Katy Naylor cast off your past like so much dry skincome down with me to the water loose those knots which bind you to your old painthe empty cupthe mast at your back let me be the harbour for your second chancesfind them herein the seaweedon the rocks Katy Naylor is an office worker, a […]
Lexi Inez At the mind’s casinoSlots spin to soothe and then to stirThings up, high as jackpot dreamsPull the lever again, againMore more moreMental payout poursCoins for corner storesChoose candy or wineNot the toilet right behindThe bowl fills, the bowl spillsWater out from underPast the doorLess less lessOdds 6:1 on floodWater chin high and climbingShoes […]
Madeleine Tomasoa CW: violent imagery i am hunched over ugly like an animal screaming without a sound a cockroach scurried away from me and threw up onto the ground he woke up one day and crashed into earth i want to see fat peel away and i admire how the flesh tries to glue itself […]
Makenna Dykstra ///there’s a toilet in the park bathroomthat won’t stop flushing. before the water has a chance to resolve itselfinto a mirror, centripetal force interrupts. humankind’s eternalsearch for vanity is undermined only by life’s yet stronger impositionof humility. sewer pipes ferry piss and shit to their damnation,all the meanwhile saving the bearer the dignity […]
Allison DeDecker Before becoming a parentI never realized how much hurt is causedin trying to prevent it;how guarding against traumacreates its own how watchful eyes can blinkto police searchlights aimingto capture and containinstead of protect and serve how easily a loving touchleft untempered can hardento vice grip over too small fingers,leading hands transmuted to gold […]
Megan Nichols Your faceis the last match in the book guiding methroughthe wreckage lighting the candlesthat encircle us so that I may see how bestto reassembleour home. Megan Nichols writes copy and takes product photographs for businesses local to her. She lives in Arkansas with her son.
Camille Lewis Heartstring (Merriam Webster)noun nheart· string | \ ˈhärt-ˌstriŋ \ Definition of heartstring1: obsolete: a nerve once believed to sustain the heart2: the deepest emotions or affections —usually used in plural That movie really pulls at your heartstrings. If your heartstring isyour string heart, thenpleasedon’tpull.Pluck it with the lightest touch.A priceless harp.Play only one […]
Megan Nichols Praying at the altar of mowed lawnsand bursting hydrangeas, worshippingthe rumble of engines turning over, alongthe narrow row of our dead end street,I drink coffee in the matriarch neighbor’s driveway,her dogs let out like dandelion seeds. My son will be late to learn his hymnsbut early to learn about wheelbarrow rustand WD-40. What […]
Colin James Amid parallel running tracksin the north of England,we workers saw their endingas appurtenances in railway yards.I asked the most forthright,was this a truth then?His answer “I don’t know, Mate.”And I loved him for it. Colin James has a couple of chapbooks of poetry published: Dreams Of The Really Annoying from Writing Knights Press […]
Megan Riggle with her wry grin—a smile that curled the lips even as the rest of her face resisted. She taught us Joan of Arc and that animals have no soul –which you outright rejectedand were sent home. That summer we held a mass burialfor a litter of kittens – ten in all –after they […]