George Franklin – Reverie
Reverie Inside a dream, there’s no description, No painter with bright oils and canvas Surveying a shoreline of mangroves And mosquitoes. There’s no one to whom The dream happens. The face that stares back From the mirror has not been born. If There’s a beach here, no one’s ever stretched Naked on its sand, listening […]
Alissa Elliot – Knife Skills: an Elegy
Knife Skills: an Elegy It’s obviously about the onions, you read from the Les Halles cookbook I brought to your place from the city late that fall. Don’t hold your hand like this, never like this. I trusted him because he smirked like you, and knew the only trick: how not to mind the hurt, […]
Marsha de la O – Crevasse
Crevasse I no longer believe in Tierra del Fuego. We’ll probably never arrive. Already I’m gray as granite, and know well how to lower my head, how to lock my tongue with my teeth. I will need four legs and sharp hooves now. I will need a long, strong spine and the ability to trudge. […]
R.T. Castleberry – The Geography of Decline
The Geography of Decline Midday, mid-September, Sundays come down to patterns of salvation radio or Pay-Per-View. A lowland Atlantic storm hurries the scent of jasmine and river willow, carries the jumpy sound of rainfall and rolling water. My clothes and crutches are tumbled on the floor. A Shelton blanket pulls at stitches, black against raw […]
Carl Boon – Arkansas
Arkansas This is red clay dust on an Arkansas backroad. This is me telling you exactly what you want to hear: we wore corduroy jackets, their sleeves at our palms, and said black faces look better in the rain than ours. I don’t know what we were—I don’t remember how it felt to be called […]
