by J. Peter Progar Along the highway, there are dead deerevery 300 yards. They’re wet and there’sno blood, just gray fur salted bythe State trucks. Men petition for a chanceto shoot the ones that aren’t dead yet.“Even the buzzards won’t touch them.”Some have their heads cut off,Taken home for mounting, or maybeEuropean Mounting if their…
Category: Uncategorized
In Our Midst
By Kim Farleigh The box-like houses most of the camp’s children drew had slanting roofs and picket fences under ice-cream clouds, cows, farmers, machinery, paths, roads, cars, tanks, corpses, and flames–The Seen–reproduced on mass. Hashim works, however, boomed with chance, yellow clouds, fusing into red, reappearing around purple, the permanent-recreation cosmos a work of abstract…
Begin with Rejoicing
by Alicia Hoffman Because all around us the drumrolls of drill bits are pummeling into old infrastructure, forkliftingthe dated shrubbery, making way for updates in landscape that speak more for this century. The hosta and the weeping cherry, maybe, because to live is to burn the memory of yesterday’s demolishment in the copper bowls of…
09:26
by Kate Lunn-Pigula Kirsty Myers was standing in Hashim’s room, in the care home, when she felt the first wave of exhaustion wash over her. Hashim was speaking with his interpreter, Leila, about something quite involved. They seemed to be having a complicated discussion and Leila wasn’t currently offering any English. Both Kirsty and Leila…
Bedtime Story
by Bill Stenson It’s not healthy for anyone to dwell on their own mortality, and Marsha Hamilton believed that, and had never been one to engage in such thinking. So long as I can chew my own food, wipe my own arse and do my weekly crossword puzzle, I don’t worry about going anywhere. This…
Taxidermy
by Alicia Hoffman I’ve killed myself a million times. Thinnick of knife blade. Hatchet. Musket. Saw. The metaphor goes: we are continuous. Re-born with a new skin. Better armor, bullet thick. And I’ve drummed the pelt. Tannedso many versions of what I no longer am. I mount the manikins on cedar planks.I shellac my specimens….
Take Me
by E. Joy Take me into natureWhere tranquility blends with chaosThat’s where I thrive Take me to the woodsSunlight streams through the leaves like stained glassWe will balter on moss to the caws of blue jays and sparrows We’ll breathe in the fresh air with new lungs,Listening to the wind’s whispers that shake the floraGale…
Freezer Burned
by Jabrie Johnson even if I knew what I know,I don’t think that would have stopped me.the oven of my heart wishes to bake you to perfection,perhaps it’s my fault for getting Burned.but it’s hard to prevent hypothermia,when there’s no Insulation in my mind. to compare your eyes to the ocean is Cruelfor the ocean…
If Loneliness Came in Shades of Gray
by Gryphon Akridge-Phillips The rain was Pinot noir.In the way murky cinereous clouds formed ablockade. Do you rememberSeptember 19th? How you sat faceless as aHollowgast in that carbon grayLa-Z-Boy. With a 1928 bottle of Moscatobought in a bargain counter. Which later turned into astringent, acidic vinegaroozing down rugged weathered lines of face. Overflowing, slate gray…
weightless praise
by Tain Leonard-Peck grant this blessingto meon this frozencliff sidethe vast empty belowmay as wellbe infinity let my axe strike firmhold deepin the iceevery desperate blowdeliveredin the driving white gale climbing-spikeslashedlet my bootshold hardand take purchasefind me a paththrough frosted rockshifting snow as I ascendlet my ropekeep tightevery knotlet my eyesstay widein every windany sleet…