Contributed By: Maggie Glover
One side offered, believe or not: daisies. Their orange bowties and Monroe piercings
made a hundred cities in the grass.
The other side: the knowledge of grasshoppers, how to jump rope—they wore sneakers that looked like sneakers, slogan pins like Shy in the Tooth.
The battle raged. After careful thought, I arranged for both teams to break my heart.
When I told them how, we were all surprised.
Return to table of contents for Issue 3 Fall 2010
The waiting is intolerable in the soupy Beijing heat of Liang Huiping’s sixth floor flat. She glares at the hourglass spinning endlessly on her computer. The screen glares back—a palimpsest of her warped reflection in the curved glass of the monitor, superimposed on her Instant Messenger. She clamps her legs together and squeezes, looking down at her black […]
Soviet cement, Yankee tenants, Belches of Euphrates Pass SEALs on the eastern shore Contractors in ramshackle camps to the west. An ex-swat cop in a tea-cloth told me not to swim Unless I wanted cancer like the Hadithans, As if to confirm the rumors of Chemical Ali’s hidden stash— The secret flow. Every paper boy […]
Exemplary You glimpse a slight copy of liquid belly. Talk about the wind, breed waves on each page, breeding breezes on their veneers. You examine that other in the water-logged bookshelf. Give a meticulous detail of tears opting down very tense cheeks. But this one you pose in your hands (leaves fall apart like butterflies […]
