Mounds of sugar beets under halogen, marooned in pressure waves like fossil dinosaur turds. Lurid thunder eggs. And always the two Lebanese brothers who walk and argue. . A six-year-old boy drowned in an irrigation ditch. His father a tethered dirigible in white Adidas. Church is headstones in hill rows wearing in an unrelenting … Continue reading Parma, Idaho by Craig Brandis
In the darkening slush of afternoon traffic, he unfolds a chair beneath a lone sycamore then urges his body into its crooked shape. Always at this hour, even as rain slickens Elysian Fields, he sits and outwaits the sun as if for someone to return, or the familiar judgment of a voice grown marble smooth. Something from the street calling to him, urging him to rise up from the green lawn and chair, He might have been carved out of air, he seems that content, as it he’s waiting for the reflections of a chrome … Continue reading The Old Man by Richard Weaver
Colors behind your eyes A slow pastel dusting Forming speckled images Of a distant ocean roar Your pillow listens in To the lawless deep blue That can sometimes churn Waves in your stomach Taking you back to a time When you were young Where you can be innocent Once again in a place Far from the world of sin That pushes against The coastline of your body Harsh Ramchandani is a Hong Kong based writer whose work can be found in various online and print publications. Though primarily a writer of poetry, he is also … Continue reading Sweet Dreams by Harsh Ramchandani
Driving switchbacks on Shenandoah’s spine, dipping into valleys and screaming up again, we scorch speed warnings from yellow diamonds as the dashboard Garmin’s destination time spins backwards. We’re regaining invisible minutes that would have languished on a longer voyage, one that slowed to marvel at purple splashes of ironweed and white tassels of sweetspire or braked to heed warnings of falling rocks. The cerulean sky has tumbled other sarsens in our path, and instead of ringing them in monuments, we have taken to the road, racing time itself, arms stretched out windows, splayed fingers … Continue reading Time Traveling by Bill Glose
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 in the sunlight. Its black edges are lost against the glowing clouds, where its whiteness is lost. My daughter sleeps in the car and does not see the gull gleam above us so far from the river. She is lost in a glowing white dream. Tomorrow I will have forgotten the gleam of the gull that circled above her so far from the river. Years from now … Continue reading A Gull and The Black Birch, 2 poems by J. R. Solonche
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 going to be there. Even our grief will not put out the fire. There it is, burning, lighter and lighter, singing into a mouthful of air. Chicken By the third time I checked on her, she had no eyes, just two white sockets where they should have been. A pair of glossy beetles, oblong, paddled in … Continue reading When the Waters Rise or Storm Descends and Chicken, 2 poems by Michael Quattrone
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 can make known again. Why is it important that we remember the metrics of marking time? All I ever am haunted by the naming of things, the finality of definition of anything being anything more than what is. Fascinated by turning toward, becoming haloed from a moving silhouette— I write nonsense, vague and unspecific defenses, keeping me from being known. Next to me, someone is talking (to me?) of … Continue reading Sure to Glisten by Ashley Taylor
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 juice-encased seeds to rot, perhaps reseed the pasture’s edge. Now I watch them in the garden. They droop egg-like, ripen toward yellow, draping palmate leaves like mittened hands sheltering blossom and fruit. How frail the flowers perched atop the leaves, a few still blooming purple! Passiflora incarnate, naked as Botticelli’s Chloris in her flimsy veil. Style and stigma, anthers invite golden bee to … Continue reading Passionflowers by Joyce Compton Brown
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 or the violence of history that stirs our passion. Is it the loss of sadness or the sadness of loss that wakes the suddenness of joy. Is it the surprise of a gift or the gift of surprise that creates delight. Is it the loneness of a flower or the flower of aloneness … Continue reading What Claims Us by Diana Pinckney
a lot of roadkill lately. one sign of summer’s approach. dead foxes— dead birds especially. and once, on the main road driving toward blessington, an otter—an almost intact thing, a torso as thick as cracked leadpipe, lying down on the lines which bisected the lanes, and everyone swerving about it. april is indeed a morbid month, and it’s dishonest— sun striking the tarmac like water and drawing things in. daffodils rise, draping forward fat flowers with curl in the neck of a landed and interested vulture. folding its wings at the verges of roadside. strutting, … Continue reading A morbid month by D. S. Maolalai