by Lance Larsen Is it just me, or do sunsets feel more battered these days? Too many crimsons and violent pinks to count, like a twilight train plowing into a herd of cows. Everything sad, haven’t you noticed, even rainy worms writhing like Ophelia instead of welcoming the wet. As for maple saplings in wind—why… [Read More]

by Doris W. Cheng You thought college would be the answer. To your awkwardness, your embarrassing erudition, your virginity. You imagined yourself a co-ed like the ones you saw on the pages of Seventeen magazine, hair ruffled, cable knit sweater knotted casually around your shoulders, though it took some effort to place your brown Asian… [Read More]

by Allison Field Bell I’ve used this payphone a half dozen times, and I always describe the scene. It’s a tiny miracle, this  phone beside the sea. I imagine writing about it: a part of the landscape that predetermines remembering. Like the small white chapels with the blue domed roofs or the octopuses strung up… [Read More]

by Kathleen McNamara   The day of his death, the boy’s mother woke him before dawn. “Dad’s making breakfast,” she said, her form shadowy in the dark. “You’ll need energy for the hike.” The boy loved early mornings before a trip into the wilderness. He loved the sound of his father singing as he scrambled… [Read More]

by Arianne Zwartjes It’s funny, my wife Anna said, how when a plane explodes and kills all these people, there’s still  all this perfectly undamaged luggage that falls to the ground. As she was saying this the crisp image of a pink suitcase with white polka dots, lying on the dusty roan earth, stared back… [Read More]

by Mike White We are all waiting  in your waiting room where the watchful fish are never and the good green plant is never where the magazines only are called  People       Mike White is the author of the collections How to Make a Bird with Two Hands (Word Works, 2012) and Addendum… [Read More]

by Nickalus Rupert   I am not the kind of mother who tolerates disappointment, so when my son Diego emerged from his depression long enough to request a full-on “bash” for his ninth birthday, I listened with interest. Diego wanted the whole works—a bouncy Camelot castle, a hand-carved ice sculpture of a murderous movie clown,… [Read More]

by Angelo Ligori “We—are the birds—that stay.” —Emily Dickinson I. A MINOR poet word canaries— small makeshift cages set long tunnels— edge working split rock to pitch black wheezing draft   II. DEEPMIND passage yields: a pick axe swinging we— —are the words— that stay broken living through birds dying measures wings beating air heavy—… [Read More]

by Aaron Samuels I am in Richmond Virginia at a company training that feels like nerd camp, and Rodrigo the program manager says that the punishment for showing up late in the morning is that the next morning you have to show up early and serve him breakfast and we nod in agreement and think… [Read More]