Category: Poetry

by Casey McConahay “WHEN AM I GONNA LOSE YOU” - LOCAL NATIVES It was during the pandemic—during the early weeks when everything felt uncertain—and when we sat on your porch together, you told me about the boxes you were disinfecting and about how your sister, who was worried about you, would be upset that we… Continue reading Mixtape →

by Madi Giovina after Micheal McCann lying together,bodies loud & mouths quiet,morning becomes night becomes morning again we don't know how much time has passed but the sun has risen & set & risen again & we have risen & set & risen & set & laughed & sweat & laughed & sweat & the shadow… Continue reading orbitals →

by John Grey I go to the bookshelf,pull down The Complete Works Of Shakespeare,open it to some random page— King Lear—  no, that’s not what I want. Where is All’s Well That Ends Wellwhen you need it?Or Timon Of Athens for that matter.I put it back.I wasn’t in the mood for Elizabethan playwrights anyhow. Why… Continue reading WHILE SHE DOZES OFF AFTER SEX →

by Cynthia J. Roman Cabrera I wish I understood my mother’s mystery. I feel the sting like a bang on my funny bone when people share positive memories of their mothers. I am envious of people who know their mothers. I know my mother by association. We are kinfolk, but not chosen folk. I would… Continue reading Rootlessness →

by Molly Seale The songs I learned first were church songs. The others—Itsy Bitsy Spider, Row, Row Row Your Boat, Happy Wanderer— came later. But the songs I learned from the Methodist Hymnal, before I could even read from the Methodist Hymnal, came to me earlier: another part of learning words and an understanding that… Continue reading Singing With My Father →

by Anna Tjeltveit And suddenly we are comforting each other,my hand on your shoulder, yours on my heart,resting in uncertainty. “Your faith is enough,”I say, though now I am an unbeliever.You hold me closer, but silence sits between us still. I believed in you, behind the altar,yours the pulpit, yours the pews. In the children’s homily,… Continue reading My Mother and I Reflect on My Atheism →

by Joe Bisicchia We may fear the tired, no longer gold mustard,all the now sky blackened gel of who we werein the dark Whirlpool, old in the shuttered cold.Yes, check our chests to see if we’ve expired. Goodness, is there not a song within our souls?Are we not still same as all who orbit eternity?The… Continue reading Inner Space →

by Tiffany Aurelia The palm opens—a map of being.Everything has left me except for the humin my chest and we searchfor familiar things. I bring my handscloser, trace each palm lineto the past where an ocean from three summers agopools into the shape we make whenwe carry a weight we cannot keep forever.Somehow, I’ll forever… Continue reading Palm Reading for the Blues →

by JC Alfier From the river that received his ashes like alms,my father stands at his workbench, tinkers in the service of the lesser angels now,heaven acceding his need for a 40-watt bulb cornered away from the radiant surge of Shekinah glory.Departed souls about him will get used to the dimness, study him putzing about… Continue reading Tradesman →