Dana Henry Martin – Write This (Death is blood seeping …)
Write This (Death is blood seeping …) — after Michael Palmer Write this. Death is blood seeping through a stoma, pooling in a colostomy bag. It’s no food and no water, cancer’s game of coconut shells. Under the first shell, starvation. Under the second, asphyxiation. Under the third, exsanguination. Death is years or months or […]
Amanda J. Bradley – Rehab Homework #3: Vulnerability
Rehab Homework #3: Vulnerability I did not want to be a fuzzy dandelion waiting for a child to blow my seedlings free, make a wish. I wanted to be the wish granter. I did not want to be an open eye, an open wound. I wanted to be the eyelid, the doctor. I did not […]
Sally Ashton – Pastoral
Pastoral I feel the grass call its reedy voice thin as wind swales green gold fold the hills lovers arms at peace a place inside where old loves walk with me forever it is the grass I will miss on the moon Sally Ashton, editor of DMQ Review, is the author […]
Daniela Buccilli – Not an Elegy
Not an Elegy At the Appalachian rock shop on Diamond Street, an aquamarine woman dusts with a large pale towel the room decked in a giant spiderweb of heavy gauge wire, palm-sized crystal-bellied spiders, red jasper stone eyes. Jasper’s good for stability. In my house the spiders walk vertically. They drop chalk-white poop dots along […]
Heidi Seaborn – Almost Like Dying
Almost Like Dying The sun sets in a particular way in Northern California. As if the fruit from its orchards ripen all at once, skin bursting onto the atmosphere. Tonight is like that—nectarine, apricot and black plum, especially black plum. And in the stillness, there is breath— but even that is slowed. The way my […]
