Lev Mirov – The Doorway
The Doorway The water is cold, up to my neck. Like Virginia, my pockets are full of black stones. I bend my knees, and I am six again; holding my breath in the swimming pool to see how long I last, staring up at the upside down world underneath water the sky as green as […]
S.Marie LaFata-Clay – Animal Lisa’s Guide to Getting Sober
Animal Lisa’s Guide to Getting Sober Write it down & pretend it is fiction. Read it to a campfire from a safe distance like my father the urban legend last seen on a night much like this as a kerosene soaked match humming against an oil drum beating my mother with his skull because matches […]
Emily Linstrom – Only Aria
Only Aria The night he died I dreamed of Baroque cathedrals, a heaven within and outside the universe, infinite and appalling, as if all we contained was not meant for a heaven, even if the bedding is nice. Forgive me, I didn’t know how not to be an enigma prowling about the house like a […]
Gina Valdés – Omens
Omens A lizard drags its tail through a crack in the world to lie on my altar under a skylight among saints and buddhas. For days the gecko sits still and silent: a green monk revealing the way to lizardy heaven, while on the oaks, crows cry out— for us to decode— the names of […]
Mary Makofske – This Country Could Break My Heart
This Country Could Break My Heart Slicked back hair, tooled boots, ten gallon hat that makes the head seem big. Broad hands, callused, quick to clench those women always running into fists. Blood’s easier than love, love’s short, somebody’s gonna cheat and break my heart, this country says. Oh lonesome road I can’t resist, outside […]
