Carolyn Oliver – Three Highways
Three Highways Dusk: two boys single file carry themselves, their arms crescent moons under trees humbled by moths’ winter webs. Bulbous, tumbling out of the rockface, ambuscades of ice. —— Half-broken house lists into another spent field. Geese battalions muster over the marsh. Beyond the reeds an islet of ice, eyeful of a piano webbed […]
Lee Jacobus – In a Boneyard in Galway
In a Boneyard in Galway In a boneyard in Galway I stepped into an open grave the grass above my head, invisible, a vacancy waiting for me. It was my fall from grace, a shock as I penetrated the darkness. I never felt so Irish as at that moment looking up at the cloudless sky, […]
Amber Flora Thomas – On a Sunday
On a Sunday I have suspected all along that I would forget you. When pressing the water out of a teabag. When a hummingbird slips its head in a fuchsia flower and pees a silver thread as it exits. When following a path along the bluffs to a cypress worn in the wind-shape of clinging […]
Laurel Szymkowiak – Leaving
Leaving Next spring my grandfather’s trellised pink roses will bloom without him. My husband prunes the canes for him, anyway. My grandfather’s house shrinks in too much stillness. I miss his scent mint candy and Old Spice. Where is the pillow from his chair? From the front porch I watch barges on the river at […]
John Bradley – Things I Should Apologize For Spell
Things I Should Apologize For Spell Speaking to a smudge that once belonged to Marcus Aurelius. Nazi-actors, cinematic hair, bituminous tea, transparent teeth. My birthplace, a wheelbarrow, my birthplace, a pencil, it follows. Stray words slipping from a vague mouth at the airport: Stay afloat. Cheap, abundant cirrus clouds from Abilene, afraid of the samba. […]
