i fractured my skull i hardly even felt it and i was more afraid of the twin nurses with stirrup pants curly hair and mean upper lips the nurses call me big brave girl but i know it was more than a busted head it’s practice to face the hard moments alone cause my parents […]
Issue 82
Nancy Krygowski: All the Words We Want
Still the man’s tongue flaps between his lips, though he’s clamped his teeth down gently. The tongue is thick and long as his short chin. In and out. He can’t seem to hide it, which makes the tongue his mind, exposed. We learn to keep fingers out of the body’s holes (at least in public), […]
Joe Fletcher: Gardenback
When the sun is eaten by night the soil is blue and dense vehicles glisten among the elderberry. A rubber-scented vapor seeps from charcoal-colored puddles. Sitting on a flower is a kind of apostle or apostate, thinking toward a corner of his mind, his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, his spine an […]
K.E. Duffin: Patience
Wind snaps the reins of the telephone pole and giddy-ups the day. Cloud herds brightly run before the sun as one long cable dances with its shadow on brick, politely mimed by a faded partner. Maybe a bell rope so a noon of robin’s egg blue can ring in the tide? The land on its […]
Erin Bealmear: Miss You All Fucking Ready
I know that I don’t have any musical talent, never learned to play an instrument can’t sing without making the dog run, but if I had written “Nothing Compares to You,” which I didn’t and I’m not claiming that I did, but if I knew anything about manipulating strings and had composed that song, it […]
Arlene Ang: Analysis of Shipwreck
the dead spitting up the future the dead recurrent in seated positions heads tilt toward the music sheets on the chandelier attached to the cello a hand a leg & blue-bottle light from windows hypothesis: the distribution of the dead depends primarily on their correct simulation of seaweed & lovemaking the body is held together […]