Rose Maria Woodson – Myth
Myth When ancestral you pinned my great, great, great black grandmother to the ground, stormed her vagina, you laughed. Drank her tears like sherry. Got some strange. Picked a part of her from a part of her. Her dreams turned umber. Condensed to heavy clouds. Darkness tentacled her darkness. She spoke rain for the rest […]
DeAnna Stephens – Matrilineal
Matrilineal The candor of these mountains will fracture your footing. Flux of memory sways in the excavator’s cradle— spring grass and bluets choking beneath the rich earth. My darling, your baby teeth will outlast you. Your mother’s grandmother pondered smothering the fires she lit in her summer kitchen’s cranky black heart, yet she fed that […]
Phillip Sterling – The Miracle of the Hands
The Miracle of the Hands The children receive an unexpected box in the mail. It’s marzipan, molded in the shape of an eighty-two-year-old hand. Their parents are astonished; they open another bottle of Bordeaux, mix up a batch of waffles. To be fair, says the father, each child will get a finger, and the thumb […]
Mary Buchinger – Earth Gates (the rock)
Earth Gates (the rock) in the corner of my garden a rock the size of a human pelvis soft-edged double-handed grey w/ a charcoal grey stripe levitates above a lace of kernelled soil curious I lift the rock & discover a circus of glossy bubbled beings a […]
Farnaz Fatemi – We Want Things We Say We Don’t
We Want Things We Say We Don’t he carried the tomato plant around looking for her even the snow geese are quiet the world is a handful of dust even as a young man, his true self was never below the surface cardamom tea in a pint glass absolute attention is prayer the rush […]
