This inadvertent find, a unit of forgotten digital storage, carries a morbid curiosity that’s almost too hard to pass away. Grandparents are meant for dying, of course, but are they meant for dialing, as well? The contact reads “G&G P”, the surname abbreviated without punctuation. There is no call log, no photograph, no evidence that […]
Author Archives: Dale
Happy Birthday John by Veronica Lupinacci
Happy birthday, Silky J, Johnathan Tiberius Sardelis The Great, Thoroughgood Longstrider, Yonnie, you would be thirty two. I told them we would really notice you’re gone when we marry people you never met and we name our kids after you. When our tattoos are cracked peeling mud scrolls. You weren’t dead when you died. You […]
Yoko Ono Said Two Prose Poems by DeMisty D. Bellinger
Yoko Ono Said Yoko Ono said that I could not have really loved The Beatles and that I didn’t know John Lennon. “Did you cry when he died?” I explained to Ms. Ono that I was not alive when Lennon was shot. She said, “Oh.” The word made her lips, painted spilling-blood red, round out […]
Black and White By Mike Jacobson
Wear white. Were white. Black gloves hiding skin. Hidden mirrors occluding their splendor. Wear black. We’re black and came back. Millions of colors crowded in. Cancel! Clouds trailed wispy white while or all the while. Millions of black clouds coming around the mountain when she comes. Clouds backing into spaces. Periodically white clouds intervened. She […]
Shattered Shadows by Heath Brougher
The owl lets go of the bungee and serves the hippo on rollerskates a plate of mashed potatoes. They are a delicacy when the mutagenic ground will sprout nothing else in the aftermath. If there is an aftermath. The wind turns to steel. Smashed netherworlds gather round the ant hill recently ravaged by an airstrike. […]
One Pot After Another Two Prose Poems by Keith Nunes
One Pot After Another always the flower pots on the veranda, the whiter than white sheets and the order of business in the dining room, you poke around in the bedroom but after some years you don’t care who you’re pleasing because the face under you belongs to your dead sister, no-one explains that you’re […]
The Garbage Man by Glen Sorestad
Before I started school, my earliest memories are of the tenement house our family lived in on East Broadway in Vancouver. I remember a man who sometimes visited with my parents. Actually, I don’t really remember so very much about him — face or size or voice — but the surname was Orrie, something sounding […]
The Bus Ride Himalayan Mountains, Nepal
by Deborah Guzzi
The bus back to Kathmandu—draped from roof to bumper with riders—careens from rock walls to ledge, beeping. Stray dogs and wayward cyclist dodge its downward path into the valley’s maw. Its open windowed, metal sides, rumble-creak over the serpentine mountain track. Dust clouds scarf behind. Molting pine forests hold back crumbling ochre walls on the […]
The Sea by Charles Hayes
Arching its neck over the undulating highway to feed from the other side, an orange dinosaur fittingly forms a gateway for my passing, a secrete portal to new things in a world of vivid color. In awe of this unexpected find, I smile and look aside at the jungle flashing by. Along its face smiling […]
Friend by Lori Cramer
Carly was the kind of friend who’d compliment you on your hand-me-down sneakers, rave over the natural highlights in your dull brown hair, and cackle at your lame jokes as if you were the funniest comedian ever. But she was also the kind of friend you didn’t want to introduce to your boyfriend because you […]
True Account of a Pilgrimage to See the Bishop of Bridges by E.C. Messer
I arrive at the first river town of the North. I have come to witness the River-Crossing Festival, to attend the Blessing of the Bridges and receive, if I am able, that most important of boons for travelers and poets alike. When I arrive, I am too shy to ask if the Bishop is already […]
Over the Ridge in October by Amanda Phillips
There’s nothing but old clouds above the sycamores, struck flat by the October heat. We pause on the muddy ridge and look out over the river – it’s a creek, but we call it a river because we always feel so unimportant. There’s a chalk-colored bird. There’s the open field below the river filled with […]
Empty by Cindy Rinne
In darkness I walk past barricades and observe the eye of Shiva carved at the crest of a building. My destination. Lights glow through closed windows like beacons. Push open the heavy door. Muffled voices blend from a distant classroom. I am ten minutes early. The couple drives 500 miles from Bishop to purchase cheese […]
Sanctuary Wolf Hollow, Ipswich, MA
by Domenic Scopa
Bored with dehydrated beef the conservationist throws to him, the alpha-male Argus who lost his sole love when she snapped her leg, tangled in a thorny thicket, overtaken by the cool fever of septic shock, roams the fenced-in pasture and its amnesia. It seems that grief compels him to shuttle past the cave mouth, back […]
S.; or, a Retrospection by Travis Chi Wing Lau
“How wonderful it was this coming to know, certain of the knowing to come. Every word was weighted and every glance an inquiry. Each gesture gave just that little too much away.” i. We met when the prosecco still had its bite. Under the auspices of Santa Monica still wintering, still bathing in its cold […]
Disquiet by Sarah Bigham
A place of learning, a place of support, a place of challenge, a place of growth. So brave to be here, between jobs and babies, debts and memories of those who said they were not meant for academic glory. Will it be here? Will it be one of my own? Will we escape, running out […]
Snoring in Your Ear Two Prose Poems by Perry L. Powell
