Last Night, I Prayed for Peace Jeric Olay __________ Last night, I prayed for peace. But my prayer, I suspect, seems inconceivably large. As I woke up, I paced for the window. From where I stood, everything was christened with wonted quiet. I looked at the bougain- villea that grew on the casserole. Its…
Read MoreCapitalist Necktie Jeffrey H. MacLachlan __________ Treasure Chest comic book Vol.17 No.2 This is a dad tie.This is a straight tie.This is a glum blue tie. This tie mows over tax dependents.This tie hangs from ironed dress shirts.This tie never squirms when belting offspring. This tie tithes at Father Ryan’s…
Read MoreVallie Lynn Watson Vallie Lynn Watson is an Assistant Professor of English/fiction writing in the MFA program at McNeese State University. Her novel, A River So Long, was published by Luminis Books, and recent short stories and essays appear in literary journals such as Hobart, Bending Genres, and PANK. Watson earned her doctorate a thousand…
Read MoreMichael Robins Michael Robins is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Bright Invisible (Saturnalia Books, 2022). His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, The Common, New England Review, and Poetry magazine. He lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he teaches in the MFA program at McNeese State University. Visit…
Read MoreWalking on the Levee on Our Way to Angel Mounds Mark Williams __________ We met on Sunday mornings with our dogs: beagles,retrievers, John Biacinni’s two German Shepherds,a collie, a pair of Great Danes, a pit-mix . . .An ecumenical gathering if ever there was. OnceI counted twenty-one people and twenty-six…
Read MoreFree Steven Ray Smith __________ You were a baby on the day I met you, and also not, because you had lived already, alone and for yourself already, somewhere invisible to me that I could never visit. But because you didn’t know how to hunt or to hide from those…
Read MoreHow My Dog Smells Dean Flowerfeld __________ The world is a whorl of wonderful whiffsfor a doggie like me who lives by his sniffs and the wind is awash in a welter of wafts,such succulent scents on the breeze are aloft: the sweet and the sour, the savory and musty,the…
Read MoreCat O’ Nine Tales Ann Howells __________ Cats domesticated themselves 9000 years ago. My neighbor’s cats are Powderpuff,Queen of Sheeba, & Sugar Dumpling.Their eyes glow like vitreous amber.They loudly order dinner, stayperpetually stoned on canned salmon. My cat, silent & soot-colored, explores unknown spaces, answers to no one. Green…
Read MoreRuthAnnI Tricia Knoll __________ Men in Louisiana grabbed me from the hoarder’s house with the two dead dogs. They called me Ruth Ann. In their shelter they cut open my belly and made fleas go away. Told me I was pretty, but time ran out, they’d have to kill me.…
Read MorePre-Obituary for a Rabbit Francis Walsh __________ pre-obituary for a rabbit he was, he was, he was asleep on the carpet and stretched like a strand of dough his paws tucked beneath his chin perhaps dreaming of hay fields and bananas and all the other morsels that occupy the wide-eyed…
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