Your job is to tend the herd of giraffes that lounge in the median of Granby Street. You bring water and food several times a day, and that is the time most likely when a traffic tie up will occur. Motorists stop to see them knuckle down for water or stretch for the suspended food. […]
Author Archives: Dale
When Soap Operas Follow Fairy Tale Plots by Brenda Nicholas
Sheathed in Chanel, Maria sneaks into Frank’s hotel room where a happenstance glass of green fitness juice waits for Frank’s lips on the desk. If Frank had not slept with Suzanne, Maria would not have to do this, but she must. She takes her bottle of prescription pills out of her purse and after dropping […]
How to Make Boxed Shells: 8 Easy Steps by Brenda Nicholas
Fall in love too young. Feel heat rise to a boil, cleave to him until you turn tender. Say “YES!” half asleep when he slips a ring around your toothbrush. Finish your studies and move around the country to look for yourself as he looks for himself. Let your ideals of marriage drain out through […]
Vision by Howie Good
I’ll occasionally see the oddest things out of the corner of my eye – a beatnik cowboy, smiles like misplaced commas, even Pope Francis declaring from his window, “Don’t be afraid of tattoos.” The doctors say it’s the result of my body attacking itself. My knowing CPR helps, but not as much as you would […]
The Ashes by Jeff Friedman
We poured the ashes into the garden and said a prayer, a single bee flying from the roses. When we returned a day later, the flowers and plants had died, so we scooped the ashes into a container and walked down to the river where we kneeled and emptied them slowly, but instead of drifting […]
Snapping Turtle by Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman
On our video call, my son told me he found a snapping turtle baby in a nearby creek. “Why were you at a creek in this weather, and what were you doing that you spotted a baby snapping turtle?” Since he was little he was always climbing to the highest branch of a tree, or […]
Out of the Hat by Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman
I pulled my ex-husband out of one of my hats, and at first, he seemed happy to see me again. “I’ve really missed your hats, and all of your weird scarves,” he said to me, beaming. I contemplated stuffing him back into the hat, but then I remembered our days in Kansas City, how we […]
Issue 29 CONTENTS
read issue Meg Pokrass and Jeff Friedman Out of the Hat Snapping Turtle Jeff Friedman The Ashes Howie Good Vision Brenda Nicholas How to Make Boxed Shells: 8 Easy Steps When Soap Operas Follow Fairy Tale Plots Ken Poyner Pool Study in Luck Lorette C. Luzajic The Skeleton Flower Winter […]
Issue 28 CONTENTS
read issue Karla Daly Lately, I’ve Been Giving Up Too Easily Guilt and Eggs Haibun Humboldt’s Progeny Mark McKain Potato Meg Pokrass at home when you aren’t home anymore Mark DeCarteret The Year I Went without Turning on the Furnace Richard Baldasty Bowl Joanna Manning Inheritance Aaron Facer Poem in […]
Lately, I’ve Been Giving Up Too Easily by Karla Daly
I was worried a bird would fly in the open French doors on this green-scented day, but no, a box turtle slipped in. I chased him into the dining room, where he crouched out of reach under the radiator. He darted into my office when I wasn’t looking and hid under shelves sagging with books […]
Guilt and Eggs Haibun by Karla Daly
Wrenched from moving Mom to assisted living, I fog-walk into my kitchen. A few stalwarts, missing. Removed. By whom, I don’t know. What kind of thief would snag my ragged cookbook, pages stained and brittle with broth, less sugar penciled by Spiced Cranberry Sauce? Who would filch the dishtowel my son gave me seven years […]
Humboldt’s Progeny by Karla Daly
Alexander von Humboldt thought tools are an extension of the brain. Last week, I heard a scientist posit that tools are part of the brain, as if there were no skull. It made me pause. I saw the scientist again at an art gallery. Gazing at Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, he sat alone […]
at home when you aren’t home anymore by Meg Pokrass
Today, a woman is yelling at the pharmacist. At home, your kid contemplates his graffiti program. Your mother is angry at your former brother-in-law. Last night your sister broke down on the phone, can’t pay her property taxes. The dog looks fat. You have been too busy to walk him, too anxious to go out […]
Potato by Mark McKain
Give us this day our flakes poured from box, unzipped from freezer, thrown on tray, ushered into oven. At the table, waiting for flesh, catsup, shoe to drop, words to catch in throat, tears not shed, leather tongue to unwind. Uneaten, hiding under lettuce, among peas. Unable to speak. On the sill, tooth-picked over water, […]
The Year I Went Without Turning on the Furnace by Mark DeCarteret
I added another piano to the fire and napped again. Until I was as hot as a pan. My forehead a skewer of sweat. The spit on my upper lip profound as a prayer round. The den needs new paneling. Even though in its knots I still see the seeds of a sonnet. That one […]
Bowl by Richard Baldasty
At the front door, three monks. At the back window, four more. They have come to help us pray, help us fall to our knees, bow our heads, get it all out—what we really have on our minds. But we tell them we’re not like that, not big strugglers or puzzlers. We let each day […]
