Aliki Barnstone is a poet, translator, critic, and editor. She is the author of seven books of poems, most recently, Bright Body (White Pine, 2011) and Dear God Dear, Dr. Heartbreak: New and Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow, 2009), and the translator of The Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy: A New Translation (W.W. Norton, 2006). In […]
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Kristin S. VanNamen: Winter Ice and The Mexican
Margaret Thompson tells her boyfriend Bill he needs a costume for Thanksgiving. “It’s a family tradition.”
Carla Spataro: Blue Sky and Pig Boy
Upstairs, in his lofty lair, Pig Boy looks out the window searching for Blue Sky on the wintry Michigan horizon. He squeezes his fingers into fists, willing Blue Sky to appear.
Greg Schreur: A Poor Reflection
After his shower the bathroom air is heavy and smells densely of soap. The steam and the moist gulf air have fogged the top half of the mirror and concealed his head behind a dense cloud of condensation, his reflection now a headless, naked, dripping body.
Tamara G. Oakman: Nothing. Everything.
Decaying houses fill Adina’s dark brown pupils, the backbones, or flanks missing. It looks post blitzkrieg—the miscellanies of the former inhabitants discarded—clothes, lost toys, kitchenware, bathtubs still nailed into place, full of grime.
Laura McCullough: Grace & Good Will
On the way home, I stop in the Good Will store in New Brunswick which I have passed going and coming for a couple of weeks while my father has been in the hospital.