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
Pink + White Everyday control. We being pink + white we just nod slow, move north nod again, eyes close. It’s hurricane season everyday. It could all cannonball the same way. It could all shoot up, kneel into something like a birth, no kiss no glory. No telling. No immortality. White Ferrari On eyes, in … More Two poems by Amanda Leahy
Brew for Brynn and Nikiko Noun: A mixture of several things – Cambridge Dictionary Verb: To cook, steep, or simmer To concoct To conspire (of tea or coffee): To become stronger in taste in the container in which it is made – Cambridge Dictionary All those years that I was chasing after them, wiping their … More Three pieces by Samina Najmi
candlelight vigil in the gunmetal streets sharp rain sinking into pittsburgh’s deep roots two blocks from your parents’ the synagogue where your mom taught preschool community congregation drowned & drowning the crowd’s gathering silence small fires between bodies we canceled the halloween party to gather at lilly’s for proximity how close to eternity we become … More Tree of Life by James Croal Jackson
Writer So, when you sat there at four in the morning, having quietly slipped out of the bedroom. When you sat there and wrote—thoughts like threads of a cobweb, a minute procession of ants, black hieroglyphs sharp like blades, miniaturized barbed wire, iron against snow. When you sat and your head was a cube, your … More Two flash pieces by Toti O’Brien
BLUE Worse than beauty dying is our letting go of it, sadly, wearily, resigned to its not being enough but tortured by someone else’s enjoying it as if in begrudgery we fashioned for ourselves a world without music or wished for rain to cover the mountains. In age, the sting of hail is a welcome, … More Two poems by Ted Mc Carthy
Debris There is a story bobbing along the blue painted boards hitting the rocks time and time again like a man full of regret, banging his head against the wall. Circling the scattered evidence in their motorboats, they keep asking what happened? But a thousand nails have already started to rust at the bottom of … More Three poems by Johanna Evenson
More than forty years here, each time passing these places, I recall: Farragut Park, I’m performing street theatre here for National Secretaries Day, a feminist play highlighting bias, equal rights and equal pay. My father saw the end of my scene, years later we saw Occupy camped out here. Sheridan Circle, around embassies we hold … More to Washington DC by Ruth Ticktin
I think the end of the world is tomorrow this morning was all granola & coffee grounds, my veins choking on themselves as cinder blocks fall off the building across the street. they say a cigarette takes 7 minutes off your life. calling for an ambulance is a good 2 weeks pay. I’m scared for … More I think the end of the world is tomorrow by Lee Patterson
Belly Buttons Lydia is afraid of belly buttons, especially insies. The valley once attached to another being by a cord creates quakes in her entire body. At birth her own tied-off navel grew infected. Doctors kept her in an incubator for a week until her fever subsided and the reddened knot faded. Sometimes at night … More Two flash pieces by Maureen Sherbondy
