The last thing I drank was clear. The number of times I’ve had to repeat this reproduces, every anesthesiologist preparing for vomit, I guess. My apologies — I did not mean to spit that out, start your day with such a gross sort of showering, you alongside me, half naked on a frigid table, foaming like a geyser’s mouth. I meant to say something more profound, poetic, give you a peaceful tributary of words, a transparent shallow that, if you sit still in it long enough, you hardly feel anything but weightless. Yet everything known … Continue reading Prep work by Katherine Gotthardt→
If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. —Charles Darwin,Voyage of the Beagle There is some question as to Definition’s whereabouts, its opportunity, its motive: our mystery character in an imagined scenario. The first place to look for the culprit is in the dictionary (any Google search will do.) You probably would begin such a search by typing “definition of ‘definition’?” It has, however, multi-faceted explanations (and I’m more or less quoting now): 1) the act of defining or … Continue reading Looking for Definition by Fred Wilbur→
Among the activities of our local Parks and Recreation Department are youth sports (including cheerleading), a genealogy class, bingo, adult softball, “track chair” outings, gymnastics, Taekwondo, a class on identifying and removing invasive plants, and yoga. The yoga offered may not strictly conform to any of the seven modern varieties or schools (other than the fact that classes are held in a repurposed school building!), but is exactly what most participants need and want. Frankly, there are as many species of yoga as there are individuals: every one’s grimace is DNA different. The class … Continue reading Yoga Today by Fred Wilbur→
A friend once drove out of town so fast he didn’t know if he was headed north or south. He just wanted to make the coast and finally learn how to swim. But that wasn’t true. I knew it was his boyfriend, the metal whip of his tongue that drove him to walk that bridge each night—inevitable as Persephone come September. One night after the bridge whiskey, he asked me to hit him and I should have said no. He said he needed a pain that would come and go like wildflowers in the high … Continue reading Not Unlike Damon and Pythias by Zachary Lundgren→
As I read this year’s contest entries, I accumulated a deep appreciation for the humans who invested the thought and energy to create them and who took the time to submit them to our contest. Thank you, fellow poets. We received 137 entries and co-editor Sharon and I have read then all. Our task was tough as there were many seriously contending poems. I found that I was in conversation with each poem. My wife thought I was mumbling to myself as perhaps a first sign of losing me. In a sense, my interaction with … Continue reading 2026 Poetry Contest Announcement by Fred Wilbur→
I don’t want to be eaten by a grizzly, my dad would say every time we were camping. But I wouldn’t want to be here if it weren’t possible. I’m sitting outside, daydreaming, when up the sidewalk strolls my neighbor, his torpid eyes fastened like buttons, his mouth a bloodless sphincter of puckered sanctimony. No matter what we talk about, he somehow finds a way to bring up my father, to remind me that he knew him sixty years ago when they were just boys. I don’t bother reminding him that I’ve always known my … Continue reading Bloodless by Martin Vest→
He perches boldlyon the old phone wiredown Canning Factory Road. He sings killy killy killya violent tune for a falconpainted in colbalt and rust. Sir Toby once disparaged the stanielas an inferior sparrowhawk. Yet here,head down, the wind-hover enchants his prey. Voles scamper into the marsh grass.Young hares cower.I admire his beauty, murder be damned. Marjorie Gowdy writes and paints on her farm at the foot of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Over a long career, she has written essays, poems, short stories, and is working on a historical novel. She … Continue reading The Kestrel Blues by Marjorie Gowdy→
Human Entanglement After they split the atom, broke our water into hydrogen, and hydrogen, and the oxygen you couldn’t breathe, we and the hydrogen wandered the universe, searching for oxygen for what you were before the water broke, swept you down the river through the rocks over the steep glide of waterfall—the dam that stopped us for that moment, before we knew what it meant to become an ocean of loss. I have to believe in the physics of love: that if two particles—quantums, atoms, humans—become entangled, simply observing one will change the other, instantly, … Continue reading Human Entanglement and Woman, Falling, 2 poems by Karl Meade→
wondering at marriage; at what it’s really like and what it does to you – like: I know that I do love her but will it dislocate my bones? marriage – what then is the piston? what engine drives my father? who will I try to impress? it must be like a headcold – like giving up one of your senses. now it’s summer – I’m single – I walk and see women – temptation still blooms with the red sweating stamin of tropical flowers year round the botanical hothouse. and sometimes wearing clothes … Continue reading The hothouse by D S Maolalai→
“The deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.” —Jane Hirschfield, “Standing Deer” And this is how it is when I see the two-point, forty feet away, straight down the sidewalk, poised and watchful. And because it’s a blessing, I move to the other side of the road in order not to spook him, to startle him out of my sphere of awareness, because I want the blessing to last, this vision of the unexpected and its mysterious presence here in the summer dusk, having crossed the barrier between the mundane world I walk in … Continue reading A Block Off Henderson by Chris Dahl→
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