Gulf Stream Magazineby 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Do everything you would do. Gone crazy in a fortune cookie. Every platitude held a poem. I wrote what cannot be read. Oh you missed it, time. Whole nights. Still need yesterday and forgot where it aches. May keep it real. You may be raining all day. Most of the sights were silent…I sang for your […]
You are the only one of your kind who does not return home to nest, opting, instead, to venture wherever you feel like, beaching new pockets of earth. Maybe your instincts have misfired, a product of mutated genes gone wrong, your idea of home morphed, lost in the translation of generations. Maybe you are too […]
Tomorrow, I’ll plant your post- sun, bury you in concrete cracks and unlit skies, praying— you’ll bloom still. If you grow, you’ll need water, but I’ve only known streams of white and yellow, of blur— traffic. Somehow, everyone has a you, a parked somewhere, a firefly […]
My father taught me to read a map, unfolding its mysterious symbology. Pointing out its legend, starburst beacons became illuminated lighthouses, while colorless roads, unimproved like myself, awaited discovery. Cartographic contours provided relief to the eye, an aesthetic guide for mapping out a life. He noted that north was a spatial orientation that put one […]
I think about guilt, at twenty-three, watching you bang on our dealer’s windows at 4 AM because the baggie ran out. And how, who I’ve become—a Writing Instructor, a Cedar Lake kayaker, an appreciator of pre-war motorcycles—is crazy different. How the poignancy of Maggie Anderson pops like graffiti on fresh brick; Bazooka Joe in my […]
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