Eel River Meditation   Above the Eel River, a concrete bridge: every summer we plied humid afternoons with hickory bark canoes. Lying on the sloped bank we paddled between walnuts and hickories— we were on the brink of believing. The Eel was clay-colored in July, and familiar as salt, solid as a Pontiac sedan although some nights, when the frost-glass lamps were lit and warm air was damp it seemed we might find the bridge led lightning bugs across water to a stream of galaxies, sets of blurred moons. While the crickets sang their growing-the-corn-tall … Continue reading Eel River Meditation by Ann Michael →

Malady   He’s never been sick before skin warm and ill-fitting, moist as he sinks into me, that exhausted root for comfort and the fear that he’ll be declining soon. Children know to seek this oath from their mothers, the affirmation when the darkness comes and they feel as though they will never stop ailing. I can feel it swallow him—skin pale, lukewarm and halfhearted the lids of his eyes bending over yellowing whites, each heavy and brimming with unease. I feel him wilt like day old flowers in my arms and at my breast, … Continue reading Malady by Jesse Albatrosov →

Charybdis and the River   Do you hear the gurgling river? All the molecules of oxygen and hydrogen in their special dance, choreographed, washing memories clean, liquid fingers wearing grooves into the banks. White water foams, restless. I, on the other hand, am the undertow, placid above, roiling dark beneath, unpredictable. Soothing sounds hide the maw that swallows without trace. Stillness draws with languor the unsuspecting heart. Remember me, I murmur: I am the scar.   Between Covers   She used to think she could open any man like a book, run her finger along … Continue reading Charybdis and the River; Between Covers by Anca Segall →

I Bought Them   I bought them, two big books, fat with two lifetimes of poems, not so much to read them, which, over a long time, as is meant, I will do, but just to look at, their bigness, heavy as loaves of grainy peasant bread, and their pictures on the covers, the two old Polish poets, Milosz and Herbert, their beautiful white hair, their beautiful long white fingers, their beautiful white cigarettes, and the smoke like their own beautiful white ghosts. J.R. Solonche is author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long … Continue reading I Bought Them by J.R. Solonche →

Mom Wants to Talk Football On the gridiron of family life, she and I stood the sidelines, flanking the husband and father who, fourth and goal in the waning minutes, always called his own number. She, the former German schoolgirl who had fled here in ’36 with her hick-town kin, to major later in garter belts and Maybelline, and who would not at any time have known a pigskin from an eggplant. Though now that the masterful man is gone, and she has her new bed, having slept a single night on his side of … Continue reading Mom Wants to Talk Football; Speaking in Tongues by Ken Haas →