Stuart Jay Silverman – Workday
Workday She lets me know, she wants the toilets done every day. I’m here twice a week, so I drop a blue tab in the tank every two weeks to keep the white white despite the shit, the piss, the menstrual blood, and, I suppose, the semen he deposits in the bowl when, as she […]
Francine Witte – Definition
Definition The little boy asks his family what a lemon is. The mother, mostly apron, says oh I use it in my cooking. Also to sprinkle on fish. The father, who is rumpled like the evening paper, says, Ha! A lemon is the car your mother’s brother sold me. The boy’s older sister is mostly […]
Amy Small-McKinney – How to Love the World, Anyway
How To Love The World, Anyway Except in light rain a body becomes a ringed seal, pinniped, fore-flippers balanced against shore ice, exhaling to empty half-lungs before a dive. Be half-quiet, half-drunk rain drizzling on a body that has decided to love at least half-way. Return to your simple tile floor—real— won’t lift or levitate […]
George Wallace – Hauling Coal in Paradise
Hauling Coal in Paradise you demanded it of us, you shaped our tongues to it, to work it thus, this is our language we know no other, being obedient & hard-working & patriotic you laid it on us, with jingles & charms, threatened denied cajoled, you & your agents, you hooked us with it, pulled […]
Paula C. Lowe – Sourdough Starter / Heal
Sourdough Starter / Heal for the diver who brought the dead man out of the ocean near Anacapa Island Only a backpack returned from Kodiak Island, a shell of you on the carcass of you carrying little hope for bread, your hair painted by Botticelli, a golden wriggling mass salted by an ocean where cold […]
