From the Archives: “The Architect’s Wedding” by Samantha Stiers

The Kremlin’s silks billowed around my husband’s legs like hot air balloons. I came gowned in Taj Mahal, still pools reflecting my glide down the aisle. The bedchambers in my depths glowed like jewels while inside my groom, a general slipped poison into the prime minister’s vichyssoise. The pyramids of Giza looked delicious on the […]

From the Archives: “An Ode to Ellipses” by Chen Kasher

You were your own deep exterior; a shallop That took one rower; A sink whose slush sounded like a rill; Ballast so cubed in blue-black water Sometimes you sensed your own depth. You were the sleepy steamed broccoli; the travel Serendipity; the room whose light Stayed up past 3 A.M.; The goldfish that prayed for […]

From the Archives: “Grown” by Janelle Adsit

we choose familiar places for goodbye places with trees, twigs hardly fastened, and geese droppings like paste beneath us which we avoid so as not to stay or take the place with us. the bed of water holds the green—only green—so not even our reflections can remind us. Originally published in Winter 2009.

From the Archives: “The Night Keeps” by Bryce Thornburg

Cool and leaves Find like parts To line the yard Each tree rather Unclung to A departure The fenced-in Quality throws me

From the Archives: “Black Cat” by C. L. O’Dell

I grabbed film to catch it, black cat in a grazing field, stalking birds, a buoy in an ocean, a miserable dis- coloration piled loose in a stairwell of thought, un- photographable in its place. Originally published in Spring 2008.

From the Archives: “A Mom Reads Kipling” by Elizabeth Bastos

I am the many-armed goddess of the market-going and market-coming-back-from, a sacred balloon tied to each child’s wrist. Death of shrimp. In the middle of the night, you better believe I am the mongoose. Beside me lies the lump of Man, unconscious, who does not hear (and maybe could never hear) the stirrings of Nag, […]

From the Archives: “Mirror” by Robin Kish

You can do it in a bathroom, curtains drawn, lights out. Any room where there’s a mirror. Some recommend the use of candles, but the best results can only be achieved in total darkness. Make sure the glass is clean. You don’t want to mistake dust or scratches for anything more than what they are. […]

From the Archives: “Mixed Blessings” by Stephen David Glover

My friend Kate makes fun of me because when we go to the grocery store together, which is often (since she has a car and I don’t), I’m always smelling things. I smell the marshmallows through the bag. I smell the circus peanuts and the maple nut goodies and the Necco wafers in the candy […]

From the Archives: “Return to Sender” by Hilary Vaughn Dobel

Don’t you remember the day it froze, nothing in the pantry but oranges? We broke the ice crust on top of the morning’s snow, ate it in slices like bread. Everything tastes out of season now, and there are hunched little women outside, scattering handfuls of blue salt onto the street. In another pastoral, they […]

From the Archives: “Self-Portrait with Crane” by Lory Bedikian

On road trips, no coastal fog rolling in Brings me the sea gull or sandpiper shifting from water to sky, but the common Armenian crane who treks across the Atlantic, breaks through California clouds, haunts the laurels, the eucalyptus, a message tucked in its beak. In riffs strummed on midwestern guitars, I can hear the […]