Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt the room was vacant, not empty, for the chairs and carpet were there, and the dark shape of the dresser broke into the light, so there was light, and inside the light a haze, giving substance, or, at least, form, to the light, which folded everything else into it, its moody aspic flowing like glass creeping down against … Continue reading “Turning Back” by Stuart Jay Silverman
She saved the fetus & shrouded it in Seran wrap & gave it a home in her freezer for seven years before her wedding whereupon she buried it in her veil Continue reading “Frozen” by Christine Stoddard
Naked, the lovers folded themselves in the empty bathtub and listened to each other breathe quieter than spiders as the dirt-bike boys ripped past their teetering apartment their first-ever home in New York City, a myth in the making Continue reading “Crown Heights” by Christine Stoddard
I Am I to settle for a lie… Something deeply known within my heart to be false. If you were love you would understand me. In a way that I can trust. I knew a man once — who did love me. The way I needed to be loved. He let me go. He let me be. That was enough. II I cannot settle for a liar, … Continue reading “Greasy” by Nicole Goodwin
Nowadays, there are more elephants in children’s books than in any other Africa as there are more ghosts posing knife-faced on paperback covers than in the still-windowed suburban house I grew up in as there are more poems in the seasons of your hips and wrists than in continent-wide anthologies and discounted magazines– And me, I know I can’t keep up. But I try. Continue reading “Keeping count” by Godefroy Dronsart
There is a painful lack of pigeons on the pavement at this moment. My entire being aches for how they go out dancing still wearing their office clothes at 5:05pm – pressed cuffs a-clangin’ against pointy shoes – displaying smart grey suits or black with fancy white stripes – even dirt-colored birds know how to groove & shake it. Wind-blown cartwheelin’ plastic bags covered with … Continue reading “He suffered, & he suffered, & he suffered – then on the seventh day, he took a break. Then, he suffered!” by David Leo Sirois
A good plume spray helps me feel whole but merely the name of a cheese from goats makes me run to my colognes What else could it mean to “become an adult” but the purchasing power for creams & powders ~ I swore off soap ages ago ~ My mirror tells me Beauty is freedom though it is such a burden too The staring becomes so tiresome ~ … Continue reading “Vanity Pigeon” by David Leo Sirois
How do we live in such darkness we huddle and scuttle and glide and hide. We gather to make light We prepare to fight fiercely Training with sharpened bones in hand again the move to disembowel again the move to paralyze again the move to instantly kill. It comes in turn and turn about Epochal nights follow Generation days What has grown withers without care … Continue reading “Night” by David Z. Morris
With the nation and the world mourning the total lack of human compassion and common sense concentrated primarily in the Bible Belt of the United States, let us try to find one silver lining through it all: times of political oppression and unrest have always spurred on great art–granted, most of it by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Let us look back upon extreme times of historical crisis … Continue reading At Least Political Oppression Has Inspired Great Literature (Mostly Dostoyevsky)
The furthest thing from me is resolution. Like the furthest galaxies it flies away from me at top speeds. There’s no use chasing it. No lasso that would catch it. Now is an undone dress only halfway buttoned up. And some buttoned wrong. Mismatching keyholes in a rush to get downstairs and out the slamming screen door. Already my closure is passing Mars and then … Continue reading “Expansion” by Stephanie Macias
