It’s really something, to realize a pond is always in a state of becoming a bog, and then a sunbound field of timothy and rye. Yes, we like our meadows but any homesteader knows they have a mind of their own, how they send up gaunt fingers of sumac and maple saplings, how they pierce […]
Poetry
Constant Williams: Chambered
Take them, he wept, his last request before he died. And we did. And they laid there in our home where we compartmentalized them into non-existence, ignored them like you might an older drunk at the bar who sits at your table and wants to be loved— or to score some cocaine—and then leaves after […]
Corrinne Schneider: 207 E. Nelson St.
I went back to my father’s house – The old maple tree out front is dying The one I studied from my bedroom window A hardened face where the limb’s been sawed off The old maple tree out front is dying Bark mottled gray, as if struck by lightning The one I studied from […]
Lorna Rose: Surviving the Rush
No music plays in the general store in Circle, Alaska, which is full of mukluks and Wonder Bread. Villagers fish the Yukon, memorize river rise, bet on breakup. Long ago miners arrived from Outside to sift, chip rip fortunes from earth. Stilts were drilled into permafrost and structures were […]
Lorna Rose: Leaving Libya
I flood my lungs with the wet stench of fish and bodies and fuel. Dinghy motor whines against the night. Salt air grinds my skin ‘til it’s threadbare and there’s no sitting since leaving Sabratha. Body clenches tight to its bones and shrill muscles shriek and weep and lock up. Damp t-shirt clings […]
Susan Azar Porterfield: Sometimes the World Makes Itself Known
Heat like a hand over your mouth and nose. Heat like old age. You’re scrolling news, screen-eyed, on the porch: who tweeted what/the latest must-read. Sometimes you’re in two places at once, isn’t that so? both awake and asleep, in love and not. Sometimes, your arm is touched so lightly, you barely notice. […]