Category: Issue 16
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BIRD by Anjanette Delgado
The summer I became a bird —the very week, in fact— the meatpacking warehouse across the street turned into a dance club. At first, it was called “The Killing Room” and then, tall walls repainted to a sky blue, “Cielo.” I’d heard someone say that it had no ceiling, only skylights, and the idea…
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TWO POEMS by Oliver de la Paz
Diaspora Sonnet 40 So much improvisation—the improvised way I enter a room. The way I walk market aisles: with purpose borne of worry. The tumult of cereal packages, an array of landscapes crossed over in a plane. I am flying above the patchwork of mornings and feeling dizzy. Truly I am making this up as…
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SILVER LINE by Christian Kiefer
I had been afraid of the cold silent body I held to my belly but when we at last reached the engine and clambered up the frozen metal ladder and into the relative warmth of the interior, the child jerked awake and began to wail, a thin, gasping sound that bit directly into my heart.…
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LITTLE LEGS by C.H. Hooks
If the TV is on, it’s morning. I might have never noticed if I didn’t think it had spoken my name. Good god good morning. It did not speak my name. No one did. I hear rustling in the bathroom and there is light coming from under the door. Warm yellow light that tints the…
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DUCK, DUCK, HORSE by Jeff Frawley
The lumber, I tell Patricia, will soon be a fence. I’ve hired a crew. We’re at the window. She’s pinching the mole on my neck. She asks, But Katrin, what about the cost? The fence will consume what remains of my settlement money, that sum secured by lawyers after I fled from the Fix. But…
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CLASP by Sophie Klahr and Corey Zeller
You were a room filled with paintings of storms in the style of Turner and each was gold— end-of-day gold; gold as you want me to be. Gold as a sweet horse in a picture book. Gold in that way, your way; Gold when it’s lost, how it seems more gold. A girl’s tooth. That…
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EMPATHY by Hayan Charara
After being with you, I saw a beetle stuck on its back, scuttling its legs. I could have crushed it with my heel but I left it alone for the ants to devour— the ants did not come.
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SNOW LIGHT IS THE TRUE LIGHT by Martha Webster
Riga Mountain trail, our last hike before the blizzard. The hawk we spooked is perched across the pond— a scent of snow hangs heavy in the air. The rabbit’s eye is big and berry-bright, lucid as a black marble. He looks untouched except his skull— an open, red pomegranate. No clotting yet.
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UNTENABLE by Leona Sevick
Looking down from my second story porch I see the flowering quince they say will thrive in almost any soil. This one is no doubt dead, though its faithful branches reach up and outward, insulting the brittle dry sticks that pin the massive bush to fertile ground. Watery red flowers the color of diluted blood…
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TWO POEMS by Jim Whiteside
Stocking the Pond 500 bluegill in a tank on the back of a truck, parked on the bank, pouring them out. Fifth grade, early spring. The year I was taught there were right and wrong ways to be a man. I watched the waterfalling bodies of the fish, our pond like a holding cell.…
