by Tifara Brown I used to walk around my house with a sheet on my head, pretending to be Mary from the Bible. My soft curls matted on my head suddenly dragged the ground as I stepped around our moldy double-wide trailer into the role of the Madonna, the mother of God. I believed Mary […]
Category: Poetry
by Horacio Sierra For José Arreola, a welder who died on October 12, 2019, while constructing a hotel in New Orleans’s Central Business District. Down in New Orleans we take pride. That’s right. We take it. From the French, from the Spanish, from the British, from these great United States. Or from you. We’ll gladly […]
by Erin Rose Coffin Erin Rose Coffin holds a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from North Carolina State University. Her work has appeared in Raleigh Review, Arcturus, Angel City Review, and Punch Drunk Press. She is currently a writer-in-residence at Goodyear Arts, and she lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her partner and her […]
by Grace Q. Song When you are finished, you may retrieve your memory and belongings. In this poem the girl 1. ______ her uncle, asks how do I love a body of law and who is the 2. ______ now. Two desks across, the boy sits three 3. ______ short of lunch. I am the […]
by Wendy Thompson Taiwo Bury erase revitalize gut Burn the effigy sell the bones strip the copper pipes keep the edgy street art Who was it who once said, “Only the rich have shrines”? Old family homes purchased by preservation societies Grounds maintained by garden clubs But what about the homes of southern Black migrants? […]
by Daniel Edward Moore Daniel Edward Moore’s poems are forthcoming in Lullwater Review, The Meadow, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Chaffin Journal, The Chiron Review, Adelaide Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry, The Bitter Oleander and Armstrong Literary Review. He is the author of Boys (Duck Lake Books) and Waxing the Dents (Brick Road Poetry […]
by Saba Keramati Saba Keramati is a Chinese-Iranian writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. A graduate of University of Michigan and UC Davis, her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and appears or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Vagabond City Lit, and other publications. Kathryn […]
by Jonathan B. Aibel Every summer Saturday my fatherworshipped, walked the roaring mower with its choir of bladesaway and back. As my brothers and I each in turn grew strongenough to yank the recoil, we were inducted into the mysteriesof prime and throttle, spilling gasoline, the sweet benzene smellmixing with newly manned sweat while […]
by Dani Putney You walked in with a vodkacream soda, a concoctionyou gave me to sip.What do you think?as if you didn’t expect meto say it was strange yetappealing, as if my thoughtwasn’t manufactured to bea gear in your cerebral machinery.Tell me, old man, that we’re not the same. Maybe then I could believeI […]
Categories
Princess Hair Match
by Amelia Badri The nineties were princess-tastic! From Lady Diana and Xena Warrior Princess to Princess Jasmine and Ariel. Even Princess Leia lived on through those of you rocking her iconic buns in anticipation of the newest Star Wars movie. Which iconic nineties princess is your ultimate hair match? Answer these simple questions to find […]
by Jessica Dubey There is no easy way to kill the weeds, only neurotoxinsto clear the brambles and invasive species that interrupt my sleep. I dress for bed in star-spangled nightgown and matching spurs,ready to ride roughshod through the five plains of sleep. Side effects may include unraveling of thread count,sudden blackout shades, lavender-scented sleeplessness. […]
by John Hazard In this stiff booth, how can I soothe my sobbing mother, who insisted we come here—cheesecake for her,beer-battered shrimp for me.We’ve earned it, she said, the day after the end of my father’s long dying. In his hospice room, she slept four months on a cot. On the phone yesterday she told a one-year widow friend, “Your Dan was […]
by A. Molotkov A. Molotkov is an immigrant writer. His poetry collections are The Catalog of Broken Things, Application of Shadows and Synonyms for Silence; he has received various awards and an Oregon Literary Fellowship. His work appears in Prairie Schooner, The Triquarterly Review, Kenyon Review Online, Massachusetts Review among others. He co-edits The Inflectionist […]
