Taking Things Back
“Two or three moves along from that town, and long after the much defrauded F.W. Woolworth had ceased trading, I decided
that it ought to be told. The phone calls, by then, were fewer and further between even than when I’d first moved out.”
By Mike Hickman
Two Poems
“I did not expect you to ask about our death so soon. We are both / still young, but lately, hesitation joins us in places it hasn’t before. / Reckless on the highway, a student driver in every car. Unassuming / at the library, preying on our introspection...”
By Megan Nichols
Marigolds like god and sun
“Years later, Mama cries through the rain, / tells me that the marigolds do not bloom like they used to. /
I want to tell her that there is only yellow around us, / And that the tree outside melts at her touch.”
By Mitali Singh
Three Poems
“TECHNICALLY, SINCE CENTURY FOX IS NOW OWNED BY DISNEY, THIS MEANS THAT THE XENOMORPHS
FROM THE ALIEN FRANCHISE, BEING BORN FROM THE XENOMORPH QUEEN, ARE NOW DISNEY PRINCESSES...”
By Shawn Berman
You Taught Me
To Love The Cello
“I only heard the cello / as it whined and reverberated and mocked / me, my gloves, my powder, us /
as if it were warning me that this life / I perceived was slipping away from me...”
By Riya Cyriac
Tempest/Teapot
“There is a house on a cliff by the sea. It’s a washed-out, barely-there shade of blue, with a lopsided picket fence
and a handful of flowers kept alive only through rain and the kindness of others...”
By Rowan Levi
I am bluish; I envy
“I kept every bouquet of roses, / wrapped in layer after layer of gaffer’s tape and / throw it from the roof of the state’s second highest building. / The incense sticks extinguish in my carpet / like cigarette butts alongside / rotting beheaded from the summer.”
By Rachael Gay
Everybody has to die—
I don’t have
“...to go to church and Sunday School to know / that but I guess it helps because there’s hope /
for the dead they tell me, I mean the folks / at church tell me, not the dead tell me...”
By Gale Acuff
Tree as Teacher
“I stand as tall as I can these days, feeling spent with change. Ten years ago /
I moved a tree with a hug and gritted teeth. I flipped a boulder with my bare hands / and lifted a fallen tree off of the trail.”
By John Dorroh
Three Poems
“I just wonder / if I’m missing something, / like a three headed dog, / licking itself as a soul sneaks away /
towards a monotheistic heaven, / while Hercules is left to wrestle / his midlife crisis.”
By Richard LeDue
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