Michael Montlack and I learned there was no castto mend a spirit, no flashlightto guide you out of a cave that dark,my older sister unwilling to bathefor weeks, my parents unwillingto make her, her...
Cat Newton And Martin told Dan he was going to wear a top hat/ and Amaris told Alexa that she’d be in that knee length dress that has started to remind me of death/ and Reggie told me that he...
Martin Shapiro Hardtops sit sun-roasted in rowson a plain of asphalt: at its far end,a megachurch in session. My Ford Feo’s a.c. eats horsepower.Eliseo doesn’t sweat this jungle...
John Nieves When sleep slips and the walls slip and the newsof the day is about who has slipped out of selfand into numeration, into a graph of a graph, thisis how we lose our breath. We lose it...
Arnisha Royston i bought a gym membership. worked out on the same machine in the same corner everyday. there is a man that likes to workout two machines down from me. i thought about waving at him. i...
Jane Zwart Consider the forsythia. Considerthe child who jostles that basketof saffron antlers. Considerthe charm of goldfinchesblown from the bush, sparksfrom ember, and the lemonsucker the child...
Nikki Barnhart From our vantage point on the bleachers, we watched them. We sat shivering, frozen still, in polyblend short-shorts and tee-shirts knotted—coquettishly, we let ourselves believe—at...
Carolyn Oliver Sunset casts a madder wash across the last nun in the scriptorium, coats in rose her last psalm, her quill from a river-plucked swan. Near the margin, a gash—...
Corinne Wohlford Mason After the Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon The way a child explains the rules of a thing to me. Handwriting from another century. The smell of eucalyptus. What a...