Eileen Tabios – Why I Am Rarely Nostalgic
Why I Am Rarely Nostalgic —Bauang Beach, circa 1965 She knew she should know better I was barely older than a toddler I had played with her only daughter during those summer days of Innocence by a sapphire sea warmed by a gentle sun When it was time to leave she gently suggested I give […]
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 […]
