Two Prose Poems by Michael Trocchia
He left the shovel out back, leaning against the elm; he left his radio on, tuned to a static sense of time, a pair of wet boots at the pedals of the piano, and his wool cloak, stained with wild game, draped carefully across the keys, as if to warm the heart of a winter... Read More
Two Poems by Alison Prine
On the shore your face strained / by laughter is washed in sun. / The recognition in our gaze / is cumulative. / Every morning I wake / to watch dawn unfold over the harbor. / At night I crave to go back into / the conversation our bodies have in sleep... Read More
Love, Anti- (notes toward) by Anna Moschovakis
I never made it to Love, and now I hear it’s defunct. Anti-Love meets regularly, though attendance is spotty. At least I’ve done most of the readings. Love, by contrast, will be a recuperation project... Read More
Three Poems by Gail Hanlon
After drones became the size of hummingbirds (and even the size of a grain of dust, it was rumored), we started to reevaluate the whole idea of shame. It was a sort of Garden of Eden scenario. But we could no longer cover ourselves. No longer seek cover... Read More
Excerpt from Situ by Steven Seidenberg
He imagines the frustration of his having to rise up—to lift himself up—as though it were an insult, an offense against the effort he’s embodied by this strain. His frustration at the endless repetition of the exploit of attaining such a meager state is considerably greater than the same plight first approached from the perspective... Read More
Excerpts from When the Ground Would Break by Emmalea Russo
We hold hands but I know this shouldn’t be the way our bodies interact. I refer to him using terms of endearment—baby, babe, hun, sweetie. The two of us are confused about this. But our hands keep clutching. Life will be a series of sites and non-sites, I think. It will go on and on... Read More
The Free Brutalists by Rav Grewal-Kök
Waverly read the drafts of Borg-Olivier’s chapters as soon as he finished them. Often she wept. One late-winter night in Borg-Olivier’s apartment, as snow fell gently outside onto the silent street, she told him it was as if he were writing the novel for her alone... Read More
Cognoscenti In a Room Hung with Pictures by Benjamin K. Rice
The cruelty of an image is that it excites us toward an anticipation that it can’t fulfill. It gives by taking away. Though, when Cotán gives me an image of fruit, he does not take away from me any particular instance of pear or pomegranate—instead, he takes away the whole idea of fruit... Read More
Excerpt from Coil by Lou Pam Dick
If to start one step ahead, wrong step, the nix is a beginning. I wore my stairs around my neck, therefore I choke. Please be legible. What time is it? The door keeps opening. My protector gets all wet. I shout, I am my bodyguard! I whisper it inside me. Bare the neck of the... Read More