Penelope Gristelfink – The Limp
The Limp I’ve always wanted a limp, to be the one who could not get away, who has to be rescued, the last-minute virgin, that 24-hour drug store Christmas gift, cheap but sweet, politely brayed over. Because vulnerability always looks so much more charming from the outside, a snowglobe in which the lawn is perpetually […]
Mark J. Mitchell – Troy Games
Troy Games Troy Games are what the war games played by Roman boys were called. They were played with wooden swords as preparation for the life of a Roman citizen/soldier. 1. Before Troy Before Troy There were no Odysseys If you were Blown off course You were just lost. Sometimes for A very long time. […]
Shannon Connor Winward – Boys and Trains
Boys and Trains That week, driving past the playground with its view of the creek, I thought of bodies but the water there is always full of things it shouldn’t be the trees are tricksters, light and shadow they’ve taken the form of dead boys before. My son was in the backseat. I was eager […]
John Davies – Underwater Detonation of a World War II Bomb
Underwater Detonation of a World War II Bomb An ingestion of time, the bomb looks inward: tortures reel endless on a black billowing screen. Hidden from war, from seventy years’ weather, sightless rats of its own creation invent continuous season. Thumb the pressure points of earth at the temple, and thirty feet of water comes, […]
Jeffrey Little – Cognitive Promiscuity: The Undocumented Gunshot Blues
Cognitive Promiscuity: The Undocumented Gunshot Blues I am walking to the reservoir in Newark Delaware where the ghosts of passenger pigeons assemble in mutable clumps and have flocked here to reveal something I’ve long suspected but could never admit. In my left hand I’m carrying a photograph of myself sitting beside a giant mushroom on […]
