Poetry: “Raccoon” by Michael Lyle

I watch a raccoon wobble
like a drunk from a bar
in daylight, so maybe he’s rabid
or she is old and confused
too many seasons, litters, […]

Poetry: “After You Moved Out of the Upstairs Apartment” by Iris Litt

I hear footsteps on the stair but they’re not you, they’re indefinably lighter and they’re not coming here, they’re going somewhere else. On the other hand they do sound like you just enough to make me raise my head and listen awhile and smile. Iris Litt’s third book of poems, Snowbird, was published by Finishing […]

Poetry: “Skipping Stones” by Blake London

we stood beside a lake unmoving, flat stones in small palms, two boys with frozen tongues. the first stone flew and didn’t skip so much as sink. we watched, a spell unbroken. The second stone followed, then a third, a fourth, and soon you and I made each stone keep its beat, drumsticks on glassy […]

Poetry: “algae” by Joseph Felkers

August mud clings to our ankles like the skies just opened for a second. Didn’t plan on raining but a little slipped out so we can stop getting cuts on dry weeds and smelling cinnamon starch air dried like fourth grade. We are so tired of being in this month. It feels like bike […]

Poetry: “The Party” by Thom Young

the party started with guns in their mouths and a nice baby’s breath arrangement that seemed to play off her dress the vows said heard by those with knives in their eyes and a one way ticket when the part came to kiss the bride the Mothership arrived with a light they’d never known or […]

Poetry: “Uncle Rudi” by Michael Salcman

UNCLE RUDI —after Gerhard Richter, 1965 Based on a family snap the artist’s uncle stands a warrior posed in grand regalia, facing the camera head on, two columns of buttons front his winter coat with smeared eagles and almost invisible lightning bolts on the collar and epaulets, a swastika perched on his cap. Smiling like […]

Poetry: “Gitmo Orange” by Christopher Barnes

Day 1: Kurt Cobain’s bore held with essence-snarling potion. Day 2: Funnel-tubed by diagnosticians, Bound-to- happen morgue rattle an inexhaustible threat. Day 3: Overhanging suffocation in firm plastic hood. Day 4: In sea thirst Guerrilla dogs racket. Day 5: Oblivion dithers, clocks refuse to tick. Christopher Barnes’ first collection LOVEBITES is published by Chanticleer. Each […]

Poetry: “The World Until Yesterday” by Will Walker

For my father You keep him alive with longing and regret, memory a patient spider lashing someone once living to that yesterday when his story stopped and you became one of those spirits divorced from morning sun, riding an iceberg calved from the land, looking shoreward at dusk. But all the metaphors […]

Poetry: “The Whole Sky Rises Up” by Linda Swanberg

one winter alone in your little cabin you worked meticulously on model ships fingers looped thread after thread—tied tiny knots made sails: red silk sails blue sails the color of cornflower stiff white sails cut from a sheet, glued, and dried from each deck you positioned cannons— stealth down to the least detail […]

Poetry: “Undergraduates” by Dan Jacoby

lost one night in st. louis down from chicago drinking wine with brakemen, nuns, whores auditioning farm girls haunting rogers hall for a fox double scotch rocks grosse point boy sneered an echo at love looking through the hole he put in his own head in 1967 we were electric a double feature in the […]