Toy Box
A Note from the Editor: Many of the photographs you will see in this issue are from Asher -- no last name, simply as is. Asher is a sculptor from near Detroit…
Barnlights
Those fireflies spark in the hum and burr of twilight, when our legs begin to itch from the day's rambles. Chiggers and tall grass have left their mark, a…
A Girl Buys Lilies for Herself
She knows that there is something wrong with her when there have been no flowers in her house for weeks. The air smells of uninhabited hearts and crushed moths and…
Sharp Parables
Children hear of water-hoardings. Lorelei floating gold cups, coaxing gullible girls down. Ancient cities settled by kelp and shells. Rivers refusing tossed-in…
How to weave a blanket out of horsehair and spidersilk
Smothered by sun and time / one sun drunk lizard / and me with my belly exposed / pine wood rounds / tree rings naked and orange / sap the taste of resin / cinnamon…
Rattle
I taped flyers to the maple trees that lined both sides of the street. Your gap-toothed smile stared back at me, crooked school tie, and favourite pink bow. I…
Letters to a Dead Racehorse #6, #8
#6 Can you tell me how much longer I get to be alive and in love? Maybe a person only gets a choice between the two and maybe it is too late to live after…
History & the Doomed
Curb corners accumulate dandelions, cigarettes, & skeletons, compliments of the whirlwind as it keens through errant sunbeams. Antennae twitch at smashed gears.…
Marigold
Mornings in Uganda are first the color of periwinkles, then roses, then suddenly a shot of brightest marigold. I watch it from my doorstep, listening. The caws of…
Arsonist With Unlit Match
She stands close enough to the building for the fumes to creep into her nose. This is the last time, she tells herself, as she always does. Even as the strong scent…
White Knives, Blue Tears, & Red Whips
The whips fed on the blood of my forefather's backs. Soaked it up like needed sustenance, leaving the drops for the soil We cried into the sea, bodies floating…
Growing Up Polack
My dad spent 4 ½ years in Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany. My mother spent 2 ½ years as a slave laborer in various camps there. When the war ended,…
perhaps the sea
Foaming and violent as the wave, we echo of beatings taken on shores unknown or known too well. The sea is as young as it is sage, as seasoned in relief…
After D
a light rain is falling. perhaps, like the trace of a breeze it will bring a fresh spirit of peace to a world that's imploding. shattered seeds scatter, soft,…