Blue Moon and Bright Mars by Sandy Coomer
“Blue Moon and Bright Mars” by Sandy Coomer Now that I have you back, even your early morning footsteps seem blessed, and eggs scrambling in the skillet, the aroma of relief. I watch you from the doorway, your clothes hanging on your body, your hollow face busy in thought, until your eyes lift and burn me with light. We learned how to say love without words when the hospital nights sank their teeth in and the...
Company by Muriel Nelson
“Company” by Muriel Nelson . . . from what could we weave the boundary Between within and without, light and abyss,...
Dogs and Men in Bed by Marcia Meier
“Dogs and Men in Bed” by Marcia Meier in the early morning silence Aussie’s stub tail moves rapid-fire angles her body scrambles to get onto the bed our bodies a nest for her wiggling legs and paws head bobbing as you croon “relax”… my chest fills I look out the bedroom window, see the long-needled pine feel the shelter of this moment remember the lie once told “You ain’t nobody” ...
Denouement by Sarah Russell
“Denouement” by Sarah Russell The movers are here this morning. Only things with yellow post-its, I tell them. I find my long lost earring behind the couch. Probably landed there that night we couldn’t wait to get upstairs. I put it in my pocket, wonder if I kept the other one. I divide the sterling service for eight into two sets of four – Solomon solution of no use to either of us for dinner parties....
Parallax by Jeanette Miller
“Parallax” by Jeanette Miller Here’s where we part. Without question you walk your same, sure pace into the dark, its walls a comfort. Alone in this difficult light I’m stumbling without familiar boundaries. In the distance ivy adheres to a wall, an insistent cover of green. Did you assume I’d continue to walk beside you, providing a shadow? I lean into mine as if it were water. Each movement changes the...
The Cage Is Open by Margaret Chula
“The Cage Is Open” by Margaret Chula and Billy and Cooey are flying around the upstairs room in our Kyoto house—parakeets entrusted to us by an English couple leaving Japan. The birds are lovers and we awaken to their crooning in the small tatami room. Lovers, too, we lie beneath layers of futon, snow dusting the roof tiles. Parakeets are birds meant for sunshine and palm trees where all day they dart in and...
Aura by Ginny Rachel
“Aura” by Ginny Rachel I was perhaps four when I first saw the colors and stood in the gigantic spiral- shaped sprawling church lost someplace deep in my past. A haloed glow hovered around plain-robed priests. I asked and was told, “We don’t discuss the lights.” These men glowed white from no source, and were shadowless. The wide-open space was dim,...
Reception by Meghan Giles
“Reception” by Meghan Giles Liquored, you drive us while the other couples are honeymooned in their hotels. That rose bouquet I caught, dying, already, and we pass the spot where you pulled over and hit me, hit me next to wildflowers and tar. How my tin can bruise has bloomed like bluebonnets outgrown of soil skin, a handful of bluebonnets, a yellow yarrow, two prairie larkspurs, pressed between tissue, a...
Asian Woman by Tanya Ko Hong
“Asian Woman” by Tanya Ko Hong “Isn’t it about time Chosǒn (Korean) women lived like humans?” – Na Hye-sok This is what you do with your life: Take what your father gives you food, care, shelter Learn to be a wife cook, sew, maintain your household Obey orders, serve your family, command servants This is what you do with your life: Take what your husband gives you food, care,...
The Bronx: A Love Story by Melissa Coss Aquino
“The Bronx: A Love Story” by Melissa Coss Aquino (excerpt from a memoir) The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes – Marcel Proust Whilst the media are saturated with stories of victims, unhappy families, disasters, the family records we keep for ourselves seem to be decidedly lacking anything more than celebrations. Why is this so? Jo...
Body Memories, Keening, Scars by Erin Pushman
“Body Memories, Keening, Scars” by Erin Pushman Once, when I was twenty, injured, and coveting a married man, I sat on the grass in a park that edged up to a lake. Kevin faced me, under a sky deepening to twilight. The beginning of summer. Purple shadows, the infrequent, semi-distant sound of mosquitos. Kevin’s khaki shorts bagged open under his...
