She showed me the cemetery’s letter, vehemently shaking the paper. Their earthly stay expired, your bones must be picked up. She had secured the plot of land with a row of linden trees, not imagining what we were about to enact, your new unburied capacity. The house was freezing, a single lamp turned on. Impatience […]
Poetry
Gift for Languages by Alejandro Méndez (translated by Laura Chalar)
On his motorcycle, far from the Prague of his birth, Mateo knows strength comes from speed. To be one with the machine, in a straight line, even in bends. Aerodynamic device, body at the service of wind. Only a calculation error, the wrong acceleration in a blowout, leads to collision. After the crash, he stands […]
As the Crow Flies by Sarah Marshall
From a crow’s eye, as the crow flies, something like gold. From the height of a child— or a girl-sized child— or a child-sized girl (for who are you to say? You have not met her until this moment, have not seen her bare, white feet as she picks along the railroad tracks down by […]
How to Drink Tea in the Colonies by Dana Kroos
I. Mugs are for coffee. Tea is served in china cups with handles too small to get your fingers through, on saucers, with a spoon, on a tray which also holds cream and sugar and (when you are very fortunate) scones and jam. Although these things are for you, they are not yours for the […]
On Learning of My Father’s Illness [November 22nd, 2011] by Liam Hysjulien
I don’t believe in anything, but nature-via-beauty-con-science— no cable that welcomes us all home. The crafted shore of crying birds. Alone in the belly of a single branched tree. I find these things all with you. Or the words we rearranged and the combinations that split along the dirty water in my head. I like […]
Love Poem to the Light before Sleep by Brandi George
These, my lips, parted with an oh-jeez-oh-man. Pale angel’s bag of suns, my heart counts new mornings by a face held to my belly. A great orb silvers over the spoiled wheat of my sex tapes—oh, various enlightenments swell and crush, but you are atomic, killer, my darling dear of the capsized raiment— there are […]
Wrong Side of the Road (An Autumn Poem) by Andrew Galan
Silver escalator going up, red struck stick going down seized ebon ink trip stair, stainless dimples on fire, arch ossified glide and anatomy something done; pass Stygian sartorial Spock going down to the wrong side of the road. Caught on heartless rivet cheek, burnt by phosphorous trace grain over toecap thread — stand hard going […]
Letters and Spirit by Richard Fein
“Whosoever toucheth the dead, even the body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself—he hath defiled the tabernacle of the Lord— that soul shall be cut off from Israel; because the water of sprinkling was not dashed against him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanliness is yet upon him.” (Numbers 19:13) And […]
One Theory of Hell (Albrecht Dürer’s Harrowing) by Thom Dawkins
Jesus looks like he’s been training, getting cut for the day he’ll dig through the dirt, stooping to save the folks who went below. Suppose him un-emaciated, un-crucified, gone underground to undermine these muppets shouting back at him, bending low to pull their prisoners aside. In this hell, the well-dead German sketches Louis Armstrong cheeks […]
The End of Snow by Helen Degen Cohen
after reading Anna Swir 1. 1939 and my mother is not the town beauty my mother is an orange flower the wind can move only so much. Iron in hand she curls the butcher’s wife’s hair. Powerful gypsies come in and out whispering secrets their eyes like bats their skirts sweeping the floor of the […]
