Jan Beatty – California
California Around here, trees are hats, little bowlers, van gogh lids of blown divi trees that lean sideways for the better view— toppers, kangols, pork pies, wig hats. I woke to the racket hailstorm: little funnels of green at the edge of the hillside—jutting out over the sea—the lives of people closeted inside—who are they? […]
Morrow Dowdle – The Gir- That Lost Its L
The Gir- That Lost Its L It didn’t happen all at once, but in chunks. The L’s first cut the parents scissoring the long hair. The Gir- started to be mistaken. The face not enough to carry its sex. No wonder the Gir- started to hate it—the hair. The face. The body with its brown […]
Molly Fisk – Even Rivers
Even Rivers It isn’t wanting to die it’s not even not wanting to keep living, it’s some other kind of absenteeism my spirit dreams about but they get all tangled up in those labyrinthine trails through my neocortex and give me a headache. What I want is no more burden, less exhaustion, some kind of […]
George Drew – Anecdote of the Rat
Anecdote of the Rat One night I saw a rat. A big rat. The biggest rat I’d ever seen. It was slinking along the gutter across the road from where I was. I was sitting on the porch. It was dusk. Light was fading like an old bulb. But dark wasn’t really dark. Not yet. […]
Grant Clauser – God Particle
God Particle Let’s say it’s true, maybe, that the warblers’ early arrival at the hedgerow, or hundred year floods three years running, or the torched forest growing acre by acre, minute by minute, mean nothing. Winter came after all, and yes, I remember that spring snowfall years ago when the garden, already starting to blossom, […]
