Leave the Barren Fields by Mary Morris
“Leave the Barren Fields” by Mary Morris Enter water, swimmer. Touch the muddy floor. Reappear dripping to be born for this. Cover the body with honey on the night of a new moon. Gather and eat soft eggs of a raven, drink milk from a goat by noon. Awaken at midnight feedings. Draw the ovaries. Paint in panthers, ruby-lit flowers. Gather your voice at the river. Sing with the loon. Read Grimm’s fairy...
Home by Kristen Ringman
“Home” by Kristen Ringman I don’t feel home anywhere after losing it, after the shipwreck. We move from place to place. It feels better to move. It reminds me of the sea. I wake each day with disappointment I pretend can be cured with coffee or friends, with your small lips nursing my breasts, the way you ask for “yogurt and granola” every morning, without fail. Every day, by mid-day, I fail myself—I give in...
Sculpture Under A Bridge by Debbie Hall
“Sculpture Under A Bridge” by Debbie Hall Buenos Aires, at a memorial for the “disappeared” during the military dictatorship, 1976-1983 Each figure climbs atop the other up from the dust and dark. They reach through cracks in the road to pull travelers out of...
Mooring the Boat to the Dock by Sarah Black
“Mooring the Boat to the Dock” by Sarah Black Anna Larina was the only audience to the final testament of her husband Nikolai Bukharin. Each morning after his death— Stalin let her live for the national asset of her beauty— she rose to recite her husband’s testimony. Through one decade in the Gulag and one in exile, through the birth of another man’s children, she held Nikolai’s heart in her mouth,...
Where I Am Standing by Marsha Pincus
“Where I Am Standing” by Marsha Pincus I am standing at the gates of Auschwitz peering up at the iron words Arbecht Mach Frei. I take my place among the school children and families of Europe in the ticket line. “Exhibits on your right, showers on your left,” the Polish tour guide says without a trace of irony. On the other side of the gate I am standing on a murderous Main Street in a genocidal Disneyland....
Untitled [When have you ever heard a silent crowd?] by Monika Cooper
“Untitled [When have you ever heard a silent crowd?]” by Monika Cooper When have you ever heard a silent crowd? Without a word, they watched their schoolhouse burn But one man must have turned his wide-brimmed hat Over and over slowly in his hands. They go home silent. I remember when I wanted to be Amish, like in books, Or Mennonite, like one I saw, my age, Pushing a stroller, in a pioneer dress. The future...
Smash Shop by Elizabeth Jacobson
“Smash Shop” by Elizabeth Jacobson From the bench above the pond I watch two ducks make dark channels in the water as they feed, pathways through a mosaic of cracked green ice. Behind me the rocks, strata of red igneous beneath ochre sandstone, are an unconformity— a geologic span— characterized by an immense amount of nothing between two calculable intervals of time. Nothing not meaning that something wasn’t...
Like a Maelstrom with a Notch by Lois Marie Harrod
“Like a Maelstrom with a Notch” by Lois Marie Harrod Emily Dickinson And when the clothing factory collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh, one young seamstress was trapped in the Muslim prayer room which also stored boxes of skirts and shawls, shirts, sheers, socks and sequins, and for those in need, a few prayer cloths thrown over pipes...
Good Stories by Esther Cohen
“Good Stories” by Esther Cohen What is the same what is different? When I was a child I had a big bear funny bear a girl bear not a doll with yellow hair I talked to Miss Bear all day long told her stories long long stories. I didn’t know much about bears. I knew she was smiling at me. Many of us listen for what we know, familiar sounds. Maybe this starts with lullabies, with words we hear every night,...
The Frame of a Couch Is Not a Couch by Karen Skolfield
“The Frame of a Couch Is Not a Couch” by Karen Skolfield The bricked-up fireplace doesn’t even pretend. We could start a fire on the hearth, but then what? In front of the Hotel Lewis and Clark, the Walk sign’s stopped working. For ten years I haven’t seen my father. Every public building has an exit plan. He forwards emails: “The Grandmother of All Blond Jokes.” Heidegger said we must abandon logic to...
