Rachel Stempel – He Was Born A Boy & That Should’ve Saved Him

He Was Born A Boy & That Should’ve Saved Him My hair is getting long meaning soon I’ll have the right answer. What we have over one another will matter never                         but now it may. It may. It’s May for us both. Rovno amber, your excuse for failed marriage, resurfaces when water breaks to corrode […]

Christopher Shipman – Time and Place (Unhorsed)

Time and Place (Unhorsed) Most of the kids were home when it happened. All except my father and uncle—                              the oldest two tasked to help                              again on their grandfather’s                              modest farm. Chancellor—the grandfather on their mother’s side— exists only as a name for me:                                           a constellation                                  shipwrecked in a memory                                                 the sky                                      can only vaguely […]

Dani Putney – Permafrost

Permafrost —              I remember being marooned up Donner Pass, my dad at the wheel,    his howls at us to stop the snow,       the only danger inside        a man cannibalizing his imports: children          & wife. —             On our way to Portland my best friend & I spun out, doused    in moonlight, tiny ice flakes […]

Elina Petrova – Aryqi

Aryqi Jambyl, Kazakhstan, 1943. Moses – my father’s redheaded father, in his round glasses and broadcloth helmet saved since his years in the Red Cavalry – stood on the step of a GAZ-MM truck and spread his military trenchcoat into the space of the missing windshield to protect his wife and child against the slapping […]

Jonathan Pessant – As Safe as One Can Get in a Marriage

As Safe as One Can Get in a Marriage At the inmate barber shop. Inmate Robinson—pulls a straight razor. We joke how easy it would be for me to die sitting in this beat up barber’s chair. I remember how before his life sentence was overturned he’d joke with me about how hard it must […]