Tonight John Brantingham __________ It’s 2ambefore I noticethe snow in the streetlight coming downin fat wet flakes.It’s an inch thick on the road, and no one’sdriven this way yet.Sirens are whining and so far from methat they’re soft as birdsong.The blue light of my neighbor’s televisionis playingoff his curtains. I…
Read MoreA Typical Day in the Life of Love JC Reilly __________ Love crawls from a holelike a mouse in the pantry;beware its droppings. Love seeks its shadow behind its back but can’t turn fast enough to see. Love hangs its sheet ona line in the morning sun.It snaps with the…
Read MoreSixteen Rounds of Chemo Sara Pirkle __________ After a nurse pluckedthe IV from my portlike a wasp stingerand the rubber-tire tasteof Taxol faded— After the victorypicture was snappedand posted onlinefor hundreds ofstrangers to like— After fake smilingwhile a chorusof nurses serenadedas I dutifully rangthe treatment bell— I sank into the…
Read MoreSagittarius A* Rohan Buettel __________ There is a hole in the heart of my galaxy;supermassive and black; no light emitsin any event from below the horizon.It sits in the snowy wastes of the Milky Way,dense with star clusters and interstellar nebulae.The absence keeps growing —no matter how much falls in,…
Read MoreMayank Manchanda Mayank Manchanda is a writer based in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and is an MFA/MA candidate at McNeese State University. He originally hails from India and his work has appeared in ‘The Medley’ and ‘Riding the Summer Train’: a poetry anthology by Delhi Poetry Slam publications. More of him…
Read MoreMayank Manchanda Mayank Manchanda is a writer based in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and is an MFA/MA candidate at McNeese State University. He originally hails from India and his work has appeared in ‘The Medley’ and ‘Riding the Summer Train’: a poetry anthology by Delhi Poetry Slam publications. More of him…
Read MoreWhere is the Answer? Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg __________ Is it in the speech of the streetlight,so determined to streak its starof orange insistence in the fog? Is it wherever the hummingbird goesto stillness on a perch in the forestacross the street from the old houses? Or is it the houses themselves,…
Read MoreSubmitting John Grey __________ We could all send blood, a few drops of the red stuff in a tiny corked tube. But how would the editor isolate the worthy from the doggerel? Not a pound of flesh. Editors aren’t Shylocks. But maybe an ounce or two. Like a little finger…
Read MorePost-Modern Polonius Anne Babson __________ “Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell” – William Shakespeare Polonius stabbed behind tapestry — But audiences don’t mourn his murder. Hackneyed speeches are the real travesty. Today, when prose is cannon fodder, “There is nothing outside the text.” It bores, Bereft of meaning, say Doctors.…
Read MoreThere’s a Strand Dustin Radke __________ There’s a strand of uncurly hair that weaveditself through your bandana and fell just tothe right of your smile. Not to be too poetic,but it disobeyed the river of your hair and ledme straight to your smile, and now I miss you.I wonder how…
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