Issue 14
The flight to Seoul was long and quiet, but after exiting at the gate Kate expected more bustle, more noise to greet her. Sunlight emptied…
There is a language within language that gets passed between poet and poem. Certain words stir us up, in a way that feels secret and…
Isabel had been feeling happy in such a simple, harmless way when she saw her mother again. She’d been sitting at the bottom of a…
Madame X’s décolletage stands bright against her black dress, shining and cinched at the waist, and my shirt, cotton and crew-necked. She balances against the…
The bridge needs defending, choke point between swingsets and water park. A gray soldier tells me not to go beyond the picnic tables. A stealthy…
A carpet stain that will never come out, a toy fire truck with no wheels, a doll with one arm, naked, one eye permanently closed,…
Each day will be the soft susurrations of silk against a window ledge. All your cakes will rise bloom-like over their cake pans and you’ll…
She awoke to an empty house, the corn crib hollow, ladder to the roof untended, the tire tracks ending at the house the sentence she…
Father, tell me about the Moor who moored his boat in a moor, how he ate petrified alligator toes and hid his prayers in snail…
A cradle still warm… a bubbling pot with no lid… So swiftly did Government troops sweep down that the Cherokees hardly found time for a…
Small for his age, hunger-hollowed, smudge-eyed, whittled thin as a withe of oak, splint of ash, the boy slips through the wall, through the wedge…
Tonight, no stars, just miles turning to light years before our eyes: You, on the mound gesturing home, who cock your head and flash that…
1 In his spare time, Deepak helped out at the local Communist Party office, addressed envelopes, put up the party candidates’ placards, and ran errands.…
Twenty-eight teeth form neat pickets along my upper and lower gums. The teeth have been artificially straightened and whitened. My toothpaste contains fluoride, tartar control,…
holds things in place. I sweep one corner then find I live in seven secret corners more. All corners firmly tied down. The little ones…
We watched the fat paramedic drape a white sheet over the skinny man’s body. A wrecker loaded a blue Camaro. The windshield was bloodied and…
Last names here are the order of the day, chiseled in caps like GOODE. Here and there, a spritz of color peeks from the dead…
The light fades late in north Wisconsin. Long summer days linger over pine, and the birch swamps wash in weak sun like the sun you’d…
You’d think you’d hear it, overblown, blowing up your mind, the dial over- turned, woofer flowing flowing a fat vibrating tongue- hum. You’d hear it…
You are receiving this letter because your house is empty. The window on the second floor is open and the long white curtain is…
The timing was all rather unfortunate. Ben had only landed in Costa Rica six days before. Fresh off a plane from Sydney, Australia, he arrived…
This morning I walked down to the cove, as calm and hushed as if a ghost had spooked it. On some nights, alone on the…
A canyon of caves looms over the train tracks like a city block, high rises swollen with lives you’ll never even glimpse. Each bear’s breath…