Christopher Nelson – Consequence
Consequence The magpies have shit on the frieze of the ancient temple. By Western standards, that makes them king. At colossal scale, the lunging naked warrior, cock and nuts heavy as a giraffe’s— I’m reprimanded for taking a photo. Most of the muscled boys, their white torsos and cold loins, are castrated. Everyone resents how […]
Edytta Wojnar – At a dinner party
At a dinner party the hostess is half goddess half bird— a common cuckoo immortal & beautifully feathered; a heron a heroine—her hair highlighted thoughts luminous in & out of the house perfectly lined lips round with vowels marking with precision shiraz in a crystal glass six seven eight times she seems to be the […]
Beth Suter – Crucible
Crucible The candle didn’t ignite the nightstand. There was no housefire. It’s not like burning. Grandma never picked the wrong mushrooms or mistook hemlock for dandelion. It’s not like poison. No one was smote by the lord or turned to a pillar of salt. It’s not like lightning. The whiskey wasn’t useless— the window wouldn’t […]
Jeanne Wagner – Vocabulary Lessons
Vocabulary Lessons At thirteen, I look up bruise in the thesaurus, like the bruises on my best friend’s arms and legs, and I find contusion. Later I check innocence and discover naiveté, a word that fits her when she tells me her father never beat her when she was younger because she was such a […]
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 […]