Sexy Barbie Rapunzel by Deb Jannerson
“Sexy Barbie Rapunzel” by Deb Jannerson you yell blissfully unbound from the what-do-they-think of female education. your dime-dozen hoots poke me into the ground like a nail with phantom pounds from conviction of the skeleton key in your pants. another tiny weight between my shoulder blades, a further contortion in my wavy spine a brother scar of night terrors and feeble days without sun. you cast me as...
Ghazal for Emilie Parker by Carolyne Wright
“Ghazal for Emilie Parker” by Carolyne Wright (Newtown, Connecticut: December 14, 2012) He had been teaching her to speak Portuguese So their last words together were in Portuguese. Such simple words that morning: Thank you. Please. I love you, Daddy. All in Portuguese. Then he rode off to work, past winter...
Blood Moon by Elizabeth Jacobson
“Blood Moon” by Elizabeth Jacobson echoes of a hate crime People are made of paper, love affairs, anything that...
How to Get Inside of a Ship That Won’t Let You In by Debbie Urbanski
“How to Get Inside of a Ship That Won’t Let You In” by Debbie Urbanski Everyone had assumed the blues came here for some pressing reason. That’s why the scientists wasted days with them in those tiny rooms. “Where. Is. Home. You? You? Home?” the scientists repeated into their microphones, their smart faces peering out from the helmets of their hazmat suits. When a blue finally pointed to a map pinned to...
Backblast Area Clear by Karen Skolfield
“Backblast Area Clear” by Karen Skolfield “I shot one of those,” I say to Dennis, pointing at the screen. It’s a light anti-tank weapon, a LAW, long fiberglass tube, next to weightless. I was 17 when I picked it up, drill sergeant beside me on the firing line, an instructor guiding this gigantic straw onto my shoulder. Even the small-size uniform looked ridiculous on me. So I have the LAW on my shoulder and...
Nocturne by Charlotte Muse
“Nocturne” by Charlotte Muse Into the always mysterious air, place of breath and wings, the moon is rising It reveals by its milky light a dull gleam of wakeful eyes The teeth of marauders Outlines of mountains and trees– enough to reassure A path to itself, straight across the water and then up Where the owl’s nest is, and its comings and goings How the owl is its own shadow and its shadow’s shadow An...
No Radio by Sokunthary Svay
“No Radio” by Sokunthary Svay i. Sinn Sisamouth, Khmer poster boy resonating tenor of every residence off rooftops on radios a voice that chilled and warmed Beloved, iconic face decapitated pasted over bodies in posters ii. My father is lost at Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. A voice interrupts my daze sprays 60’s...
L’Orange by Page Lambert
“L’Orange” by Page Lambert I’m having a pedicure at Ivy’s Nails and Spa. The shop owner is Vietnamese. Her seven sisters and one brother work here too. The shop is immaculate. Ivy and I talk about her homeland while she files my toenails. When her father, a prosperous businessman, lost everything, he was given $200 to start a new life...
The Late Afternoon Crashed All Around by Karin Cecile Davidson
“The Late Afternoon Crashed All Around” by Karin Cecile Davidson Excerpt from “The Late Afternoon Light Crashed All Around” – first published in Iron Horse Literary Review, Father’s Day Issue, June 2011 My daddy, Charles Royal Blackwood, III, was ranked a Sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, his uniform sleeve decorated with three chevrons and a pair of crossed rifles. Mama had long since dubbed him Royal...
The Last Diary Entries of Septimus Warren Smith by Katherine Orr
“The Last Diary Entries of Septimus Warren Smith” by Katherine Orr Like an attic full of books. Like a gymnasium. Like sorrow. Everything is always so big. But I’m not afraid of the silence that follows what I came to say. So instead of talking, I watch my wife work on her bonnets – feathers and flowers, violets, vegetables, birds. All the ladies come to her, now that it’s Spring. * Explosion in the park...
I have not yet written a single page by daylight.
Harriet Jacobs
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