By: Carl Papa Palmer Anticipation She watches the officer’s precise approach in her rear view mirror, grips the steering wheel tightly keeping both hands in plain sight at ten and two. Not the first time in this situation, she recalls…

By: Sam Barbee / trespass / lamp post beside my happy gate / its hinge-pin creaks /holly bush’s red berries / lush lawn, swept sidewalk. oak tree silhouette blackens neighbor’s yard /a bough-stamp of roots / like fingers’ dark-gnarl. leafless…

By Jim Woessner We only ever saw the Rausches in the summer. They were an elderly couple that lived in Jeff City and only came to the river on weekends. Their place wasn’t far from ours, just downriver a hundred…

By: J.K. Durick Early This early the streetlightsbegin losing their battlewith darkness are slowly replaced by the sunby morningits beauty silent, bare something whispers “fiat lux”and then thereis This early we get to seeday begin this waythe sky wins colors…

By: Lisa Creech Bledsoe The Way Poets Go On About Birds (My Secret Poem Name is Swan) True, we do go on, having had our organic yogurtwith bran on the porch as the sun rises. Jesushow could we not, after…

By: Ricky Garni F THAT MUSEUM IS EVER hit by a tornado,Alexander Hamilton’s hairwill land on Harry Houdini’sOuija Board What’s left of the world’s smallest mermaidwill settle upon Bigfoot’s foot. ### ARCHIVES this man filmed his wife as a child.and…

By Edward Wells The river comes at Penthelm, in its depression, from the southeast. Before reaching the town, the river curves to the northeast around the natural levy of the ridge. It circles the town, back toward the southeast, slowly…

By: Sam Paget You win some; you lose some, as I always say. My father always said it, and now so do I. I’ve said it to my old pal Paul quite a few times. Our wives were friends from…

By: Janet Brown                 When I was a young girl, there was a little, old, brown house that was situated down from where I lived.  This house, which was really a shack, would actually serve as a home for many…

By: Michael Foldes A Pilgrim’s Progress A fish can only feed so many flies.So the earth makes a lowly home for the worm.How complete the visitor who sharesexperience with the stranger.We meditate in crowded rooms as easilyas on the Holy…