Matthew Kelsey is from Glens Falls, NY, and works at the Chiaravalle Montessori. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and teaching fellowships from the University of Washington for their writing programs in Rome and Friday Harbor. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry […]
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Kyla Sterling: Blue Chicory
This is where we sat once, cinder blocks for back steps, trumpet vine spreading under the siding. You played so many songs on your old harmonica and I danced. When the heat went out, you combed tangles from my hair, fed me straight from the jam jar. The mail piled in the corner— old pennysavers, […]
Laura McCullough: Maggot Therapy
Near death, sometimes the hands curve into themselves like claws. I held my mother’s open, smoothing the fingers, trimming the wild nails. Once, years before, my husband and I awoke to a fawn caught in the family compost, a hole on its back end festering with worms, and he pinched each one out swiping his […]
Laura McCullough: Reclaimed Wood
I confess now I have begun to henna my red hair gone dull in parts and penny bright in others. And I always tried to subdue its wildness. But when the hull of our marriage busted rock and began to leak, we both thought it was a good idea to renovate the kitchen, together, by […]
Laura McCullough: Leafless
In the end, my mother’s shoulders, barely covered and quivering, were like birds. Once, I made a dress for her, the fabric creamy white, the print a single brown tree spanning the width, with stark branches. It was 1974. I was fourteen. Each night, I taught […]
Carol M. Quinn: Here Still
Veronica sat behind the wheel, Edie called shotgun, Gina and Betts claimed the backseat windows, and Kath squeezed in the middle. We assured Siri that yes, we were sure. Unhappy but subservient, she voiced directions over crowded city blocks and down deserted sandy roads to Macy’s bungalow in far outer Queens, […]