Categories
Lesbian Barbie
by Dustin Brookshire –After Denise Duhamel Tossed in the toy box,plastic body to plastic bodywith all the other Barbies,she’s horrified, when her arm that was left reaching for the sky is now up Christmas Barbie’s ball gown.(She respects consent.) People think she’s goodwith power tools, could build a deck or add a room to the Barbie Dreamhouse,but she’s never held […]
by Ali Wood Ali Wood is a current MFA poetry candidate at North Carolina State University. In 2019, she was nominated for Best of the Net by Screen Door Review. Ali’s poems have also appeared in Bear Review, Plenitude Magazine, and others. Her poetry frequently centers around queer identity, mental illness, and family. Rebecca Pyle’s […]
by Anthony Immergluck * My guru says it’s cheatingto meditate drunk. * I let my thoughts passlike clouds in the breezeand when I open my eyes,I can’t remember any Spanish. * Sometimes toads explode.Look it up. * All things are cyclical. I will live to see the daywhen socks and sandals come into fashion. * I had […]
by Ashley Sojin Kim Bodies strewn across rocky soillike freshly-pulled radishes, white and lifeless, now buried undernine-hole courses and honeymoon suites with marble floors. Sparklingknives stole through Bukchon fifty years ago. Jeju is knownfor folk culture, citrus, trees stunted by sea winds,and free-diving haenyeo scouring dark underworldsfor abalone, a dying tradition of old women who […]
by Anne Hampford • • • Anne Hampford is a writer, traveler, yogi, and lover of nature. Currently, she is working on a series of poems inspired by travel in South America and Antarctica. She is based in Connecticut but is spending the year on the coast of Ecuador, enjoying life in another language. Nicholas […]
by Zebulon Huset The poem below won 1st prize in our 2020 Summer Contest in poetry. Here’s a statement from judge Ashley M. Jones. This is a poem that took me by the most spectacular surprise—I’m a poet who loves to play with form, and I think this form illuminates the content beautifully. How can […]
by Alaina Bainbridge I try to keep my eyes open. I watch sunlight rippleover blue-gold water. Light shadows jump, make menauseous. A few years ago, all the Tumblr girls were obsessed with Ophelia.They’d lie down on muddy banks, flower crownsglowing against dark, green marsh, stare blankly into the camera, glossed lips parted sensuously,eyes absent as […]
Categories
I’ve Been Waiting for Hate to Die (In memory of John Lewis) the way deciduous trees let go their leaveswhen the air becomes chilled, leaving trunkand bough and branches naked in winter. I thought somehow hate would have its springand summer but give way with time.Now, I see that hate is an heirloom pressed in […]
Categories
Not Homeless, Just Moving by Jan Beatty
I wasn’t homeless, just had my mattress in my ’69 Chevy, clothes underneath boxes in the trunk. Everyday stuff in the front-seat backpack. I moved 14 times that year, drinking and drugs but still working my waitress job. I was in motion. Driving, working, hoping to stay with a friend for a night, I was […]
Categories
Double-Cut by Jan Beatty
Please click to open Double-Cut by Jan Beatty. This piece requires formatting not permitted by our site design. Visual art by Heidi McKye
I want you to see (me) Not past, nor through (me) Nor should you pretend (I look as you do) Nor will yourself into believing (I should) No, I want you to see (what’s here) I want your eyes to trace (the structure and dance of my lines the texture and humility their design) Heed […]
Categories
Entering the ICU by Jessica Dubey
The air tastes of spoiled milk a day ago something that was safe to drink Its molecules lock onto my skin follow me back to my hotel climb into bed with me They resist hot showers and rainstorms I want to crawl away I want to live […]
I. Out there, on the farm, it couldn’t have mattered less. Not that I was the only human among the beasts, but I was the only one of my kind, and still, it never mattered. II. We were, every one of us, coupled or not, quite lonely, so we became a pack […]
Categories
The Father by Johnna St. Cyr
In that wood they built their house. You can’t see the ocean but you can smell the tide. He remembers birch sap under his nails, and April’s light. Foundation, beams, paint. Maybe he wanted to be a painter once. Maybe he danced. Surely he stood in front of the mirror practicing his songs. This is […]
Gulf Stream Magazine 