In the end, my mother’s shoulders, barely covered and quivering, were like birds. Once, I made a dress for her, the fabric creamy white, the print a single brown tree spanning the width, with stark branches. It was 1974. I was fourteen. Each night, I taught […]
poetry 96
Harold Whit Williams: Hawk Pride Mountain Nocturne
The deceased leave behind their voices. Some in shoeboxes Stacked in the back closet, Others under creaking steps, In leafwhisper, water murmur, highway hum. Most, middle of the night, seek us out With their quick-and-dead singsong. Disembodied, tremulous, Gusting down Off the pine-sided hill. An uncle’s high tenor; an aunt’s thick alto. A whole ragtag […]
Harold Whit Williams: Alabama Field Holler
I have decided to blame no one for my life. – Robert Bly Winter morning all hollowed-out, Whistling its one-note ballad. Morning bark-stripped, sanded-down, Held over a flame. A woodsmoke Morning piping clear across Childhood back pastures. Let me wake early to cop the riffs Of this bygone morning song. Let me stomp out with […]
Heidi Walls: It Left a Shadow on Me
that he was too quiet to ask and i to offer. shy beggar— watery eyes like riptides and his voice disappearing into the bricks.
Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad: Small
If that glow-lost fleck in the span of space is home, then his wishes are just a sliver of that grain’s curve; everything that he wants is small: His fingernails gouging deep seas for blue clay— an invisible slice of the particle’s bow His doused body sliding along the mako’s fin— a morsel, only, of […]
Sue William Silverman: If the Girl Ungoes to War
Pirates unfuck her cunt, unplucked from sockets, eyes unfixed, undilated, can’t unwitness every unkind crime, every ungrief. Seas unlush with bloody unrooted hair swarm with unkempt men, the ends of whose arms still handed, as yet unhooked, strum rough guitars. Strings unsnap as bodies uncouple. The girl waves a black flag, unsurrendering her remains to […]