I wrote a poem about miscarrying my first child in Las Vegas, and an editor emailed me that the lines were too concrete. Should her womb be emptied and refilled with sorrow would she write in pencil? Would she be satisfied to hold a dust mite? Would she grasp at gossamer webs, or would she, […]
Category Archives: Issue 8
Cleaning Out the Garage at the Centralia House Two Prose Poems by Lana Grey
Cleaning Out the Garage at the Centralia House I’d never realized how poorly gray plastic storage tubs held water. As I stripped what had once been papers and pictures apart from the sopping, color-bled mass that had been floating for untold ages within the tub—the water seeping in from a human-sized hole in the roof—I […]
Blue by Jennifer Novotney
He locks eyes with me and I melt. His eyes are blue, but not just any blue. They’re not blue like the sky or a Robin’s egg. No, his eyes are blue like tropical waters off an undiscovered island. I want to dive in stark naked. The cool iris bathes my warm flesh, sharp and […]
Skin by Lucy Palmer
The skin on his face is so pale it’s almost a whisper. So thin, so close to his skull. Sometimes I wish he would eat more so he would seem more real, more solid. Sometimes his skin makes me cry. He doesn’t understand this. He says he doesn’t want to be fat. I say he […]
Untitled by C.M. Keehl
I. Frailty of mortality isn’t what to seek/ isn’t what to wish/ to recount when reality is left scrambling in depths of your clothes trying to predict what you’ll need; if anything at all. II. 6 hours later & finally I was aware your wearable truth left leaking spinal fluid & fragments/ swollen eyes, a […]
Between Silences Two Prose Poems by Joanna Drake
Between Silences Between silences I could hear the steady thump-thump of your beating heart; its inner chambers working to sustain life no matter how frail the body or brittle the bone. You would fill that space with eyes that pleaded, that wept, eyes that searched for escape or recognition. Between silences I created worlds for […]
Attached by Rebecca Dutsar
Out of all the boys that liked to swarm around you, asking you for coffee, you chose him. He sat in his room and played the most beautiful songs on his guitar thinking that nobody would listen. He had given you tea before, blankets, even, but this time he held your left hand as you […]
I’m Not a Child Anymore Two Prose Poems by Sarah Frances Moran
I’m Not a Child Anymore Let’s discuss the appeal of tents made of Ninja Turtle Sheets. How when you’re 16 you long for those things but ignore them because they aren’t cool. Like how a guitar riff is cool but not that guitar riff, because it’s too old and who is that guy with the […]
A Cold Spring by Will Cordeiro
Sunrays riddled the snow-mounds, heartless as any gangster. Noon had detonated each vacant crystal. Old sneakers dangled from a tree, their shadows twisted. The river, swollen, dragged off the last dead branches. On its surface a few small clouds (dimpled on its mirror) raced toward the mountains, but the current fled where it always goes: […]
Archives of A Future by Scherezade Siobhan
For Greg Bem x If love as a body peeling its rind of bandages, then us browsing digital boutiques for fuchsia bondage ropes the colour of coral vipers. If the sloe-pupil of your camera as our handsome voyeur, then your hand on my neck, my leg on your shoulder—each act as an acrobat for the […]
The L.A. Skyline at Sunrise Two Prose Poems by Jeff Burt
The L.A. Skyline at Sunrise Haze pink, a Hollywood cerise deeper than a pink flamingo or fandango pink and pinker than coral or salmon-crested cockatoo pink, darker than Persian pink or Persian rose of carpets, darker than raspberry, lighter than cranberry and deeper than watermelon, a cherry blossom pink less subtle than carnations and hung-over […]
Saturday 10/10/2015 Two Prose Poems by Michael Julian Arnett
Saturday 10/10/2015 I wake with a sneeze and shift in my skin. A four year-old girl was shot in her own home by a police officer responding to a 911 call. She had been badly cut by broken glass. The quick-thinking officer felt that the right thing to do was to shoot the family’s dog […]
Homicide, Suicide, Plea by Steve Passey
I don’t understand suicide. Homicide, yes. (False bravado now) Who hasn’t wanted to choke the shit out of someone? Choke them until they plead with their eyes, watch the light go out and they are gone. Holding on to them dead until the sweat pours from our brow. Fuck yeah—Give me some of that. But […]
Now and Then by Deborah Guzzi
The attic wants all loved things to come to it and remain. The timber expands in the heat, clamps closed in winter’s cold. An evergreen branch, nailed into the rafters in nineteen twenty-eight, and the floor boards of King’s Pine recollect the perfume of new cedar shingles mixing with the Old Spice on Grandfather’s square […]
Second Year Malaise by Josette Torres
I am sick of my voice. My teaching self talks too much. I use the grip tape wrapped around the red rails at the top of my spiral staircase to mark the boundary where I can speak my grievances. I use the street outside to mark the boundary of where I can’t speak anything. On […]
Pine Two Prose Poems by Elijah Matthew Tubbs
Pine Two brothers rip through the forest tripping over tree root, bramble and broken branches. They slip on the fallen leaves, their gaiety glows gold. Pine needles stick to the soles of their shoes, wedge themselves between the crevices while thicket scratches at their calves trying to hold them still—warning the boys, threatening. It is […]
The House is Sad Two Prose Poems by Hermine Robinson
The House is Sad It shudders and sighs, exhausted by the wind that blows out of the west. The front door creaks with each load that goes out to the moving truck and empty rooms cry with the stark bleakness of their loss. This place will no longer be the anchor that brings our family […]