Nonna tends Dad and Auntie in three room railroad flat; Bathtub in kitchen, 3′ x 5′ plywood tabletop, fridge at foot of bed, toilet in outside hallway with overhead waterbox and cold, wet chain hanging for the flush that suburban cousin Gina never could figure out how to use. Nonna fork-kneads one-inch pillows of dough filled with cheese, parsley, and beef. Tasted wonderful, even if too-many eggs and over-cooking meant they fell apart in grease-speckled broth. “Al Dente” could have been an opera singer, for all Nonna knew. She could not cook Italian: The ravioli … Continue reading Love Not Cheaply by Giancarlo Malchiodi→
Because we didn’t ask Abraham to do anything we wouldn’t do ourselves. We don’t owe him any explanation. Let him think it’s revenge in advance for when kids snitch on parents. We know it’s a kid who kicked off the Salem witch hunt. We knew Shylock’s daughter ran off with his ducats, that kids would accuse their mothers’ boyfriends of all kinds of crime to keep them apart, then set fire to City Hall: We already planned to replace it with cheap dwellings all the way from South Street to High. We knew revenge in … Continue reading We Need Appointments to See Friends by Gerald Yelle→
My father stared at me like a rose full of lint. He was wondering how living haunted me, spreading through my face and body, how it serenaded me like a black shadow, this slice of stench, this mound of nausea. I told him that I would get married to her, the love of my life, the lint of my universe, the one whose smile cracked Heaven open, the only woman whose carcass cleaned me. When she lived, my parents hated her; my mother believed she had no home training; my father thought she did not … Continue reading A Dead Love by Chibuike Ukah→
In the century most recently expired, pigments to suggest certain fruits and vegetables were infused into the metal of appliances, plastic tableware, canisters for sugar and flour, even the weave in carpet fibers. These were part of a concurrent affronts to taste including deleted expletives of Presidents, the Fonz scowling at a juke box, gas lines, fear of toilet paper shortages. Then that ancient ‘fridge began leaking coolants. You could have bought new seals, a refill of freon, but there was a virgin Master Card for such crises. The clearance floor model was the only … Continue reading Avocado by Christopher Dungey→
I pattern through my day first thing, I walk across the green geometry of my rug telling myself I will stay on course, breathe rhythmically coffee myself up to start up my inner waves of can-do coming and going through tasks written on my straight-line list repeat my regularities shower myself with adulthood stand among the trees living above underground networks feel their energy, take in the reliabilities of exchange somewhat ready for small differences and changes in the flow and spiraling of conversations with the known and the unknown who may try to sprinkle … Continue reading Framework by Susan Shea→
Thinking of Queen Elizabeth While Waiting for My Son at Dance Class The Queen’s body, enclosed in leadand English Oak, shifts forward for six hours. The waiting room, coffin of tired fabric,dance moms hold up their faces, hand bone effort. Children scurry, glass door handprints,sippy cups on tile, they escape like squirrels. Young mammals shimmer up oak treesby the road, plastic saws, hammers to pretend. Construction of her majesty’s casket lasteddecades, preparation for her death, a great British novel. In my town, dying is about which manufacturedbox is affordable. Elizabeth, a new mother to this … Continue reading Thinking of Queen Elizabeth While Waiting for My Son at Dance Class and The Solitary Mare, 2 poems by Sarah Lilius→
I wore a turquoise donkey bead on a thong around my neck— choker, bead and knot resting in the space between collarbones. Glass eye facing outward from my wrist pupil of deep blue defending against malevolence that wandered high school halls. Perhaps forgetting to say “Rabbit Rabbits” before opening eyes on the first day of the month explained everything. I have a fitness tracker clipped to my shirt as if I could outrun the apocalypse pocket full of dog treats to throw to the beast. Alison Hicks’s latest collection of poems is Homing. She was … Continue reading Portrait with Amulets by Alison Hicks→
Yesterday, I ate a lion for free, an elephant for the asking; and a leopard for my pleasure. I ate when I was not hungry, hunger stitched me into pieces and I could not eat. Hawkers and market women pleaded with me to accept a river, with two skies for a discount. If I decided to pay for an ocean, even the sea would flow along. Wherever my shadow fell, there the world was my limit. Now, the cub of a lion hides from me and the young elephant sharpens his teeth; though I was … Continue reading Shadows of their Bones by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah→
At the Concourse End of the Sky Bridge Discombobulated by my inability to sleep on a plane arcing across the wind-tossed top edge of Europe, the next thing I know we are making an unscheduled stop and I’m in a stop-and-start line where each passenger is being greeted in their native language by a woman who, when I get to her (she’s smiling) says to me, Welcome Good Morning, and I walk away marveling at not only the urge I am feeling to return to the back of the line so I can hear her … Continue reading At the Concourse-End of the Sky Bridge and Can I Pay Next Month What I Owe This Month?, 2 poems by Ben Sloan→
for Thelonious Monk I have a table for one at The Five Spot Cafe. Monk is on stage with Miles Davis and Art Blakey. No one in his band disturbs the jazz genius, or waits for him to speak to them when his mood is no brighter than his E Flat Minor. His melodies are the words his black fingers play on black and white keys for a black and white crowd, with a band always ready to follow Monk’s lead. He may change a play at the line of scrimmage, sending Blakey in … Continue reading ‘Round Midnight by Terry Huff→
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