A Very Small Adventure by Susan Shafarzek Many, oh, many, many, years ago, a friend and I took a plane trip to Minneapolis, Minn. It was not a first flight, but it was a first time west for […]

Dear Portland: a Love Letter to My Childhood Sweetheart by Melissent Zuwalt We first met holding hands at the outdoor Saturday market, vendors selling tie-dyed tee shirts and us eating foods that seemed exotic to me, like […]

My Wife Is In Love by E. H. Jacobs Five years ago, my wife fell in love. I’m not talking about me (we have been married thirty-nine years, so I hope the falling in love thing happened m […]

A Gull and The Black Birch, 2 poems by J. R. Solonche A Gull A gull so far from the river circles the parking lot. Its whiteness is lost in this late fall day’s brightness. Its black edges are lost […]

Duck Blind by Regina Guarino Across the narrow alley way between row houses, where trash cans totter and feral cats loiter, a window opens onto the neighbors’ kitchen. For o […]

When I was about twelve years old, I found John Christopher’s YA Tripods books in the library. In this series, the humans on Earth have reverted to an agricultural, village-based society dominated by aliens who s […]

When the Waters Rise or Storm Descends

Each family will have gathered
what is durable and light.
How far will the little ones walk
before they ask to be carried.
What else will you set down.
When are we […]

Culture Shock by Rachel Lutwick-Deaner Fifteen years ago, I knew that moving to the Midwest would be a kind of culture shock. I knew it because I googled “Regional Food of Michigan” and the […]

When I was very young, I memorized the poem “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas, unaware that I had been drawn into poetry of place. Short-sighted, I read it as a poem about the loss of innocence which mirrored some […]

Sure to Glisten by Ashley Taylor The vermillion sun salts our mouths, warmth brimming with the sapor of brine. I write on my arm the torrid air a salve for wounds pleasure […]

Between the two American holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, it seems appropriate to write about one aspect of both: food.

Traditionally the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of a successful, […]

Mollypops, we called them, stomping
with our small shoes,
heaving them like baseballs,
bursting them green
against the barn wall.
We were children, seeking
to destroy, as children do,
leaving the […]

Turning sixty last month mandated a driver’s license renewal that replaced my wide-eyed forty-year-old self with a puffy-eyed, wrinkly-necked person unmistakably related to the round-faced woman who gave me l […]

Immersed by Caroline Kahlenberg     People will say it was suicide, but you mustn’t believe them. They’ll say I looked normal at first, a tall woman with long black hair […]

I reach for a glass jar of sweet gherkins and notice the same unfamiliar woman is following me down another aisle in the grocery store.

I wonder if it is a coincidence. My gut tells me otherwise.

The […]

Is it the nature of desire or
the desire of nature to reveal
how little we have evolved.

Is it the few words of a person or
a person of few words who
commands our attention.

Is it the history of violence […]