It has been a decade ago
when we had our first dance.
In what took the semblance of,
crepuscular happenstance.
Dorsey Craft __________ My Football Team is Winning (III) And my granddaddy’s still dead. He swatsan almighty yellow jacket from a star-soakedcan of Coke while our tailgate moves fartherout on the asphalt grid. We’ve got a healthylead. We’ve got a blond quarterback with eyeslike the last two red salmon pouting…
Read MoreRaye Hendrix __________ At Toomer’s Corner, the Morning After the Iron Bowl (2019) In memory of Pat Sullivan An autumn sun, expected, rises;steals darkness from between the stars to illuminate the streets and avenues—College and Magnolia brilliant white with billowing paper, a southern substitutefor snow: live oaks cloaked from trunk…
Read Moreis it too tender to kiss? Hannah Rousselot __________ I.in the past, i always held my wounds outgaping and red, hoping someone would noticeand want to kiss me better. many tried, but none could re-knitmy skin, my heart, my brain togetherwith strands from their own body.i had to do it…
Read MoreWhat Fancied Her Rikki Santer __________ If a toilet seat can be a lyre& applause stored in a box then this is the story of a believer—your closet in the candy-colored language of clown—you witha pimiento center & comfortable as a sock, never ruffled or lacybut blooming in tie-dye spider…
Read MoreCourt Castaños __________ Burn Rising Yesterday, Blake asked me, what are you doingwith your hands today? I opened them, read:too clean, too dry. And remembered thesehands, just seven years old,aimed for his eye, glasses and all, sockedit red, puffed, like a burn rising.Blake Gollmer, my best friend, and his betrayal:an…
Read MoreEsteban Rodríguez __________ Throw Down With rumors in every room,you learn who wants to throw downwith who, that tomorrow,or the next day or the next,you will face an enemy you didn’t knowyou had. And so, you go home,raid your mother’s jewelry box,put on every ring she owns,and in your room,…
Read MoreSeth Simons __________ Winter Sonnet But wait. I’m not an ornithologist.You’ve never lost your hat in Lake Erieor come to hate your friend one restlessAugust in a corn maze in Kentucky. Last Christmas we poured whiskey into snowpacked wooden bowls and ate it with a spoon.Your lips were cold blue…
Read MoreStephanie Athena Valente __________ Lovers in Alchemy drip me in quartz,powder my lipspurple swollen, i ate the bees,there was nothing left alive tinged eyelashesher skin, drippingpretending to be translucent. we’re gamine, thinking aboutthe humanity, not thinking about humanitysipping, slipping polished stoneslike royal honey, like truth into diamond pots,we’re listening nymphs,…
Read MoreSara Moore Wagner __________ Invasive Spotted Lanternfly Close to Ohio Border It’s a mirror of a lantern,it hangs over the garden,sways back and forth on the fingerof the fern, outstretched. Semi-translucent, wrapped in red, crimsonas the bottom of a well in the morning,lit up. It echoes the ladybug, that littlered…
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