When Mrs Kovacs upstairs left the door open, we brushed it aside as carelessness. After three days, we began to think of burglary, or worse, maggots hicupping their way into the body. Mrs Kovacs was absent from her home at the hour of death. When they found her in the river, they had to find […]
Poetry
Meena Alexander: Wind Song
He loaded me into the wind, As if I were a dragonfly, blowing softly. Under the slurry wall swallows were mating. My thighs were bruised: Threads of silt packed into vesicles A man’s arm, a boy’s kneecap A girl’s milk tooth, a slip of silk curling. On Lispenard Street I heard wings beat A man […]
Janna Pate: Because You Were Older
You built your own table, the bare boards exposed. By yourself, you kept the top clean, marble smooth. What’s more, you prepared for this dinner, you measured your sauces in stone sake saucers, speckled with pinches of thyme and flicked sage. You knew your spices. But, because you were a man, you could fixate on […]
Rose McLarney: We’re Not Much for Words, But
Blackberries, suspended in moonshine, enlarged with alcohol, skins stretched taut, almost to bursting and preserved, sit on the shelf. They wait, purple and potent, with the promise that, if we drink, our skins will press together, and our lips will split in speech.
Mara Jebsen: Sundays in Lomé
By the jelly blue lights of an ocean The day wakes, and breaks into sweat Beach saunterers gossip of potions, The power of juju, the wet Face of a madman, whose wife, they said put a spell in with the onions— It was a Sunday of church, vodou, and knife Her stewpots were seized by […]
Kristin Hatch: Sign of the Beefcarver Poem
we were at the break table swatting flies off the au jus. jerky kept laying his bald head on my shoulder & i was like i’m trying to eat my french dip, but probably so timidgirl it sounded like purr, purr. (everything sticky, everything tan) the boys would smoke in the kitchen & probably ash […]