Poetry: “Litany” by Jessica Pierce

Litany The bus driver monologues as we wait for the barge to pass under the raised bridge, dulled by low clouds. There’s the late shift in the summer, vignettes of stumbling, swearing, sweating out alcohol. There’s the 911 calls he’s made for heart attacks and strokes. There’s the daily checks to make sure everyone’s okay […]

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 […]

Poetry: “Night Flight” by Jay Rubin

Night Flight —Above the Atlantic Cabin dimmed, passengers slack sky outside my window black A cranky couple quarrels in French fingers stab the air He a suit, she a skirt each a laurel of light How wonderful—Company Somebody else wet by the rain another yawn along the campaign The woman twists, waves a wrist shines […]

Poetry: “Late Harvest” by Donna L. Emerson

Late Harvest After reading Catherine the Great I found the stable full of rhymes and boys, limed, serifed, written bold upon— who embroidered moon fall, fell upon me at dawn. Called forward by the many miracles of mouth and sibilant song, delivered to new ports opened on the Black Sea: Odessa, Kiev, traveling as Empress […]

Poetry: “Dressing this Morning” by Bryanna Licciardi

Dressing this Morning I am waiting for you along the line of a bed building up stories and knocking them down— Christ-like figures will find one another and I’ve yet to find the grace in letting go. My life plateaued in a prom dress, the red one you always liked, even years later. Together we […]

Poetry: “Alexander at the Library” by Aaron Benedetti

Alexander at the Library His hands are basins. They brim as he handles books. The left one turns a page. Today I read Russia in his features—maybe Doctor Zhivago. I consider asking why he has never traveled. Or, I imagine his eyes on me. When he rises, at last, he draws one hand along the […]

Poetry: “They Were Garnet” by Darren C. Demaree

They Were Garnet Embolism in the shower, her eyes folded into the tile and I was left with one kiss. We planned to date on her return to Wooster, but by Fall she was a scholarship and a photo there. I went to my writing classes and counted how many girls wore men’s dress shirts […]

Poetry: “Gavone” by Lynn Hoffman

I was here before you and you and youse especially. When there was room to hide on downwind side of brownstone stoop or in the alley by Carmine’s where me and Eddie doo-wopped, doo-wopped. I owned the street. It was wild then feral, forest, lamppost trees offa parking lot steppes. and we were the wolves […]

Poetry: “Summer’s End” by Linda Beeman

Summer’s End summer’s first light skims top most limbs of hemlock incites swallows to their aerobic labors and peeks under the skirts of my uphill big leaf maple angular beams mottle through elder and salmon berries painting lime grass nile bottle greens highlight slug slime calligraphy on my window glass agonizingly slow action painters those […]

Poetry: “War Games” by Rob Schultz

My brother was the cowboy, I the Indian. Stumping his Stick horse in crazy zigzags He dug up dirt. Once I stabbed The ground with my knife. Nicked his ear. He grew industrious, mowed the lawn In neat squares, uprooted weeds–wild- Flowers–built a plywood fort Under a weathered oak whose branches I climbed to watch, […]