By: Mike Nolan I’m standing looking out the window, thoughts far away, when my phone rings. My mother. I know it will frustrate her, but I don’t answer. Whatever her reason for calling, somewhere in the conversation she’ll ask if…
By: J.K. Durick Now Online Everything, everyone in line is onlinedealt with in a click.PIN numbers, usernames remembered,filled in or forgotten,account numbers, then totals.It’s a matter of the numberswe translate ourselves into.It’s the easy to recall password.A shorthand shortcut that…
By: Ken Poyner ADAPTABLY MORAL I work at the playground mine factory. Assembly line work, and I have no idea how many stations there are before or after mine. By the time a mine reaches me, it has already started…
By: Jim Brosnan Forever Daydreaming It’s almost eightas I barrel pastwaves of corn rows,the July sunsetsplashing the Kansassky in strawberryswirls, the longshadows of eveningstretched acrossbroken white lineson the interstate.I listen to oldieson the truck radio,harmonize with Elvis,familiar lyrical linesI sing…
By: Susan Mayer Brumel Goose and Fish Sometimes, I succumbto suffocating sadnessthat force-feedsmy heartmy soulmy madness The goose. Salmon river-racethrough my veins –the pressure pains And I am that forsaken fish:stuffed withvulnerability and fearsingled out—and eaten by a bear. The…
By Taylor Dibbert He’s justThrown awayLondon’s pinkDoggy bed,His wee LondonPassed awayA little moreThan aYear ago,He’s not ableTo putWhat he’s feelingInto words. ### Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. “Rescue Dog,” his fourth full-length poetry collection,…
By: Stanka Bajlozova-Barlamova She often saw the deformed open mouths of her patients in her dreams. The most distorted faces, she remembered of patients whose medical instructions were a diagnosis: extraction. Of all possible dental activities and interventions, tooth…
By: Simon Heathcote ‘You have traveled too fast over false ground;Now your soul has come to take you back.’ –John O’Donohue There is a great nest of sorrows in each of us, yet tragically, it’s long abandoned and closed down….
By: Paul Dickey Almost Infidelity Josie and I want to walk to the lake.Maybe a little fishing in the moonlight.Josie is Don’s new wife. Don says doesn’t want to go.This is in spite of the fact that he and Betty,…
By: Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal Is It Even Real After Sylvia Plath Art dies on the pagelike everything else.I do not know magic.I am not exceptional.It seems we are alldestined for hell orheaven. Is it evenreal, hell, heaven?Where we end up,is…