Category: Uncategorized

By Matthew Wood Carol-Ann was watching the rain run down the window: the paths it cut, the way streaks ran together. The shifting mosaic of it. She held a coffee mug in her left hand, a towel in her right, slowly turning the mug, polishing away the printed logo. Her head throbbed.  Then she stopped…

by Kevin Lichty Another driver and I watch a woman dying on a street corner in Phoenix. The driver is a floater (or a sweeper), she is taking packages from my van. The woman on the corner is trying to stay under the shade of a palm tree, but the sun is directly overhead and…

by Kyle Williams In the theatre of warI am an outsider I have a non speaking role I search for a place of pilgrimagea shrine of memory like a barnacle clung to the undersideof historyIn my journeys I see much disappearing the collective memorylike a wave of oil on the ocean a chemical spread of…

by Paweł Grajnert Someone’s conserving all thisSomething wrong,Indiana. Not just Indiana being off course.The sirens’TestingThe readiness for warOr worship. Disasters!There, between the rowsScoured, planted,Set,Sealed,Lacquered isNot just Indiana again, not for most.But for the few.Subdued by religion, of the empire.Either side of the train Whistles, just beyond the hum of the Interstate,- Over here, Some power…

by Wendy Barry From the busy street, full of tourists and their hosts, students and shoppers, I open the door and step into the hallway with the exposed brick painted pale yellow.Cooler than the street, almost subterranean, narrow and long, in a building erected over a century ago, it digs back to the beginning. My…

by Dominic Dimapilis My heart speaks through my right foot, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, the bass drum pulses through the room. I swing the ride cymbal, tickling it with my right hand, backbeating with my left foot, ting, tsing, ta-ting, tsing, ta-ting. And my soul pours out of my left hand, comping crazy as…

By Molly Gustafson Today, one measles death tomorrow, deep-bleached veins then, a leach wrapped on your wrist then, the quiver after punches to the gut then, drips of poison in the water supply then, buried coffins of professors of history then, the unviewed Vantablack television screen. Sallow in rot; it begs to start again.  …

By Molly Gustafson We shouldn’t have earthquakes inChicago. But my mother carries me down to the basement, becausethat’s what you do in an emergency. Ships are freed from their bottles asshelves crash around us, and she covers her head, as if she were under the waves that the ships sailed. I remember hearing a storyof…

By Ihor Pidhainy “Still?”Quiet as I swimin the spin of that one wall(Are you coldhungrydead?)My head bobbing asa buoy in the waterwatching for the kickof those legs,center of warmththis roomboth womb and tombof thought and beingLet me escapethis frigid heat, this lossof a word:this blood and bones,this flesh. About the Author: Born in Canada,Ihor Pidhainy…

By John Leonard Bullwhip anger, the gravitational pull of tender veins. Steel-purple,like an iris of dawn as I watchyou vanish.Constellations and lovelessness,carved like runes in the pulse of your neck.Draw the Lord’s face in angel dust. Your faith, buried in a hotel nightstand. No conscienceleft to devour, no alarms when the rivergrows teeth and the…