Jim Natal – Étude in the Form of a Crow
Étude in the Form of a Crow Crows punctuate my life pierce slice swoop dive origami folded enter my dreams disrupt subvert from within cardinals magpies jays the whole extended corvid clan anthracite feathers rouge feathers blue-speckled and barred camouflaged by pinons junipers madronas more cousins than my wife’s family the few I have I […]
Seif-Eldeine – Yara’s Grandfather’s Garden
Yara’s Grandfather’s Garden Yara knows the type of weapon being used from its sound. She paints the flowers she remembers in her grandfather’s garden: lilacs pecked at by hummingbirds like dead bodies are pecked at by jackals, red roses like the soldier who coughs up blood from the smoke in the scorched wheat fields of […]
Dorothy Neagle – The Snakebite Cure
The Snakebite Cure Maybe I’ll forgive her out of tiredness. I’ll give out and she’ll pick me off the ground. Oh, happiness. Put me inside the trunk of a tree, her treasure. Forget I’m there. Forget I forgave. I’ll forget. My forgiveness will turn to rage. Down from a tree the […]
Gail Entrekin – Waiting for my Daughter’s Baby, Week 36
Waiting for my Daughter’s Baby, Week 36 In Ljubljana, half asleep, Kate listens to the heartbeat of Matej curled beside her on the mattress in the heavy orb of her belly, like a swollen seed inside a gourd. Head down, he’s pressed against the round door to the passageway out into the loud and glaring […]
Eleanor Kedney – Arizona Black Beetles
Arizona Black Beetles Some had been stepped on, their split bodies trapped in time. Others were wounded, moving on two legs in a tilt. Most ran fast, confused by my shadow which way to turn. There were so many days of summer rain, and they came en masse for the ironwood blossoms, short-lived lives airbrushed […]
