Toni Scales – A Haunting
A Haunting We feed the ghosts with fettuccine and fire extinguishers. Watch as they bend backwards and crawl towards us. Through musty windows the light fails. We set fires to the etiquette books. Don’t brush our teeth for days, the scent of us feral and dreamlike. All night the dresses burn. Mother’s face haloed as […]
Alexis Rhone Fancher – A Nickel For Every Time
A Nickel For Every Time December, again. Bare trees scarecrow the woods. The crunch of leaves underfoot reminds me of those jawbreakers she used to mouth, cracking at them with her back teeth until a molar broke. She’s stubborn like that. Check out her eyes when she’s not getting her way; there’s a storm brewing. […]
George Witte – Dead Nails
Dead Nails “Recently, archaeologists excavated an unusual set of talismanic nails from a mountaintop necropolis on the outskirts of Sagalassos in southwestern Turkey.” –The New York Times They burn, then brick him in the pit, tiles blackened by still-livid coals, too powerful to risk escape. Slake lime and slather crevices against his posthumous return. From […]
Lynn Wagner – Black Dog de Christo
Black Dog de Christo 1. What dog? Where? And in what wrap? Mastiff? Spitz? Chihuahua? No. None but the black dog bundled. And Christo, would he sketch her architectural? Choose binding to hold her? No. First he must find the place, then carefully decide the cover: a shy translucent saffron to make her a sunspot– […]
Carine Topal – Belye Nochi
Belye Nochi Streets glazed with brine, the reek of a dead wren, and cabbage. Midnight pearls down the narrow channels of Leningrad. It is August. Moonless white nights skulk along the walk to December Street. Further down, the boulevard and the bread-stand. Our bodies are fugitive regrets: true morning will come with its rusted sun […]
