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]
Witness Magazine
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]
Boys in Cities
by Yaccaira Salvatierra In most cities, you can hear us at night. Our bodies, without our shadows, cannot be seen. Our skateboards tremble & staccato on concrete & asphalt. You can hear the cadence of searching. We move beneath security cameras. There are a lot of eyes looking for us. Paranoia has set its eyes… [Read More]
Ida the Storm
by Ian U. Lockaby with Jean Valentine and Poochie Lee C. on the porch through the veil of green rain, its careen off the bayou beyond her as she speaks with Tony, out of sight—in the soft reek of swamp-swallowed figs—from where I stand, in the dark kitchen, and to where the blackout has travelled… [Read More]
Children
by Robert Osborne Martin, the neighborhood black cat, was originally named Sambo. Nelson knows this because some of the younger kids still call the cat by that name. They yell in the street under a late March sun. If Nelson is around inspecting his gutters, or scouting out locations on his property for the new… [Read More]
After Diagnosis // Act III
by Morgan Hamill this is not // what I’d hoped // for a sudden lack of limb feet hot, thick // in a summer basement // play about a girl time-traveling during // her own mastectomy just prior // to her time of death. // This is not // what she’d planned for, this //… [Read More]
Losses of a Pandemic: To My Garden that I Let Die
by Ashleigh Albrechtsen When COVID-19 barreled to Utah in March of 2020, the material experience of my body and its response to the outside world transformed. Though I remained safe in my home, the anxiety I experienced felt nonetheless like I was hooked to an intravenous tube that coursed icy currents through my capillaries. Maintaining… [Read More]
The Living Ghost Is on the Street
by Ismael Santallines The moment I say you are beautiful you begin to fade more and more of you vanishes more of your chafing beauty draws you with it away from the reflective tissue of what we choose to see diaphanous image back to the purity of base elements like a wind that does… [Read More]
