Vigil Outside the nurses’ station, third floor east, twilight spreads its white canopy over the busy avenue of bright buildings. Down the hall, an orderly lofts a pale sheet over a vacant bed. In the next room, the ventilator pulses on, pushing a steady breeze through the cracked wall of a failing lung. In the dim light, the old woman tethered to a fever floats under the fluorescent aura shimmering above her head. Beneath shuttered eyelids, night pools. Right up to the edge. Work Gloves Nothing much to look at lying on the shelf, one … Continue reading Vigil and Work Gloves, 2 poems by Ron Stottlemyer→
Cottonmouth As the boat eased out on the pond, there was just enough light to see pale ribbons of sky rippling in the water. Dad paddled ahead with slow, heavy strokes, but the lives watching from trees, listening in the grass knew what had just arrived. As he rested the paddle on his knees, the boat glided on as if it knew where it was going, pulling a wide scarf of quiet behind it. Then the first deep croak sounded in duckweed near the far bank. When he dipped the paddle over the side to … Continue reading Cottonmouth by Ron Stottlemyer→
I went on a museum field trip not too long ago and had a revelation. I’m sure I’m not the first person to have pondered the following—but isn’t it wild to think that all sorts of currently priceless artifacts may well have started off as gee gaws shoved in the junk drawers of days of yore? I mean the pottery fragment on display could have come from a set of unregistered-for-salad plates some caveman’s new bride couldn’t put in the give-away bag fast enough. Or you know, accidentally dropped. In other words, it’s entirely possible … Continue reading Beholder by Erika Raskin→
Today is Nora Richard’s seventy-fifth birthday. She sighs, blows her nose, rests her head back against the scratchy, cheap couch that came with Apartment 205 inside Serenity by the Sea, an assisted living community she and her late husband moved into six years ago. Another long day stretches ahead of her like a superhighway to the moon. Mornings are the worst without Harvey brewing eight cups of Chock full o’Nuts drip coffee instead of two cups because a full pot of brewed coffee really makes this place smell like home. Harvey’s baritone voice talking … Continue reading Serenity by the Sea by Virginia Watts→
back then on that Bronx block few of us stood a chance against reruns of Lynda Carter’s Bracelets of Submission…..truth lasso or pale décolletage rendering erotic doses of televised justice on a daily basis. but we all know it wasn’t just her alone. so many of the finest neighborhood girls played defense with both their hearts and breasts—and rightfully so— because we’d wetted our tongues too often just to get a chance to one day lick the closest thing we could find to a cinematic Caucasian nipple. and into the Internet and collegiate suburbs we … Continue reading Ode to Wonder Woman by Akhim Yuseff Cabey→
When Stevie Nicks was a witch in Florida, I sent her letters on stationery purchased from the canteen. The new girl at the youth residential center told me her mother was Stevie Nicks, and also a witch. I was fourteen, a year into the system. I didn’t ask why Stevie Nicks’s daughter was also there. Anything was possible; lies about mothers, or the real reasons kids were there: I’d been stealing cars since I was eleven, or my teachers kept calling the social workers, or, my mom’s in jail for selling drugs. I heard the … Continue reading When Stevie Nicks Was a Witch in Florida by T. J. Butler→
feels this way. Familiar like the abstract place you grab for when you’re curled in despair on your own kitchen floor begging to go home, not knowing where you mean. No matter whose hair and breath lend the other pillowcase its scent, which farm grew this squash so delicately sliced, whose face you lean toward, lips to their ear, cupping a joke. No matter which gone person you scan the crowd for year after year. Whitney Hudak is a CNM and poet living in Newport, R.I. Her work has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal and … Continue reading Each Year by Whitney Hudak→
He looked small, curled up on her couch this handsome boy/man not looking at her picking his fingernails jiggling his foot a whisper of a beard on his face he was silent she waited he cleared his throat, said he had the same nightmare every night dreams of carrying wood up a mountain, walking with his father who he trusted more than God walking with his father who he loved more than God Dreams of an altar a fire, a sacrifice did it really happen? were his hands really bound? a knife at his … Continue reading Therapy Ten Years Later by Claire Scott→
I heard him say it dozens of times, but the first time I said it I laughed out loud. Dad never had two extra nickels to rub together— my parents the king and queen of getting by— and, get by they did— money not nearly as important as a house full of family. He was a soft touch— never able to say no to a friend. I often wonder how he’d fare today when money is god and we worship those who have gobs and gobs of it, like we worshipped the gods of mayhem … Continue reading Millionaire by Steven Deutsch→
Casting the Current I waited hours on the bank while Dad kept trying for a couple browns. He was far downstream when the first big drops cratered the water. All afternoon, the dark bruise of a storm had been closing in over the hills, but he waded out farther with the rushing current, casting long, slow loops over the ripples, some lifted by breezes, others blown aside like a bird in a gust of wind. Cigarette dangling, he moved carefully, shifting his footing around slippery rocks, past slopes that fell away in darkness below, someone … Continue reading Casting the Current and What’s Forgotten, 2 poems by Ronald Stottlemyer→
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