Silas, you might not be here come April. Ain’t none of us ever promised tomorrow. If you died right sudden, you’d need a will. That way you control who gets your nickel when you gone. Get your ducks in a row, Silas. You might not be here come April. Yeah, your policy’s up-to-date and we’ll […]
Contributors 65
Molly Bendall: Over Sleep
The long reason of his life pours out— slender-drool-string. But I’ve built this canopy. Yes, the shipwrecked girl left for dead. Not as haunted as you’d like to think— Lone tribeswoman, wrecked, leader of an expedition, survives alone. And I’m nudged by the tumbles of sand. I was meant to appear. Cannibal, well, yes. That’s […]
Molly Bendall: Stitches
I think the man I didn’t give change to lurks near my cruising rock. Although I’m shucking and peeling—so busy, there’s no plot to untangle from the scratchy earth. Nuts in between the lines of heaven. Urchins parade the whole month around, and new months I’ve taken to measuring in loaves. I call out that […]
Molly Bendall: Island Call
No season I’ve seen. Lightly the algae and I drift. We resemble each other. Until a flat fish came hovering, told me to stop behaving like a fugitive. Note that I’ll accept letters in the hollowed out branch near the wing-shaped ledge. I swear the current changes, pushes its teeth toward the back of the […]
Molly Bendall: Charmed
Off the ragged hull of a ship a gleam stepped. A bit of a springy step. It danced on top of the water. What were my intentions once? How I seduced him till we bled. And found his errand was living-cold but possible. There I was zipping around so I reeled him in. The gleam […]
Raphael Allison: Frond
In the snowed-in flowerpots sporting wizard hats a frond, green shoulders stiff against the old, frozen dirt emerges, misinformed. The little green bishop’s tendril rigid near the stem-cuff slumps to the white crust. It is an old mistake: here, but not now. The weather report says: “more snow.”