From my window, I watched the pool’s plastic pit return to its former glory. Only when the refurbishment was complete, the pool refilled and made usable, did I discover Cathy existed, that the dull-but-probably-well-to-do couple next door had a daughter the same age as Gretchen Lowe.
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Two Poems by Vikesh Kapoor
"I care to understand,/ upon the backs/ of mother’s hands/ who cradle the scars of eastern sunrise,/"
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Turn Away by Stephanie La Rose
Permanently installed in my mortal mind’s corner sits Mrs. Eddy, ram-rod straight on her wooden chair, dark hair pleated, expression severe, Victorian jacket battened down, white ruff protruding round neck and wrists.
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Can Chimera Be Rescued? by Kristin Emanuel
Forget the original myth, its violence, its finality, your own complicity. What if--instead of dominion--this could be about tenderness?
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A Normal Interview with Éric Morales-Franceschini by Victoria Monsivaiz
My poetry is indeed heavily indebted to my studies in history, psychoanalysis, political economy, and critical social theory; but I find that, at times, only via poetry can I adequately express the gravity and intricacy of not just a given fact, but what I should (like to) do in light of that fact.
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Missive for a Departed Soul by Haya Abu Nasser
"I wander among abandoned houses,/ asking beggars and passersby near the rubble/ if they caught sight of a stray wish meandering around."
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The Velvet Air of Gaza: A Conversation with Three Palestinian Writers
I still think it is essential to at least sometimes focus on aspects of Palestinian culture and heritage outside of the conflict with Zionists. Doing this shows that we are not only defined by the current suffering and brutality; it is definitely part of the Palestinian experience, but it is not all of it.
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Minor Lightning by Victoria Barrett
We walk straight toward the things we want or need or have to reach, leaving a wake of our longing in the bare dirt behind us. We roll our eyes at the olds’ advice to slow down, to “savor,” such corny bullshit, we’ll slow down, maybe, when we arrive.
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The Smokers’ Daughter by Rosemary Harp
My mother lit her first cigarette on waking. My father smoked himself to sleep at night. They smoked as we carved pumpkins, sang Christmas carols around the piano, dipped eggs into bright dye. They smoked in our bedrooms while they read aloud to my brother and me. My mother, a skillful and innovative cook, especially for the time, smoked while making dinner every night, an ashtray balanced on the back end of the stove, lighting cigarette after cigarette on the gas burners under simmering pots.
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Still Life With Chair by Jericho Parms
The canvas hung askew. Thickly coated in acrylic, the painting bore the abstract depiction of a chair, singular and empty, in a room of three distorted walls. I didn’t recognize the painting, nor did I particularly care for it, but I appreciated the expressionist approach.
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Laurels by Tara A. Elliott
"...arms now/ berry-covered branch/ —how awfully/ they must ache."
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A Normal Interview with Myriam Gurba by Monique Quintana
A Gothic style is ideal for narrating the conquest of the West because it’s a horror story that continues to unfold. Horror tropes that have their roots in the Gothic are ideal mechanisms for that type of narrative.
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The Antipodal Point of Fear by David H Weinberger
After discovering antipodal points and remembering Australia, I immediately started digging. It made no sense to believe that I could dig through the core of the earth but it didn’t make any sense to live the way me and my family, my neighbors, were living: threatened and afraid all the time.
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MISCELLANEOUS GRIEVANCES by Ji Hyun Joo
My doppelgänger smells like wet fur and Old Spice. Even when we’re sitting in the dry air conditioning of my Jeep Cherokee, the scent — heavy with notes of yeast and nutmeg — is overpowering.
Read MorePulp Poem by Nathaniel Lachenmeyer
Mirror, mirror on the wall / Look down in mercy / The wheel is fixed / In a lonely place
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Will We Hear it Coming? by Amy Benson
I adopted my father’s fears, but the fear on tap at church spoke to what felt like my native suspicions—that harm was gestating in me in the shadow of an inevitable but unpredictable cataclysm. I learned to be in constant fear of my thoughts, lest something unforgivable dash across them at the very moment of the apocalypse.
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Margo Price Macro Doses by Joe Bonomo
Price is a difficult artist to box-up, for those so inclined. She’s lived in Nashville, Tennessee for decades, and has both courted and been denied Music City’s trappings. A dynamic study in contrasts, she grew up in rural Illinois but sings with a southern accent; her debut album was released on maverick Jack White’s Third Man Records, hardly a Nashville industry staple (though it may be on its way); she cut a live album at historic and revered Ryman Auditorium, waltzing (and rocking) within a storied tradition.
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Two Poems by Laura S. Marshall
"The doctors call me ugly,/ draw over my bone structure,/ trace the routes where the/ coral will fuse."
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Sleepless by Ann Hood
“But here was evidence that maybe, if this ever did happen, I wouldn’t be able to scream or run out the door. That something—fear, disbelief, paralysis—might keep me right there, in place.”
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Moms by Marguerite Alley
A few times, he reached for her breast, but the moment his fingers collided with the skin of her chest she involuntarily felt herself disengage in surprise, as though shocked that this should be a place his hand might be inclined to rest, to explore
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