rots beside the Ohio River. The ‘Welcome’ sign reads Population: 5,000, but they must’ve been counting gravestones. The steel mills are two decades deceased, yet the mesothelioma remains, robbing the former workers and their progeny of health and life. Breathing the air in…
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in the end, who are we but little women fused and accumulated and ready to snap apart from the whole of ourselves like chocolate squares
by Amanda Pendley there are envelope poemsfistfuls of you in my handsblown away only half on purposeand half by the wind held in and let out likea child’s emission of defeat from not beingable to hold their breath any longer I stand emptybreathlesshands limp in a reflected pool of surrenderbefore the scream comesthe scurryingthe nails…