Xiaoly Li – Swallow Brand
Swallow Brand Sunlight through drapes, swirls on the fifty-year old sewing machine and your waterfall hair. With needle threads and scissor snips, your steadfast hum rhymes with the device’s whir and click. Our youth was dressed in hand-me-downs. Each cherished garment held a braided story beneath your skilled revision. Labeled a rightist, rendered jobless in […]
Carolyn Miller – The Feast of Corpus Christi
The Feast of Corpus Christi For we consume the god in the tortillas, in the wine and mescal and tequila, in the lamb burned in the pit, the tacos of cow’s udder, the blackened chiles, the gray fungus growing on the corn. Today I saw the elote man, who sells cooked ears of corn still […]
Madelyn Parker – We’ve Passed Through Many Churches
We’ve Passed Through Many Churches A magic trick— the nothing that can levitate a woman from the ground. A steel plate fixed at the spine. A golden braided band around a finger. A replacement. A circle of safety. A fearfulness glinting silvery like satin threads in the stole hanging by gray filing cabinets. A reaching. […]
Jeanne Wagner – Schrödinger’s Cat
Schrödinger’s Cat In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead only while it is unobserved in a closed box. ―Wikipedia I think of him, wrapped in his striped-orange fur, warm and comfy in his box right before we open it and gaze down. Killing him softly as the […]
Kim Addonizio – Compassion Problem
Compassion Problem By season two of The Walking Dead I’ve almost grown immune to corpses staggering along a road or through the woods drawn by gunshots, bells, some music, like old dolls leaking dust only blood spews out if you cut or stab or aim a car through them, you might pull at one & […]
