From the Flume The banks of the West Ausable River Is a place you’ve never been. Staring straight down into the flume Violent bursts of water over Great granite boulders mesmerizes The boys, but I pull them back To trek a well worn path through Tall timothy, navigating our poles Around brush and beaver dams, Following the sound of gurgling river water Till finally, finding still waters, they cast. Cormorant In mid-afternoon sun I’ve stared for an hour At the lone cormorant perched twenty feet from shore On the remains of a tree grounded … Continue reading From the Flume and The Cormorant, 2 poems by Barbara Tifft→
So, you’ve read a literary magazine’s guidelines, you’ve even read its sample poems available online, or ordered a recent copy of the magazine to learn about what they publish. Maybe you’ve taken a class/workshop in which your poems were critiqued by peers and a popular teacher. But, how is it that some of our poems we have toiled over to the point that they are strong and seem to be the best they can be, do not get selected for publication by the journals where we’ve chosen to send them? As a poetry editor, I’ve … Continue reading Is Your Poem Ready for Submission? by Roselyn Elliott→
because hope is a motherfucker, i went up to each house of the dead and knocked, but no one answered. still, i am haunted: the sun sets a little dimmer ever since the last feeble twitch of that cat’s tail, even while its head lay red & bashed on the dusked asphalt, the traffic passing and passing. because the heat doesn’t work properly, we huddle nose to nose, the trauma of the world reduced to a single stray hair strangled in the neck of your tee, golden in the breath of the bedside lamp; to … Continue reading when i say i, i mean i by Joanna Lee→
I paint to find out what I think about the world; to discover the things I do not have words for. With collage, I love the randomness of the snippets of text and photographs appearing and disappearing that becomes the subject’s likeness. Even as photos and text become part of the pattern of lights and dark that create a coherent likeness, they also retain their … Continue reading Geoffrey Stein Updated→
My wife wants me to write my own obituary. Write a draft in the third person and revise it as many times as it takes to produce a short, readable account of a life that will make sense, if at all, only in retrospect, when a theme or at least a pattern might emerge from the confusion of places I’ve lived, schools I’ve attended, jobs I’ve held. Put it in the safe with my other end-of-life papers, the insurance policies, list of passwords, living will, last will. And no, she stipulates, I may not make … Continue reading Work in Progress by Philip Lawton→
lopes as only Hare can, all fits and starts, ears sky-sieves for the whoosh wings and clenched claws make as death stoops towards him— but not today, the sky bluebare serene in the heat, the great redtails who carry death on their shoulders perched on a high leafless limb to sentinel at noon: their eyes rake the cliffsides for mouse shadow a mile away. Nor can Hare stop his eyes’ search for coyote’s earth-colored pelt, or his nose twitching, tongue lapping the air for his rank smell though the brush is still. He leaps into … Continue reading Hare by Lance Lee→
I live a runaway life. I’m a writer, a wife, and a mother and, like a lot of women who tire of the multi-layered duties that come with that combination, I need to get away. Right now, what I’m running away from is a story. That could be funny since I’m a short story writer, a comedic one at that. But it’s not funny. Usually I run away to Washington, D.C. I ride the train from Charlottesville and settle in the quiet car. The train sways slowly from side to side. It’s like being calmed … Continue reading A Runaway Life by Mariflo Stephens→
She’s been sitting on the feeder since first light, gathering herself, I suppose, for the journey south. I wonder if she slept there, waking for a sip from time to time, adding calories, planning her long, winged trek through the mountains to the Gulf and across the waters to Mexico. Not for the first time do I consider the courage of the hummingbird at one-tenth of an ounce, the toll it will take to travel 3,000 miles to flee the cold of winter. Not for the first time do I consider the family she fed … Continue reading Migration by Priscilla Melchior→
Pocast: Coming of age. A short story performed by Jennifer Sims. Read the story online: Vanilla Music for Sinister Women Coming of Age by Mark Galarrita Follow us!
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