for Alfred Kern,1924-2009                 Search Amazon for his novel,               The Width of Waters, and you get                No Image Available                and No Customer Reviews.                Instead, you see suggestions                for dry texts                on hydro resource management.                Yet, as if the red ink is still wet                between the lines                of my fictions typewritered onto                now yellowing pages,                his words manifest in my mind’s margins. I wonder if the storyisn’t or can’t be deeper.Press harder.                Once, as a curious student,                I visited his classic Victorian                facing Diamond Park,                watched as he released,              … Continue reading Mentor by Jeanne Julian →

On the black and white TV, we watched silently, as an American soldier fell into a field of static like he was falling fast asleep, tumbling down the screen, out of sync with the signal, dropping one horizontal line at a time. Then, someone’s daughter came running out to us with her arms raised. They called her the Little Napalm Girl because she burned with Napalm’s invisible fire. She looked to be exactly my age at the time, caught on the camera in this first war, televised. My dad didn’t want me to see her, … Continue reading Little Napalm Girl by Jean Mikhail →

What Horses Say What’s to be made of the field of buttercups, a saffron sea at the bend of the road, with the three horses                     ….one black with white mane and tail                      …one coppered like a new penny                     ….one white as an angel a triumvirate of muscled peace and perfection. What’s to be made of thinking of 3 recently dead friends every single time I drive past the most laughably maudlin reach for meaning when the real story is simple: Time is real- the realest unseen thing undocumented, untouchable a mystery deeper than … Continue reading What Horses Say and Stains, 2 poems by Rita Quillen →

We walked down this dusty canyon, where the rains have worn gashes in the gray banks like the creases that run from your cheek bones to your jaw line, Dad. Once you rowed us on a lake, squinting in reflected light, the muscles of your chest and arms fluid, your laughter again like cold water in my face. Then, only a boy, I wanted arms like yours. I even wanted a crease in my cheek. But when I leaned towards you, you shouted, “Sit down! What are you trying to do?” and I sat hunched … Continue reading Trails by Will Hemmer →

The night was so quiet I could almost hear the stars, that place laden with pines. Your eyes hard to read across the air between us, air you swallowed whole with I’m sorry, I need more room. But I believe in gestures, in the plate of mandarinas served at dawn, when you knew I needed feeding. Linda Laino is a visual artist and writer who has been making art in one form or another for over forty-five years.She received two years of fellowship awards from the Virginia Museum in pursuit of an MFA from Virginia … Continue reading Mandarinas by Linda Laino →