Singer, the thief, steals a dignity as its needle eye blinks and moves to fool the unsteady hand that attempts to thread it. The sway-back villain disrupts the flow of colorful threads, tampers with tension of the iron-latticed pedal, forcing a frail foot into a press-halt pace. This stitch robber stealthily unwinds: her bobbins, her […]
Poetry 90
Dave Nielsen: Home Office
He sits down at his computer and opens a folder and discovers a folder he’d forgotten about and opens it and discovers another folder he doesn’t recognize and opens it and now a folder a sort of backup he remembers creating years ago and opens it and discovers a folder so deep inside the computer, […]
Kay Murphy: Undiagnosed Villanelle
I lie half-crazed on a cement bed, Temp 102. I’m on a grave, a table? The nurses make their rounds in shoes of lead, Rolling pcs, forms to sign, and my one med Until the virus has a label. I lie half-crazed on a cement bed. I want to tell them that I feel code […]
John McKernan: I Still Dial Old Phone Numbers Back in Omaha
My index finger punching in Jackson 3280 My father’s At his office downtown In the Farm Credit Building Thumb punching the cell phone 402.551,3080 My mother’s At our house on Cass Street Where I grew up staggering toward vodka Sometimes I’m drunk all day And dial wrong No one answers so I hang up Before […]
Warren Longmire: Ready Player One
How many cried when the avatar floats red across the monotone skyline? The mastered physics fluttering your fabric made of math? You might. When thumbstick millimeter becomes a gait toward simulated sun. The moment tutorial is a muscle memory. When pausing could kill a world. When the orchestration echoes you and swells like a gland would. Congratulations! […]
Alyse Knorr: In which Our Friends hike the Long Trail
Jane’s pockets sag with smooth stones. She takes the incline easy, walks with eyes on the ground. Now and then, Then-Jane reaches back to hand her a piece of mottled slate. The green moss breathes and so does everything else. The Mariner stares directly into the sun and Jane feels suddenly proud—of the sun, of […]