Unanticipated Effects of Altitude by Jennifer Steil
“Unanticipated Effects of Altitude” by Jennifer Steil Before you moved to La Paz, you were warned about the dizziness and nausea. You were told not to eat on the plane and to drink coca tea as soon as you arrived. Rest, everyone said. No exercise at all for the first few days. You took these recommendations seriously. Twelve thousand feet demand...
Sustenance by Sarah Russell
“Sustenance” by Sarah Russell When glacial bogs blush with berries it’ll be a hard winter, folks say. He is cutting down a dead pine near the cabin, beetle-killed by drought last summer. His chainsaw knows the hearth’s width without measuring. I went to the orchard on Route 5 and bought peaches for canning. The kitchen smells of sweetness, furry skins sloughed off with blanching, floor juice-sticky. He comes...
Riding Past the Museum of Natural History by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal
“Riding Past the Museum of Natural History” by Ruth Sabath Rosenthal seeing the steps I first took toward infidelity — how far I descended. My lover is history, has been for some thirty-odd years, yet, I remember the nervous excitement still — how unashamed and unnaturally good I’d felt. How beyond stupid, thinking I would scale those highs unscathed — so sure I was just stepping into my husband’s footprints...
Anatomy of a Lighthouse by Rita Anderson
“Anatomy of a Lighthouse” by Rita Anderson ____________________ Share your response to this work, in any form, here Rita Anderson Artist Statement: Rita Anderson, a member of Poets & Writers, and The Academy of American Poets, has a MFA Creative Writing and a MA Playwriting. Rita was poetry editor of the literary journal at University of New Orleans, and her debut chapbook, The...
Café Des Artistes by Sally Taylor Tawil
“Café Des Artistes” by Sally Taylor Tawil her first sips of the Chateau Margaux surprised— slid velvet down her white throat edged with tinier, whiter pearls. finest vintage ever produced, he promised— what are promises but the succulent heady swollen majestic fullness of the purple grape before it is ravaged from its vine broken squeezed compromised entirely unrecognizable...
When a Ghost Touches Your Body by Kristi Carter
“When a Ghost Touches Your Body” by Kristi Carter We wanted what any young couple wants: to have sex and for everything to be simple. But it wasn’t so. The river freezes over in winter and the washcloth dries twisted, like a ghost, after it touches your body—coiled in dermis and soap. I’d like you to have a picture of me looking the way I caught myself in the mirror today—my hair askance as if...
I Promise I’m Always Careful by Alethea Alden
“I Promise I’m Always Careful” by Alethea Alden Jess throws her phone across the bed. It’s midnight and her husband’s phone has been going to voicemail for two hours. Sam texted earlier saying he had to work late, so when he wasn’t home at ten, she wasn’t surprised. When his phone had gone to voicemail, she’d wondered if he took the tube instead of riding his bike since it was raining, but...
Schrodinger’s Wife Sells the House by Jennifer Campbell
“Schrodinger’s Wife Sells the House” by Jennifer Campbell I am ready, a locomotive hurtling a star already shooting a lunar eclipse set in motion He is stuck in a half-state the house with dwindling half-life all there and not-there, at once It’s all I can do to find a box that’s just a box. And the cat’s been holed up in the wall for days I’m thinking outside of it now The house is a box and we are...
Co— by Jennifer Campbell
“Co—” by Jennifer Campbell ____________________ Share your response to this work, in any form, here Jennifer Campbell Artist Statement: Jennifer Campbell is an English professor in Buffalo, NY, and a co-editor of Earth’s Daughters. She has published two books of poetry: Supposed to Love (Saddle Road Press, 2013) and Driving Straight Through (FootHills, 2008). Jennifer was a semi-finalist...
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