Contributed By: Allison Blevins
I’m going to stop coming out
in the usual I don’t want to offend you way.
I’ll tell the next children’s librarian who asks
me my husband’s name about the time
a cop held my wife against our car,
ran his hands slowly up her legs, pushed
his dry thumb inside her, then walked away.
Return to table of contents for Issue 10 Fall 2016.
Keep watch over your children. Forget about linger and loaf. Think of all the yeses you’ve spoken. Aim to be small. Remember loving the sound of some place: a hum or a whoosh. When the men come, when they…
—found in an interview with actor Levar Burton, who is African-American Listen: I'm gonna be honest with you. This is a practice I engage in every time I'm stopped by law enforcement. I've taught this…
An animal scared silent, rabbit atremble in the morning grass, belly fur slick to the ground, the ground warming to the hands of sun and light. A salt lick, discovered in a day-to-day field, crusted…
Hoohooooooo a man kneels down before an even more powerful man his hand imagines a cat with lonely fur curtain seltzer weapon lover as the train whistle scratches the face of distances a…
Against the pale-blue enamel that April makes conceivable, the branches of the birch-trees stand and gradually turn into evening. Their pattern is sharp and complete, the stiffened gauze is fine, like a drawing that someone has neatly traced out on a plate of china. Some merciful artist has performed that design on the glassy heavens, […]
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 […]
When you’re dead you no longer have to think about the experiences of your childhood, get up morning after morning or cook meal upon meal until you no longer wish to eat. When you no longer wish to eat, you may be dead. I kept a collection of newspaper articles documenting airplane crashes in my […]
