The Distance Between by Maureen McQuerry
“The Distance Between” by Maureen McQuerry You tell me to lean into sorrow as a horse leans against a fence, day after day, believing in time his weight will topple it, like a child leans into her mother, forehead to breastbone, the twin press of despair and hope. Tonight the air is charged with wanting, electric blue. The distance between a question and answer is a skitter of light, the long ache from gravid...
Not Always by Denise Miller
“Not Always” by Denise Miller Remember stones skipped across man-made lake. Remember tall grass browned by sunlight. Remember bouldered footsteps against linoleum. Remember town— city’s antithesis. Remember the bodies of buildings only one story high balanced on basements taller than their skeletons above ground. Remember rock and stone and wood. Remember aluminum and that streetlight bouncing off it like a...
Survivor’s Guide to Sex by Elizabeth Hoover
“Survivor’s Guide to Sex” by Elizabeth Hoover Two days before the declared frost, cold snap. You wake to find the fields a bank, stalks lost to morning light. Walk through wheat, stems snap, brittle with cold. Look into an ear: each kernel is brushed white. You notice details like that more often now—how, when wheat bends under the weight of ice its hair catches in the frozen mud and can’t yank free, even in...
What Is the Medicine for Rape by Trina Porte
“What Is the Medicine for Rape” by Trina Porte last week at the acupuncturist while tiny needles helped my qi unblock the doctor told me that the chinese view the inside of the body as a garden with a waterfall flowing through next week i want to ask him do the chinese have a word for rape what is the character for it and does a spot in the garden die or does the waterfall wash it away ...
Comfort Woman by Tanya Ko-Hong
“Comfort Woman” by Tanya Ko-Hong On August 14, 1991, in Seoul, a woman named Hak Soon Kim came forward to denounce the Japanese for the sexual enslavement of more than 200,000 women during WWII. They were referred to as “Wianbu” in Korean and “Comfort Women” in English. 1939, Chinju, South Kyangsan Province Holding tiny hands fingertips balsam flower red colored by summer’s end ripening...