Stefan Lovasik – The Noble Science of Trauma
The Noble Science of Trauma for my wife I shower in the canopied jungle with wires of light and rain; dry with strings of ears and scalps, I step into your body, a mirror. My faces sweat liquid only the dead can give up, yet the mirror rips into a thousand scars, the age of […]
Bruce Bond – Cathedral
Cathedral For three days a woman paints her mother in the chill of the funeral parlor, the doll of the mother’s body open-jawed in the long astonishment that overcomes the dying. God is in the small stroke, she says, the unction of the oil, the aromatic solvent that taints the air. She lays the death-mask […]
Romana Iorga – Golem
Golem I look up from the page and notice my shadow watching me. Lately, she has been sulking in corners, morose as a teenager who finally realized just how embarrassing I have been all her life. She cannot wait to leave home. Soon, I tell her and light a thousand candles. Soon, as I fill […]
Dane Cervine – Wisdom Template
Wisdom Template The older Tibetans draw a stenciled mandala— a simple outline, light blue— hand each page to a young man who, in a long room filled with light from open windows, arranges a palette of brilliant pigment, filigreed brushes, sits for hours on a pillow or low wood bench to trace and fill the […]
Amanda J. Bradley – Escape Artist
Escape Artist I scan the forest floor – lush, green – for coyotes and bobcats. The shadow of a hawk’s widespread wings graces my view. I am trying to get used to discomfort. Someone I love dearly wants me to. It is also the right thing. It is the only path to fearlessness. I am […]
