Judith Janoo – The Edge of the Gorge

The Edge of the Gorge      Man is by nature a political animal —Aristotle Canyons between us we can’t understand. Tell me stranger at this political divide, what thresholds you failed to cross, what you lost, that there’s more than nothing between us. Freedom of thought, soft as lambs-ear, cashmere, fragrant as thyme-walked ground. Somewhere between […]

Andrea Hollander – Scorpion

Scorpion One afternoon when I was ten and almost home from school, I glanced up at the second-story window of a house on my block to see the acned older brother of one of my friends. He had tapped, then knocked so I’d see him framed there, the blinds lifted, the sun a spotlight on […]

Benjamin Hertwig – for the rat behind the fridge

for the rat behind the fridge In October, the first of the oak leaves chokes out the last of the arugula. It rains every day. There is a dead rat in the basement, a live rat in the kitchen. It jumps off the stove when I open the door. It’s hiding behind the fridge, longer […]

Alisa Golden – The Burn Zone

The Burn Zone Under the bedspring skeletons where the cleanup crew looks for bodies, lies a metal arcade token, a coin, the kind you’d personalize with the names of you and your lover. This is not a film. This is the news, and that’s all one couple has left.         Alisa Golden […]

George Franklin – Reverie

Reverie Inside a dream, there’s no description, No painter with bright oils and canvas Surveying a shoreline of mangroves And mosquitoes. There’s no one to whom The dream happens. The face that stares back From the mirror has not been born. If There’s a beach here, no one’s ever stretched Naked on its sand, listening […]