Jessica Yuan – Origin Point
Origin Point In the naturalist’s study each shelf is preserved as he kept it, a row of bird feathers, fish skeletons, a severed hand tied at the stump with lace doily and ribbon, red-spined seashells, skulls of lesser humans, a hydrocephalic fetus, pinecones, iridescent beetles, a yellow lump of skin pushing formaldehyde to the top […]
Aaron White – caged school buses in Kankakee
caged school buses in Kankakee alarm clock on the carpet where my dresser used to be. if I’ve learned anything it’s that books can’t teach me. you are the capstone course of my formative years. I’m educated in: • Your embrace • Whiskey eyes • Birdless banter this I’ll remember as I run from home […]
Stephen Toskar – Repaying an Immigrant for Teaching Me How to Steal, Long Island, May 1955
Repaying an Immigrant for Teaching Me How to Steal, Long Island, May 1955 Fannie tried to teach me how to steal spring, but it’s taken years to get the knack. First I had to imagine a 6-year-old refugee with a rag doll disembarking circa 1892 in New York after weeks of skulking across Europe—after months […]
Lynne Thompson – Morning Street
Morning Street Morning’s no one-time storm— is mere, is integer. Morning is émigré, street noire, testier, rime most rotten! Griot. Grist. Rioting rioter. Sentient morning, egoist entire, soignée in nitrogen garment. O gemstone. O morning: no segment, no omen. Innermost engine. Totem. Winner of the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize in 2016 […]
Kerrin P. Sharpe – the taxidermist can’t leave limbo
the taxidermist can’t leave limbo he sleeps awake with his own exhibits it’s freezing outside he opens the curtains is that the elephant standing in snow? he thinks her twin-domed forehead her arched back she should never have been stolen from the forest or made to carry a howdah she should never have been executed […]
