A distended queen with hawthorn boughs, bonfires blazing
majusculed
Letters in the streets. She will go on watching them, upright &
inevitable.
“Inevitably, She Declined,” by Lucie Brock-Broido Read More »
Each week I pried stones from the frog, ran hands over fetlocks.
Gold palomino, black morgan, a huff and a cirrus
of steam. Winter mornings light
muscled its way through the whitewashed boards.
“Boys of My Youth,” by Charlotte Boulay Read More »
When it was spring, we
pulled crawdads and salamanders
out of creek beds we dammed
with rocks and leaves,
thick as the swallow’s nest
in the corner of the shed.
“Nocturne,” by Madison Jones Read More »
She cried and I painted. And when I was finished,
she wiped that still-wet hand on my pants, left
streaks of drying varnish stinking the air.
Held her hand toward me. Said, again. Again.
“Tourist at the Sisters of Charity,” by Gabriela Garcia Read More »
Or do they belong to bilges
and broken pumps, shrouded to the eyes
with progressive waves that scour,
tumbling the surface, turning hours
identical, each as homeless as
these babies born between countries?
“Custody,” by Jen Karetnick Read More »
She thinks of the lost possibilities,
the one that remains hidden in the grass
unnamed by yearned for —
the idea of a bright one,
stranded,
star-gazer, poet, mathematician.
“Vasectomy,” by Cathy Song Read More »
the faithful scholar dreams of being exact,
invites unsorrowing reason in, builds
a church of math: illuminates this volume of
violence with formulae, brackets the absence
with love for the civilian dead approaching infinite—
“the faithful scholar dreams of being exact,” by V.V. Ganeshananthan Read More »
About the horses,
oh, do not ask me
how they live or what
their lives center on.
“About the Horses,” by Mark Halperin Read More »
The other side of the window:
two chubby gods build their lives
with jollof rice and sparkling water.
“Window,” by D.M. Aderibigbe Read More »
beware the moving picture
the cylinder of film sprinting
through its filter, the light
that tears the frame
“First Writing Following the Newest Movie Theater Massacre” Read More »
