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The Flood
by Fabrice B. Poussin Counting the drops, it is not always clear that a flood may be coming by way of the river. Walking on the tow path, mooing at the bovines, singing the melody familiar to the wild coyotes; no light seems to hold power over the new darkness; clouds thick as a dirty…
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The Dead by Maura O’Connor
one by one, they were all becoming shades… —James Joyce I fled your deaths. They happened anyway. Me, the missing witness. Michael, I will miss you most. The roses you gave me the night you told me you hated me. The song you wrote comparing my eyes to ocean my dreams to rainbow. It wasn’t…
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The Best You Can Do
by Lauren Bender Her sweater takes your hand without bite,her head lifts to watch you dispense your charity. Her eye peels your skin away, and your insidesscrunch up and then fold in on themselves like many palms covering faces as they buckleto weepiness. Things flutter in your chest, you start to understand that it’s not…
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Sky is Dark
by Alexandria Liston A Tabby swaddled in cellophane. Smoldered stiff residue. Thinking if I didn’t eat, I could spend hundreds of dollars on clothes instead. Thinking less body would be good; Thinking less of me and more of you. The train is cold and still. Winding in loops and loops with light above. It is…
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On a Nebraska Interstate at Night
by John Grey out of happiness, wretchedness, truth and falsity, comes this Nebraska highway, where wheat has devoured grasslands and fence posts lead the way — barely a kink in the surface, a dip in the horizon, just a farmhouse, a silo, to measure the boredom and a car keeping up with the stars —…
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Adoration
by Kelly Stacy Let us paythe bill on time, let uswalk to the grocery storetogether, let us order moreshelves for that spacein our living room, between the radiatorand the wall, let’s giveit some purpose, let’s fill itwith all our small totems,let’s do brunchon Saturday morning, let us dropoff the laundry on the way,let us shop…
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The Carpenter’s Son
by Katie Pukash mine is nothing but stain-each carving a little less.can’t say too much about the carpenterwhen the carpenter holds the only chisel.pliers for eyes-he will call you Floorboard andClaw hammer and Screwdriver and Sin-will knock at your throatuntil there is nothing but screws.stained and sealed-Mouth Wide and Shut.he won’t come back to search-not…
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Three Poems
by Darren Demare EMILY AS THE SECOND WINTERI pressed the bleakness of Ohioto my face & I breathed so deeplythat I swallowed old wounds to create new wounds& Emily, she watched all of this beneath a blanket she made,next to a fire she started. I, too often, force myselfto experience all of Ohio all of…
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Cafone
by Salvatore Difalco When my father was in the late stages of terminal lung cancer — chemo and two operations had not slowed it down — a group of his friends came to our house to visit him. They had been drinking. Giacchino Palmieri, his godson, the loudest among them, slurred and slobbered greetings to my father, who was…
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Forgive Us
by Salvatore Difalco “Ma,” my sister said, “we’re taking you to an appointment. We have to be there at ten o’clock. Do you understand, ma?” Maria, the oldest of my cousins, had come along for support. My mother trusted her. She smiled at Maria; her eyes looked bluer than usual that day, eyes that had…