Ashley Mallick – The morning after I rejected my best friend’s proposal of marriage at Union Station
The morning after I rejected my best friend’s proposal of marriage at Union Station Mom makes eggs one palm clasping the skillet handle, the other a spatula. Loose pieces of hair like flypaper glisten and cling to the sweat on her neck. Our AC’s broken, window cranked, Mom pauses mid-stir and looks at me elbow […]
Editors’ Introductions
Editors’ Introductions Pedestal’s editorial process is always an exhilarating and expansive experience. To see an issue come together – poem by poem, each with its unique voice, music, and intent – is gratifying and still, after all these years, brings me a rush of energy, a feeling of being on some kind of creative frontline. […]
Kristy Bowen – Plane Missing Since 1939 Lands
Plane Missing Since 1939 Lands Over the Atlantic, everything looks like sky— ocean, cloud-cover, the rocky sand. All sky. All blue we keep wanting to fly into. We were broken before we started, busted landing gear. Cracked altimeter. My suitcase had a gash from Paris running straight across the middle. Into which I threw hope […]
William Greenway – Quarantines
Quarantines i Imagine the media coverage of the Black Death, whole families boarded up to die inside, the comic bring-out-your-dead carts, cameras on location by the mass graves, Shakespeare, the Globe closed, Lear televised to the yokels. Tired of YouTube, my bored daughter draws over and over stick figures with straw hair like the thatch […]
Heidi Seaborn – Burning the Evidence of Our Existence
Burning the Evidence of Our Existence A matchbook lies on the table between us next to the ashtray, dirty with cigarettes. The one we stole from the hotel in Rome, drunk on chianti and moonshine. Drunk on a story we told into extinction. I’m done talking atonally. I’ve emptied my pockets again. What remains lies […]
