Jared Smith – A Heavy Weight to Carry

A Heavy Weight to Carry … the average cumulus cloud — often called a fair-weather cloud — can weigh around 1.1 million pounds, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Very foggy this morning. The road outside my home is slick. There’s a lot of water in the air and leaves are budding. I […]

Olga Livshin – 2023

2023 When a war flares abroad, American sky smooths out, erasing the small scars left behind by airplanes: we are now extra soft, extra large. American oxygen, twinkling: Little accomplices, you luxuriate under my protection. The sky has gentled my head so many times, I have nearly learned to check my disgust, not the news. […]

Jennifer Isaacs – Subjacency

Subjacency (linguistics) A constraint on the movement of elements which states that the target position of movement must be structurally close downwards to the source position. –Wiktionary … lying immediately under or below. –Merriam-Webster the incomparable syntax of the knee the half-familiar language of the hands the mouth’s vague symmetry we spoke a new and […]

Ken Holland – How Quiet the Words

How Quiet the Words You lean towards me             the way a whisper leans into intimacy             or how rain strips the sky down to no other purpose but its own. I know no more of you             than summer knows the dark eclipse of its heat             when the earth wanders away from the long light             like a […]

Diane Gottlieb – Like the Woman Who Drove to Work Crying in Her Car

Like the Woman Who Drove to Work Crying in Her Car after Kelli Russell Agodon I wish I’d kept going. Going. My sweet petals to the metal. Burning rubber, stamens, stems. “It won’t hurt,” he said. “Just a tickle.” Uncle Theo’s breakfast. Whitefish breathing down my neck. Like the woman who drove to work crying […]