Poetry: “Reckless Abandon” by Thomas Piekarski

El Capitan cloaked in a cloud of angel wing powder; art implemented as orgasm that releases inhibition and accumulates tintinnabulations… Was it a clump of kelp or a mama sea otter snuggling a baby on its tummy that bounced out there atop the salty waves? And would the answer be intelligible […]

Poetry: “Empty Vessel” by Eugenie Theall

Your cracked knuckles will never heal; they know the grip of the hammer too well. Yet you’ve stopped to cradle the hot cup of coffee I brought. The woman you married thirty-five years ago will not return, will not sing again, although she washes your thermos, watches us from the kitchen window. Shall I fill […]

Poetry: “Renascent” by Matthew Wallenstein

January is winter. Footprints in slush kicked back to slush, an honest record. This ugly alone. Hoping not but knowing. Last falls leaves clinging wetly to gutters half frozen. The slush on the sidewalk is pealing paint, the truth of it. Step through sliding doors. They recognize empty pockets. Then the walk: street, then street, […]

Poetry: “At the Pace of Infinity” by Oliver Rice

At dawn in Bangkok a protagonist is having breakfast, boiled rice with fish, pickles, and dried shredded pork, all reality engaging again. Near Kiev a personage hours ago had quite a hearty breakfast of crepes filled with pot cheese and topped with sour cream, the dew phenomenal as the sunlight on a mating ground of […]

Poetry: “Samaritans” by Christopher Scribner

The speckled fawn walks among them; as she nibbles earnestly at the foliage, the shade of her body throws the tombstones’ dates into shadow. There’s splendor in the sharply-angled morning light. I imagine my own granite marker, its last line unfilled. In life’s sadness the days pass slowly, the years quickly; each year I keep my birthday quiet; […]

Poetry: “Banyan Nights” by Lara Dolphin

Burgettstown bred, I sit on steel atop a Bouganville Ficus close to Bagana near the Torokina River directing artillery fire by radio. Nearby flares rain down on Hill 260. The Southern Cross appears, and the infantry slips behind concertina wire. Saint Barbara, bless these powdered eggs and dehydrated potatoes, guide our ordnance and steady our […]

Poetry: “Six Standing Crows” by Meryl McQueen

Huddled like rabbis in a field Of dying rye, six standing Crows scratch a coarse meal From dust and dirt. No command Or edict tumbles from flat sky. No Rain. Skullcaps of slick black Feathers dip and nod as bow To cello, the rhythm halfway back To darkness. The gathered stalks Are crumpled moths, wan […]

Poetry: “Rhapsody on Independence Day” by Evan Beaty

The psalmists have all gone underground with armfuls of tortoiseshell inkwells and yellowed paper and their bodies and horses’ bodies wrapped in a rind of sour-tasting fog. All their wives are blonde but not the type that cries at airports or major abandonments of the more permanent sort. They are in their houses making buttermilk […]

Poetry: “At Twenty” by Carla Baricz

Pauvre Martory! All those months in Tunisia drifting on the chipped cusp of nonexistence, yellow like yesteryear, sweating gunpowder, choking up on surreal loves and manic lusts inking the petrified yolk into sky. Jaundiced and blue, a jazz trombone out of tune still waiting for life to throb through its paces according to the season’s […]

Poetry: “Memoir” by Carla Panciera

The calf wandered down his driveway and Louie, thinking: deer, got his gun. But when the little Jersey emerged from the buzzing haze of spring, Louie lay the gun across his lap, called: Here, Calfie, Calfie, and the calf, Liza-lashed, a starlet on mother-of-pearl hooves, came. Louie had no rope, but you can’t sit forever, […]