Diane Gottlieb – Like the Woman Who Drove to Work Crying in Her Car
Like the Woman Who Drove to Work Crying in Her Car after Kelli Russell Agodon I wish I’d kept going. Going. My sweet petals to the metal. Burning rubber, stamens, stems. “It won’t hurt,” he said. “Just a tickle.” Uncle Theo’s breakfast. Whitefish breathing down my neck. Like the woman who drove to work crying […]
Steve Cushman – December, 1974, West Wareham, Massachusetts
December, 1974, West Wareham, Massachusetts I remember snow blowers and hot chocolate, Charlie Brown on TV. My sister and I snuggled beneath the heavy blue quilt. My mother across from us, in Dad’s oversized chair, smoking Parliament 100s, with Jiffy, the black mutt, on her lap. And I remember having to pee but not wanting […]
Maddie Clevenstine – Ask Me About Hell
Ask Me About Hell There is something standing in the street. With sharp teeth and hands made of metal, it paces the edges of the neighborhood. Sometimes it wears the face of my mother, other times my uncle long dead and buried turned to marsh and twigs in the dirt. Still other times it wears […]
Carine Topal – What Are You Looking At?
What are You Looking At? You are looking at a beating heart. Red Square, the front yard of rulers, named for its loveliness. You are looking at a plaza of lock-stepping uniforms and a few demonstrators. And tourists. Above them, the minarets of St. Basil’s, its onion domes disquieted by a huddle of limping babushkas […]
Michael Spring – hospital walls, 3am
hospital walls, 3am (after the pulmonary embolism) the walls are made of wings rustling inside the white paint my wife is asleep in a foldout chair in the corner of the room my body is sunk into pillows facing a dark TV screen – a black mirror – I watch myself and her and all […]
