by Shaun T. Griffin Ten years ago an Iraqi Vet walked into my poetry workshop at the prison. Here’s one version of how it might have saved his life and brought us—soldier and teacher—together. Bear with me: this might sound like fiction—but it was an ornery fiction that ripples through us still. Let’s say… [Read More]
Witness Magazine
She is Barren Land
by Nic Anstett When Anya arrives at a new town, she searches the mom-and-pop stores first. She knows that their pickings will be slim. Before the collapse the chances of a two-story house converted into a downtown pharmacy carrying spiro, estradiol, or progesterone was unlikely. Now it is near impossible. She keeps her expectations low… [Read More]
Filled to the Rim
by Allison Grace Myers From the beginning, you created my heaviness and my easiness. Before you, my daughter (never known, never named, at least not by me), my shape was slippery, a cross too light to bear, an empty vol-au-vent—that flaky buttery pastry filled with vegetable or meat or maybe fish, on the menu at… [Read More]
Down and Out
by Robert Herbst Sliding gravel, clatter of falling rocks, a fine mist of red dust. When the man glanced back, the boy was sitting on the ground, examining a fresh wound on his knee. The boy frowned in concentration, his mouth ajar. He traced a finger along the trickle of blood, brought it to his… [Read More]
The Second Hole
by Michelle Thomas Madison was a new student in the Detroit Waldorf school’s second grade, a class spoiled by three bad girls. Nikola! Emily! Beth! Teachers usually hollered their names. But the bad girls kept right on balancing on the log-fence that surrounded the playground, deaf as cats. Or tipping slinkies down the stairs two… [Read More]
If There Is a Place for Death
by Shaun T. Griffin for Greg Having served seven years before the cancer came, the tattoos scrawled up your broken wrist, no room for the dark survey of this grubbing art. Drummer who didn’t believe he could be hurt— you symbolized what the other men wanted: freedom between the lines. Hard to chain those words… [Read More]
When Flies Pursue Spiders
by Ashley Hughes Naomi is having her breakfast, breaking her bread, inspecting her husband. Nancy leans against the kitchen table until it creaks and then keeps leaning. This bothers her. Nancy chews so that she can hear him, right over the kettle’s whistle. He eats off the plate she made for him, bites off the… [Read More]
Poem About My Rights
by Dariana Guerrero After June Jordan Alone tonight and I am always alone/ I hear the whistle of the wind and mistake it for the shadow of a man/ I can’t walk without thinking about how noticeable my body is/ my floppy arms/ stomach gutting out like a well-worn tire/ the men look for a… [Read More]
Are Angels Green?
by Tomaž Šalamun translation by Brian Henry are angels green? can heaven sustain them? workers have a mouth, a face, a gait and children little sheep lick the grass, tigers tear meat water is always scooped up near the shore I saw that a rainbow had fallen shepherds swam over it I waved, I waved,… [Read More]
Antares in Winter Sky
by Sandra Fees everything comes to an end like an exhausted star dangling from winter’s throat. look at you now. who would know you—supergiant of joy and boldness— are in your death throes. don’t linger like a soured lover. scatter. be quick about it. Sandra Fees has been published in SWWIM, Nimrod,… [Read More]
The Liturgy of the Hours
by Emma Bolden Did you know that the trees all talk to each other, a friend said. Something like a neural net. Something made of root and fungus, the way each branch hangs heavy on the sky. Great, I thought. Just what we all need, here clock-ticking our way over the earth. More language. More… [Read More]
Self-introductions
by Anika Somaia New Delhi, India: I am in Sarojini Nagar market, where the free space around me shrinks from little to none within seconds. I navigate narrow lanes flooded with people that look like me, and my decision to wear open-toed shoes is one I quickly come to regret. I’m nudged from both… [Read More]