Inheritance by Joanna Manning
It’s time to tuck away the old woman’s coats and the woolen socks she has pinned toe-to-toe. Winter’s gone. But in the chill of that last winter, when her blood struggled to reach her toes, she had complained about socks. “I need more,” she’d insisted, again and again, like a meditation tacked onto her morning […]
Poem in B Minor by Aaron Facer
‘You know you’re in trouble when people stop listening to sad music because when people stop listening to sad music, they don’t want to know anymore; they’re turning themselves off.’ – Thom Yorke They come around as my windows turn dark and the cold sets in, slipping in silently. Sometimes I don’t even notice them, […]
Poem Noir by Jason Gebhardt
This time I try characters. I give them names, Scandinavian ones, impossible to pronounce, hard to trace. I put them in a room with a desk. The fat man sitting behind it. The slender one standing before it. It’s a backroom enveloped in smoke. The pulse of music from outside overpowers their voices. As the […]
Kitchen Clock by Alice Teeter
1. The old cat is a loaf of bread hunkered down on a cushioned kitchen chair where the heat vent blows. She’s quiet. Above her, the clock on the wall ticks on and on. It is unclear what the time really is. 2. In the summer, he would stay out all night, coming back every […]
Brave Like Troi by Jennifer Savran Kelly
I wanna be brave like Deanna Troi. Like skintight powder-blue eyelashed brave. That’s not afraid to look inside you and see what you see when you look at me brave. Like under the knife for the cause brave. That doesn’t question anomalies or enemies or orders because this is a choice brave. That looks down […]
This Year by Brooke Middlebrook
In all the homes of this year, we flickered off and on. The dog licked herself drunk. We scratched grooves in the lintel with our fingernails to attend the passage of time. Light was scarce but we could feel the wind ripple through our failures. In each home stood a dining table without chairs. In […]
We live now by Francine Witte
We live now by the side of the road. We live now inside with only small windows. We live now in the now. We live now in the hand in front of our faces. We live now where there is only a green screen we will fill in later. We live now in the why […]
Lone earring by Francine Witte
Found last night in my jewelry box. Cheap dangle of rhinestone. Clip-on and just a bit of a pinch. I wore the pair of them that night we drove around and drove around, the two of us new and hungry for us. We found a quiet spot to park. The city all around us. The […]
Where Did You Go? by Francine Witte
I went thin as pears, all sliced-up and see-through. I went halfway to happy. I went to a place where I don’t have to answer. I went sniff in the air. I went to the arms of another. I went bent as bones. I went to a job without a computer. Where I stand in […]
Catalogue by Phillip Watts Brown
We wish our work of art to be once in a lifetime and never again. – Cristo and Jeanne-Claude I find them everywhere. Not monumental pieces—islands surrounded with pink fabric (each a loud bloom) or veins of saffron flags winding between miles of frozen trees—but smaller ones. Moss-coated stones. Gutters lined with scarves of […]
Sweet Thing and Scooter by Brad Rose
Like a circus clown at an action-packed funeral, I struggle to put on my selfie mask. All morning, I’ve been trying to trick the algorithms into playing something a little less swashbuckling, a little more humane— like Gollywog’s Cakewalk. Naturally, the Artificial Intelligence would like to think like everybody else, but it’s become all too […]
A man of sorrows dreams in sunflower, 1889 by Naomi Kim
for Vincent van Gogh He held his severed ear in his hand. Divorced now from sound, it looked lonely. It hardly weighed more than a whisper, a lone word of pain cradled in the palm of his paint-flecked hand. […]
Disentangled by Dodd Ellsworth
My partner told me I’m like an octopus who doesn’t sink his tentacles into anything. She said I like to hover above a thing, grazing my tentacles over it, dangling next to it. I’m a hoverer. A grazer. A dangler. I said I didn’t know that an octopus sunk his tentacles into things. I thought […]
Safety by Dodd Ellsworth
I had a high enough account balance that the bank gave me a free safe deposit box. I didn’t even ask for it. The lady just handed me this little key. I said, how big is the box? She said, three by five. I said, you mean inches? She said yes. I said, this box […]
Ringmaster by Abigail Frankfurt
say you finally decide to run away and join the circus – but by the 3rd mile your knees start to ache – so you slow down to a brisk walk and the circus is still within sight – but now your lower back – ouch – all those years waiting tables, car crashes, lifting […]
Dead Language by Abigail Frankfurt
in a dream you came back and made the same mistakes you already made. 3 broken ribs and hospital bound. i played the cd that was in the back of a book i bought on the east side. we listened to it over and over and over. we prepared. what song would accompany those who […]
Issue 27 CONTENTS
cover art by Sarah J. Sloat* read issue > Brad Rose Insect Scott Hicks There Were Good Days Too Sara Backer Half of Courage is Rage Freesia McKee The Devil’s Pockets Jim Woessner Spoiler Alert Bryan D. Price Quiet and more nocturnal Pictographs Jason Gebhardt American Limbic Smoke and […]