That the day, with all of its minor chords and it glissando-like conversations should come to this: fireflies and maybe a full moon struggling through an agreed upon darkness; ranchers somewhere dreaming of fabulous wealth, socialites casually fainting on the manicured lawns of a forbidden city, and the chords, still minor and only slightly augmented, […]
Contributors 73
Raphael Allison: Dawn
The trees are yellow, the chlorophyll is gone, brown birds fit black in the sky or the color of the wet blue skin of horses. These stand quiet while flies rim their eyes to drink from the deep brown well, wings tucked in lucent folds. It’s apple-pie order in this proliferation of light except the […]
Brian Barker: Crow Gospel with a Mountain Crumbling on Top of It
That winter, when the landfill was bulldozed over, The crows strutted into town To roost in the trees along Beaver Creek And spar over the trash bins down on State Street. That winter, the mountain shone a pale gray-purple— The color of a crushed crocus, or the dying skin of a god Who turned his […]
Carla Panciera: Conviction
Heavy mists loll above the sodden ground of a late December thaw. The distance disappears. Black trunks of bare trees align. On a clothesline strung from porch to oak, handkerchiefs as old-fashioned as cold winters hang white corner to white. Over woodpiles, insects beat raw wings and flit into mossy mid-season. Someone throws open a […]
Lucyna Prostko: Childhood with Something in the Foreground
Winter is close. I hear its arrival in the frantic call of a crow, as if the blue-feathered swerve toward my window were telling me something. “Something” comes from a magical world, like “someone” or “somewhere.” At eight, I’d read stories, tangled plots with Baba Yagas and wise-turned fools that hid words as clean as […]
Jillian Weise: The Body in Pain
For a long while I was with you & faithful as I was to the black hair dye on aisle eight, as good at covering-up. For a long while I gave you to the stage in exchange for Aunt March in Little Women, Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. It felt entirely like an act, […]