It doesn’t matter what they call it. The first image was of something like squid in a cloudy aquarium, ink swirling, a sinking, murky poison. But the brain is nothing like a fish tank; I know this. It is made up of wrinkles, rolled tight like new pantyhose. Layered like an onion’s pearly sheath; pink […]
Contributors 92
Keverlee Burchett: Goodwill Inventory
This time when you come you’re not a thing lost, not broken or recently fixed— you don’t break or fix me. Now you’re harmless. Now, you’re a glove-boxed ice scraper in south Georgia, a post hole digger, birdseed scattered to a city of squirrels. Now, when you appear out of nowhere […]
Antoinette Brim: Walmart Poem
My son wants weight lifting gloves. He is sixteen. He is taut muscle stretched across six feet and one and one half inch of wiry, lithe frame. He is a smear of blue and white against the night, his feet barely touching the football turf. He is sweat flung wild on the basketball court. He […]
Shevaun Brannigan: When the World Ends
there won’t be newspapers with letters to the editor objecting to how the city council handled the crisis. No TVs to turn on. The hand-cranked radios too hot to handle, but then we won’t have hands. No psychologists to diagnose Post-Traumatic Death Disorder, no couches to lie back on as a glistening orb of light. […]
Lisa Andrews: Mother Love Song
Watch me, I am the living snake that sheds its skin. Watch this emerald sheath turn to grass. I go on forever. I am the green flash, quick as summer lightening. I am that fast. I am the cobra. Kiss me and your village will be saved. I am the boa constrictor that hangs in […]
Zaccaria Fulton: Dramaticule
[ Mother lies in bed, center stage, under a spotlight.] Director [to twelve-year-old son]: Remember, you’ve been brought in here by your elementary school Guidance Counselor. This woman is also a friend of your mother’s, and she wants you to tell your mother that it’s okay to let go. Your mother’s body is wracked […]