God must be, I dare now to say, like a cat, with His / Her / Its impertinence and delays in ordering our lives, loves and ways of being whoever we think we are, or might be. I’ve learned this from my own clever pet, Kestane, who is happily (I suppose) grooming herself as she lies curled up in the wicker chair across from where I sit in my rocker, having my penultimate drink of the evening and trying again to understand what drives us in our conceptions of divinity. She’s not, or, perhaps, she … Continue reading God by Mel Kenne→
it surely is the same wrinkled sky from years ago when i lived in dense forest towns when cold winds chafed Iroko bark like prayers chafe fingers. i smoothed my first grinding stone with rocks rocks picked from streets maddened from stoning thieves. i peered down wells and called to the nameless to find out for myself: guards of the wide road where mothers have gone mad where faint rhymes tuck into palms, love poems in vapors, breastmilk curdles with ghosts, and from mounds poured for the forgotten, i walked, anyhow, anyhow myself Liz Femi … Continue reading grown girl: she thinks of the dead by Liz Femi→
And if you were that old collection of smudged walls and dusty glass, you would be embarrassed to be caught by the morning – stretched out fence to fence, your top half in scaffolds, cross in repair from the super storm, gravestones covered September leaves in March, unprepared for the sun, bleary-eyed, pulled from that dream of the underground railroad – belly full of tunnels, tunnels full of bloody songs. And if you were a stone, you would miss the touch of … Continue reading Belleville Reformed Church by Josh Humphrey→
Father Fagus Grandifolia, silver grey with muscled shoulders fingers traced across the soil like a hawk’s nest suturing the slope. Beech tattoos give proof to Jake and Sue that they were, indeed, in love in 1962. Proof that Peter mattered and that Harlon was, in fact, here. Slow growth in acid earth, with polished nut. Sweet scent a dozen decades old still luring pilgrim children to the woods, knives drawn. Ned Kraft, a librarian by trade, has published satire, poetry, and short stories in such places as Phoebe, Against the Grain, Grimoire, The Pennsylvania Literary … Continue reading Beech Tattoos by Ned Kraft→
As a child, when did you first become aware of air? It was probably as its manifestation in the mysterious force of wind. Indeed, we all have forgotten our first gasp at birth. I thought of this question as I drove through a dead-still morning when clouds brushed the top of my pick-up. The air was thick with moisture; not really raining, but enough water accumulated on the windshield to necessitate turning on the wipers every few miles. I thought it would be nice for the wind to sweep away this dark sniffling day. My … Continue reading Air is Wind is Song by Fred Wilbur→
I sit at the bar at Café Un, Deux, Trois on West 43rd and cross my legs and swivel toward the room glass of wine in hand nylons shining skirt above my knee. I cross my legs and the heel of my shoe slides off just a bit as I raise my toe up and down. I catch a man’s eye at one table then another. I have what they desire but will not get. Mother of two, forty-plus married in the burbs. I love making them want it. It sets me up for the … Continue reading Desire by Molly McKaughan→
Among rural Piedmont foothills, coves of the gentle Blue Ridge Mountains, is where I live. There is no incorporated town in the county; the courthouse town has but a few hundred residents. As internet access reaches into the remotest corners and the local newspaper sees its circulation numbers dwindle, it is fortunate that an online Facebook group has been set-up as a community bulletin board. No substitute for Moose Lodge dances, a church chitterling dinner or a Fourth of July parade, but the group serves to disseminate information, both of a general and a particular … Continue reading Reaching Out by Fred Wilbur→
After-Xmas industry. In neighborhoods, crisp cedars and spruce pines hyphenate curbs. A pasture fronts the orphanage, tempers grid of brick dorms where crews toil with life-size figurines of an ornamental nativity. An ensemble donated by Sears & Roebuck in the 70’s like gold tensile or corporate myrrh – fully amortized / no retail benefit at the mall. Bedded horizontal on a trailer, the plaster statues murmur in route to out-of-season storage: a devalued host of sojourners relegated to an outbuilding. Not a stable, not a fable, but dry font until next November’s advent – reverent … Continue reading Dismantling Bethlehem by Sam Barbee→
From however far away, detail. The lovers, almost fully clothed, amid bushes, her round blonde face delighted, hopeful. The returned Prodigal, kneeling, embraced, exhausted – such precision of apology and joy – but seen by whom in the middle distance, that fascinating distance you don’t notice? A bystander, a passerby who stops to take the scene in wholly. As in Christ Presented to the People so they may choose between the thief and him: steps, platform, doorway, every window full, spear-carriers, hangers-on, all known; and Christ, thorned head down, looking tired, as one … Continue reading Rembrandt Etchings by Frederick Pollack→
The best ones are the small ones, those you need to hold in your hand two or three at a time, those you need to feel for size, and shape, and heft, the blunt, the sharp, the smooth, the rough, the square, the round, the firm, the soft, the ones like rocks, like bricks or stones in streams, the ones like clods of soil or clumps of clay, the ones you pile to build the whole world with, and then the ones you hurl to bring it down. Nominated for the National Book Award and … Continue reading Monosyllabic by J. R. Solonche→
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