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, scavenges cloudy eyes, achey paws a turkey vulture circles and leaves returns with a flock the raccoon flattens against the grass animal control joins me in the yard …
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 …
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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 …
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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 …
Fiction: “The Watch” by Nicholas LaRocca
After he was blown up, after he lost both legs below the knee, after he made it through three surgeries that saved his life, Jimmy Cachetti rotated out of Landstuhl and back to the states, where he convalesced near home, at the V.A. in Riviera Beach, Florida—a mammoth facility painted the color of an oxidized …
Fiction: “The Note” by Delphine Hirsh
It had just started to rain when I ran into Theo’s parents on the street outside the museum. I was trying to hail a taxi. I was happy to see them and they seemed happy to see me. I was nervous that Theo’s mother Sally would scratch my face or that his father Reg would …
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 …
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Fiction: “Amateur Altruism” By Jody Azzouni
… okay you have to start over, that’s all. Huh? We’re at the beginning of the program again okay? Soup Kitchen: just start in on it like: here’s the big event that ended it, the event that no one talks about. I guess. Once upon a time—now it’s your turn: Go Okay okay it had …
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