Marriage I may not have loved you, but I set your shoes out at your place on the mat every day before you hopped the train. Sat them by the door, far enough so the cross-breeze from under wouldn’t chill the toes and I untied the laces, left them limply at the sides. Though I … More 2 poems by Sarah Valeika
She envied the pink plastic furnishings of other girls. Hers were makeshift, cast-off cardboard from the kitchen, the laundry room. Hairstyle experiments matted her cottony hair, and there was a pinhole in her forehead from a brief curiosity concerning acupuncture. Aware of the benzene in her DNA, she still managed a shy smile. A gleam … More Love, Or Something Like It by Carolyn Adams
Fires start in rainstorms, grandma told me once. Behold this tangle of thorns. The rose garden blooms by blood in the snow. Daffodils, the willing weeds. Roots on the waterworn cliffs, platonic pornography. I scoop mouthfuls of her words and fondly break into wilder sprints to boys my age with eager ears, embittered tongues, halos … More Grandma Told Me by Tom Garback
Four years have passed since the woman I knew as Mother enclosed me in my tower. Mother claimed the confinement was to protect me from the world’s cruelty. “Zel, your oddness and ugliness grow each day, and men destroy the things they find hideous.” Mother left me only one toy, a gilt-framed mirror, which helps … More Stealing from Windowsills by Judy Darley
Cat’s Delight If the moon was spun of yarn and the stars were strands of thread lying between awake and asleep I would tie them to my bed Bubblegum Breath Each bubblegum bubble I blew gained a core floated off the Earth and became a planet once more Ribbons You tied ribbons around … More 3 poems by Jade Riordan
OCD You’ll break the lamp on your desk, use the shards to stab your cubicle mate. Please, they beg, stop. So you move the lamp to the corner of your desk. A colleague will pass, you’ll slam their face into the lamp, glass on purple lips, what a mess. So you bury the lamp under … More 2 poems by Dani Putney
O Eleanor Your buck tooth smile Thin lips pressed against a pink track of gums Who could have known Your first name was Anna O Eleanor On the way to Babylon a coyote shot between its amber-yellow eyes. How were you … More At the National Portrait Gallery I Make Impossible Requests by Leah Dawson
Aisha and Ahmed’s fingers are interlaced and black with dirt. They trudge a pock-marked Syrian road, half pavement, half sand, that winds from Kafr Halab, the western Aleppo countryside, to the Mediterranean sea. Once in Latakia, their intention is to travel by boat to Cyprus. Dressed as boys, each wears a takiyah over shorn curls … More Hardened Road by Deborah Trowbridge
The interest of a photographer lies in experiments with transparency, explorations of the frame, and interrogations of perception. I first toyed with these ideas in September, when I took a photo of my friend wading into a pond. He wore only boxers and looked out at trees reminiscent of summer time. James’ emaciated body bore … More Cantilevered Ponds by Brianna Di Monda
Before he fell asleep in my arms by the campfire again he saw something in the flames. First a cat, then a monster, then a burning tree, the same he climbed earlier in the afternoon, high enough to look out at Pike’s Peak and see the snow still holding strong in late June, his dad … More Fatherhood Therapy by KG Newman
