but intentionally touching at exactly the right places so they become almost beautiful all by themselves just like the way that man will never love you. In your rear view mirror, you see a stranger you have to love because he is sweating in his red bandana, so tired from work, you realize he really […]
Poetry 92
Jessica Murray: Sweet on You: Suffocation
There might be a lesion here, something on the hippocampus there, which begins with a giggle and ends in the fatal heart attack or asphyxiation. There are no known deaths from laughter attributed to women, though it’s said to have happened to both philosophers and kings. Take those hands off of your nose, that plastic […]
Jessica Murray: Sweet on You: Abduction
Why, girls, just last week you were taught how to resist should you find yourself in an abduction; just last week, you were taught how to save someone from drowning. Now you’ve done it: gone missing, gone drowned.
Kay A. Murphy: My Mother Called Me
My mother had a dream in which I entered her bedroom calling Mom, Oh Mom until my voice pulled her from something… enigmatic? . What, she said and opened her eyes. I simply answered, The Lord is here, as if someone less important than a gentleman caller without flowers had arrived. Although she is […]
Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren: Estuarial
I’m beyond the wooden houses on stilts anchored in muck, beyond where grizzlies dig for clams exposed when the tide goes out & sunlight fills the slough. Around my waist, algae—green skin taut as milk heated over a flame. The grainy mud moves as I move, expanding, contracting between the pressure […]
Laren McClung: The Fortified House, Omaha Beach
Up the long path, inside the bunker wedged into the cliff, did you see the star etched into the stone wall, crossed out, a swastika drawn in? Facing la Douve from the lookout one can almost see the seasick, dead reckoning, the first wave at zero hour jumping from the landing crafts into the crashing […]