Eivind E. Olsen __________ Thin Leaf On a winter day, much like a day in fallexcept the trees are bare, I find a leafblown up from the yard, thin as a thumbprintand slightly larger than my own.  Its brown skin is cracked and translucent:a ghost against a stone step;or a…

Heard and not heard at my grandmother’s wake Jordan Nishkian __________                                  We pretend to bury her.“Here, eat something.”                                 In two weeks, we’ll pick up my grandmother’s ashes,                                 her urn will join my grandfather’s                                 in their nightstands, in their bedroom.                                 My aunt“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying.”                                 will sleep beside them: both                                 room, tomb.“It’s good…

Nancy Carol Moody __________ Blue Wheelchair Come, Blue Chair.Come like a dream, a month’s second moon,water-wrapped planet, September’s stone.Cornflowers and summer-time berries and sky the waywe were promised it would always be.Come, Blue Chair.Who cares what you’re made ofor what it is you really are—four rickety wheels or rusty running…

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee __________ Redefinition An adopted country lends, and demandsa down payment, which is your initiation. Language rolls on the tongue and slipsinto memory. It carries with it a past new to you.You believe in the future because it has not yet come.All the colors of the country:…

Back then, they let us sift through broken glass Jean Janicke __________ and called it arts and crafts. Blue meant midnightgravel crunch under pick-up truck tires. Swirls could bewet sand drizzled on a sandcastle before waves washedthe turrets away. Grey lines like pencil stripes of witch-broombare branches guarding the post…

Article Z: Letter to Dad | a double abecedarian Zebulon Huset __________ Article Z:                       beware the easy.      Chest ≈ thorax. Defend the (breast) plate like Harmon Kilibrew.                  Eventually Pavlovfinds his own saliva        for a tiramisu—                 ghost flickers       each whisper of dessert. Harmon, batting lefty, nervous.                  I (innocently) disregarded                yourjovial spirit          kindness   (even…

Sophia M. Giudici __________ Tattoos Some of us grow upTo make our bodies coloring books—Stories marking warm skin. __________ Playing Dress Up Why are children the only ones allowedto dress up in every color of their dreams?They come outside on Saturday morningsstill vested in the vestiges of sleepTrain pajamas topped…

Alicia Cook __________ The Widow in the Window The Widow in the window watchedthe sea-town home across the streetlose its weather-torn For Sale sign. Moving vans curbed and unloaded innocuousclues like a beige couch and an upright piano. The Widow in the window watchedas newlyweds crossed the threshold.She remembered her…

Paula Cisewski __________ Red Poem In the fenced tennis courts, a woman rollerdiscos solo, weaving between green nets on fuchsiaskates. Meanwhile, an upside-down flag hangsfrom one bungalow and an upside-right flag hangs from the next. This neighborhood we call our own.I’m home slicing radishes into a bowlwhich is a version…