D.W. White Tomorrow knocks againSo patientlyCarrying the pain of her childrenAnd asking us to let her inFor she is a solitary travelerWith only one door to try D.W. White is a graduate of the M.F.A. Creative Writing program at Otis College in Los Angeles and Stony Brook University’s BookEnds Fellowship. Currently seeking representation for his […]
Rachel Alarcio The world is my mother and Mother is a witch,she says, a psychological horror protagonistwalled in, exit forbidden sans consent.Lest the teen princess be exiled. The hearth is ravenous, cavernous,cold as the word no.The screen is her ladder,her savior. Purveyor of Prose. Playground Pariah.These epithets? Remnants of rejection.The prince in print is amber […]
Brandon North I’m climbing out of this secret.At the benefactress soiree,I tuck a ladder inside my ear to remind myselfno personality lives beyond the person.Often they die long before the bodies.I don’t explicate myself as a mere bodythe way publicly funded aphorists do.Class ciphers are always in the alibis:I cast a ballot for the hangman,my […]
Elizabeth Ellson there’s a shade of bluethat pulls in with the cloudsover the glacierwhere the ice pushes back against Apollobegs the navy, canary meshing opento give it coveragefrom the rushing of the melt it prefers the greys which protect its coverits vulnerability liesin picture perfecthuman preferencefor a gazewhich glorifies our version of beauty but for […]
Alex Sosebee i. if i’m telling the truth—and i am, this time—every time i look at myself in the mirror i’m looking for someone else. this secret dialect, disguised in broad daylight, selfhood splitin two: perceived and imagined. the gap is so wide it echoes. what ungodly thing i am,and outside of dreams—how? conceive of […]
Ieva Dapkevicius “The city’s name is the same as one of the Ukrainian namesfor Artemisia vulgaris, mugwort or common wormwood.”Etymology of ‘Chernobyl’, O. S. Melnychuk “… and the name of the star is called Wormwood.”Revelations 8:10-11 And the angel’s palm opens, tilts,and from it an absinthe star fallsto the woods,to the rivers, which stand still […]
Ieva Dapkevicius August, and the days seep into dark sand.Hems of lace trail behind each wavethat retreats from the shore, identical,unnumbered. Bramble-month! My thoughts blackenfrom red to ripe to rot amidst your thorns.Dawn arrives wrapped in shawlsof spider-silk fog beaded with dewdrops;dusk brings out spindle-legged shadowsthat stand behind the pines in their vigil,alight against the […]
Damon Stanley After the sculpture by Cleber “Lobo” Machado. Angels, all pistons and ironwork,descending a ladder in unison — it is 4,000 A.D.and distinctions between persons troubleand fade, as, on the way up, one learnedto make distinctions, what it meansto multiply. Once, we dreamed of ladders ornamentedwith ivory feet, with mother-of-pearl,with tortoise-shell, inlaid with stone. […]
Damon Stanley its contours at meetpointsin disarray. Carried off? Delicately,“transported.” The comte d’Angivillerdescribed a prison as a lemniscate,a guard calling out, “Houston, Damon Stanley lives in Columbus, Ohio and has a website at damonstanley.com.
Leela Raj-Sankar after Olivia Muenz Welcome in. Close the door behind you please. I’d like it if you took off your shoes. I just had this carpet cleaned. Last week. Welcome in. This is what will win me the Pulitzer. This is my brain. On calculus. Or on music. You can decide. Both infinite series […]