Snoring in Your Ear So you were keeping someone’s rabbit. And the dream is laid out like Ohio. With one what to do about it followed by another. All while the whole naked banana waits. Then there are the children. These children who when gone are always here. These children who when here are always […]
On Constructing the Ghost Two Prose Poems by Jessica Cogar
On Constructing the Ghost I am teaching the significance of a broken chandelier as it falls toward me. A token of glass catches itself on my sweater—my tour guide of what’s breakable, what can be viewed but never touched. The projection of this image stretches across the underside of my wrist and what is borrowed […]
Box by Melanie Dunbar
It was a box before it fell, and if not box, then balloon, full of heavy, and as it floated down it fell, and stories were, and not held back, but told and told and down, cat and girl it fell and green parrot or plant, and shine shine shine and brick, pigeons, or squab […]
You Are Here by Joseph Hesch
As he doodled on the blank page, filling it with circles and arrows and hoping that Freud was right and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Andrew prayed that the old lightning would strike and worried that another type already had. The pen dragged along, as if it didn’t want to do more than […]
Wit/Woes of The Jester A Collection by Hermine Robinson
Wit/Woes of The Jester I am not the only one who wears a face that is not my own. The ones who come to smile/jeer at me are compassionate/cruel in their own right. I see it in the laughing/crying crowds. I see it in the smiles/frowns of couples holding each other’s hand/heart too tight; caught […]
Three by Mark Magoon
I bite the distance between me & you. I try to the moon. You like it rough so Lay me I say. Fuck us both to the third person. Turn our names out & lay us both afterwards to dry. To cure. Afterwards we are other—we are good humans, skins, fine old leather. Worked. You […]
FUGACITY by Richard Fleming
For many years now, traffic signals have been routinely ignored by the fellowship of bicycle messengers. It’s a carefully planned obsolescence with small souvenirs of happiness. Things have a tendency to disappear when you snap your fingers in a cross wind. The brains of the outfit come with no guarantees. I can’t predict the outcome […]
Wishful Thinking by Jenn O’Connor
We left his party early because he did not want me there and the place was too crowded with people whose faces you couldn’t remember. I suggested we walk to the fountain, so he let me kiss his cheek goodbye and shook your hand and might have watched us leave. We forgot to place our […]
Mustard Sky by Brenda Birenbaum
You stumble into the room (insert time of day, description). Daylight intrudes through a window the length of the back wall, hazy mustard sky and odor of sulfur are barging in. You step back, or pause, or something to do with halted movement (insert place). You’re in the doorway, peering in (reverse angle). Could be […]
Dream, dream, dream Two Prose Poems by Howie Good
Dream, Dream, Dream 1 Ghosts of memory circle my head like nagging black flies. We all go shopping together for a mirror to put above the piano. Attitudes have changed. Authentic social life has been replaced with its representation. A half-grown man in a baseball cap that says Vietnam Vet on the front visits me […]
Message in a Bottle by Eva Roa White
After 30 years, my sister is back into my life. She was looking for a recipe for a dish online, when she came across my essay about our hometown. Her email said: “Hello, I’m your sister and I hope you will answer me.” In the space of a few lines, she reconnects me with the […]
Come Light by Randal Eldon Greene
The acrid smell of her stomach juices hits my nostrils like a belly flop. The guy is yelling, all excited because the sun is coming up, rising from the city skyline. I am kneeling by Mabel, watching her nuzzle the gravel. We’re fifteen stories high. The guy yelling at us to look at the burning […]
Submerged A Collection by Santino Prinzi
Submerged Your memory wanes as I descend towards the seabed. Lingering is your touch on my fingertips. I’m long forgotten on yours. Deeper I dive, searching. You’ve left me in my breathlessness. My lungs bubble. I want to swim towards the sunlight, but how can I resurface without hopeful warmth? The ocean soul envelopes me […]
Autumn A Collection by C.C. Russell
Autumn The clouds moved stealthily across the flat surface of the sky, an invisible high-atmospheric current whisking them along while we, on our backs in the grass near the pond, were left untouched. The geese rattled their tongues in long ululations of grief at a disappearing season. You put your hand on mine for a […]
Abroad by Laurie Kolp
Beside me someone cries as I watch you make your way through customs. The crowd is thin, most of the others are still checking in their luggage. Behind you a young mother and two wiggling toddlers— the ones cried about. In a text I say you should make friends with them. Quick response: they don’t […]
Seven Horns By Scott Thomas Outlar
Neurons frayed from a lack of sleep done purposefully just to reach an altered state so the words will flow from the bowels of a fiery abyss. Add coffee and nicotine to the party and achieve a purge of pacifism which opens the gates for raw rage to saunter through with a rant against the […]
We Can’t Swim in the Dark Two Prose Poems by Kyle Hemmings
We Can’t Swim in the Dark You can’t love me. When you press your ear next to my heart, you’ll hear the swoosh of back history, dumpster mermaids and open hands. I recall the teeth of the night. No hot line for those marked with erroneous incisions. You still recite Marx from last semester and […]