whole plums hang rotund from heavenly branches / puckered fruitless / bruised but beloved on the kitchen table /
Read More
Frosty Diamonds by Michael Bishop
And so it came to be that on that first night, parked on the roadside gravel abutting Hale’iwa Ali’i Beach Park, across the street from million-dollar homes, with the necessities of life stripped to the bone, my nerves humming with a new kind of freedom, the orange glow of street lamps fractured through Frosty Diamonds into scintillating sunbursts unlike anything I’d seen before.
Read More
What They Say If You Lose a Child by Kate Stoltzfus
I remember the neighborhood shrieking in summer, / kids dripping popsicles the color of blood onto hot concrete / & wondering how his voice would cut the air / when I finally heard it. You can always have another
Read More
Dream Mother by Andrew Bertaina
She wasn’t listening. My mother had always been a wonderful listener. Now that she was dead and only a part of my dreams, mother had a bit of a foul mouth and didn’t listen well.
Read More
On The Color Matching System; Or, Marriage by Jehanne Dubrow
I might say last August was a faded blue, like a pair of blue jeans worn to softness.
Read More
Vinegar Instead of Blood by Don Malkemes
The beets knew what they were doing; Kimbark was patsy perfect. He was a visitor in his father’s house, which was a remarried house with a new mom, new brother, and fruits and vegetables.
Read More
Florence, Yesterday Evening, Dusk by Jill Witty
Among the many Monti possessions, all belonging to the Contessa, none was so highly prized as the Palazzo Principio, a magnificent Renaissance building that sat along the Arno, a stone’s throw from the Ponte Vecchio. Beautifully restored and as large as an entire city block, the Principio was said to be the most valuable privately-owned building in all of Florence.
Read More
Genetic Expression by Nicole Walker
Sometimes families fall apart. It’s not always the Brussel sprouts’ fault. One kid loves cauliflower. Another loves kale. That third baby that no one knew about might have loved broccoli but you will never know whether or not just as you will never know how many cc’s there are in broccoli.
Read More
Three Poems by Janice N. Harrington
I am grass and root and loam. A vole tunnels in my throat. / Field mice bed inside my womb. Hair, limbs, / fingers lengthen and rise, lengthen and slender into turkeyfoot / and stands of Indiangrass.
Read More
Cake by Anthony Varallo
Time passed. The boy grew older. Taller. Able to reach all the way inside the freezer whenever he felt like it, which wasn’t often. Most of the time, he could find whatever he wanted in the refrigerator.
Read More
Chaos by Julia Charlotte
When life feels chaotic, it makes me feel better to remember that it is; everything is depressing, but cover it in flowers.
Read More
Two Poems by Natalie Dunn
We would lie on her bed with our legs up on the white wall eating saltines / with butter while we made a list of everything we wanted. / Try to keep your hunger, someone said when she died in the summer. / I ate flour and bone. Measured the distance between two cups on the table.
Read More
Little Pelvic Bone by Jessica Fordham Kidd
The mother bit the very tiniest tip off the snake’s tail. It tasted metallic and felt tough between her teeth. Then, she tossed the snake into a stand of privet hedge.
Read More
A Normal Interview with Michael Chin by Mialise Carney
I came around to the idea of this book being a lot like the storytelling I would do in early romantic relationships, when I wanted so badly to share my whole whole world with this person who felt vitally important to me, who I couldn’t wait to have fully immersed in my life and the world I’d known.
Read More
The Muse the World Forgot to Name by Mureall Hebert
She paints roses under heavy skies. Purple, / the color of bruised plums. The artistry is in knowing / her audience, their heart-beaten stutter riding / on airbrushed waves.
Read More
Syllabus for My Mother by Catharina Coenen
Prerequisite: A hunger for written words. Remember how your mother wanted you to stay in school?
Read More
Two Flash Fiction Pieces by Rita Feinstein
He looks at me so suddenly that I return to my body in pins and needles. For a moment there, I’d forgotten I exist.
Read More
Something To Remember Me By by Gabrielle Brant Freeman
I gift you rough ditches / where I search for purple fists / of thistle. I suck hard / the sweet petals like spears / all the way down / to the stinging white heart.
Read More
A Guide for Boys (Ages 6+) by Samuel Rafael Barber
It’s perfectly normal to imagine becoming a Football Star. Your imaginations need so much practice for where we will be taking you. “The Possible” is as important to imagine as “The Real” you think you see.
Read More
Fear of Women by Logan Hoffman-Smith
“You have to understand—the Women were hungry, angry, trying to survive—that this is what happens when a Maker cannot love their own creations,” mother tried to explain. Beloved, i would gaze at the invading Women, at their sallow eyes and ruptured hearts, and see only monsters. Perhaps this was why i did what i did.
Read More