Lynne Knight – Conversion, or, Homage to Molly Bloom
Conversion, or, Homage to Molly Bloom That summer I swore to remain a virgin. I could practice wooing if I kept saying No, something I’d learned to say to the Devil, that insidiously devious monster conjured for us by the nuns, who swore our chastity was a gift beyond measure. So why not prolong it, […]
Danusha Laméris – Today the Pleasures
Today the Pleasures Today the pleasures are too numerous to name. Walking over the bridge and up the drive to get the mail, then setting down the packages to open by the front door, a fat swath of sun falling against my arm as I open a box of two slim volumes of poems, then […]
Xiaoly Li – Swallow Brand
Swallow Brand Sunlight through drapes, swirls on the fifty-year old sewing machine and your waterfall hair. With needle threads and scissor snips, your steadfast hum rhymes with the device’s whir and click. Our youth was dressed in hand-me-downs. Each cherished garment held a braided story beneath your skilled revision. Labeled a rightist, rendered jobless in […]
Carolyn Miller – The Feast of Corpus Christi
The Feast of Corpus Christi For we consume the god in the tortillas, in the wine and mescal and tequila, in the lamb burned in the pit, the tacos of cow’s udder, the blackened chiles, the gray fungus growing on the corn. Today I saw the elote man, who sells cooked ears of corn still […]
Madelyn Parker – We’ve Passed Through Many Churches
We’ve Passed Through Many Churches A magic trick— the nothing that can levitate a woman from the ground. A steel plate fixed at the spine. A golden braided band around a finger. A replacement. A circle of safety. A fearfulness glinting silvery like satin threads in the stole hanging by gray filing cabinets. A reaching. […]
