by Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale | Mar 31, 2024 | Issue #6, Issues, Poetry
For Giyazah I pray you, merciful God, always give me the strength To listen to my inner self, when everythingAround me becomes rebellious, Israelites at the entry of the promised land,Stifling the breath of my green hope. I’ve lived through the untimely departure of...
by Svetlana Sterlin | Mar 31, 2024 | Issue #6, Issues, Poetry
i. my injuries weren’t metaphors & yes i really do still live within a 1km radius of both, still within the chemical glow radiating from the pool where we exchanged spit on accident, obviously by the swirl at the drains, which accepted my vomit when Dad didn’t...
by N.L. Rivera | Mar 31, 2024 | Issue #6, Issues, Poetry
which is to sayi’m not sure poetry is enough anymore,which is to say, my life! is better than ever!which is to say, i’ve lived so long on the defensive that i’m not sure how to deconstruct this wall,how to chip away at twenty-some years of mortar,and i don’t think i’m...
by Rhys Evans | Mar 31, 2024 | Fiction, Issue #6, Issues
“Let’s not marinade in delusion and call it bravery for my sake, please,” I say, picking at the newly formed scab on my knee. The ones that leave a crater behind. “He’s dead and no amount of tapping my fucking temple or breathing is gonna help.” ...
by Svetlana Sterlin | Mar 31, 2024 | Issue #6, Issues, Poetry
a lane rope rackets across concrete. a hook clangs into place. i drive past a school; P.E. class in progress. tunnel vision ball game. your hand first to the wall. your feet splatting across pool deck to claim the one shower with decent water pressure. always racing....
by Sophie Bebeau | Mar 31, 2024 | Issue #1, Issues, Poetry
like goldfinches being watched by the witch’s cursed scarecrow like a northern star is a nosebleed dripping plasma dust and magic metal on the late-night heads of the pool children like a cattail is a coagulant and also a well-roasted corndog like a corndog is just a...
by Rod Raglin | Mar 31, 2024 | Fiction, Issue #6, Issues
The bus is late. The afternoon sun is merciless. “Bad accident,” one of the dozen of us waiting announces without looking up from studying the screen of his cell phone. “Bus had to be rerouted.” “How long?” a woman asks, futilely fanning herself with an envelope from...
by John Grey | Mar 31, 2024 | Issue #6, Issues, Poetry
This is the lake and the grassy bank where Paula and I sat together, mesmerized by water and its connection to our touching heads. Here is where willows dipped their outer branches to sip and mallards cruised the rippling surface. Here occurred kisses I remember as...
by Kait Quinn | Mar 31, 2024 | Issue #6, Issues, Poetry
after Dorianne Laux’s “The Mysterious Human Heart in New York” Aureate but spurred, the heart straps on her boots, bears the stickers, stomps away copperheads to catch her golden hour dalliance with the bluebonnets before evening mosquitos eclipse...
by summa iru | Mar 31, 2024 | Issue #6, Issues, Poetry
the field is barren but for the bloom of this horse and its iridescent pubes fluttering like shirts pinned to a clothesline elsewhere the horse is a comma in the middle of its own pause, or say a leaf in the ripple of its fall— is it not mightier than a crashing...
