Girlhood
By Hannah Calkin
During my teenage years I lost
My belief in Fairy Tales and pixie dust
But came to see myself as Persephone:
Legend of beauty, freedom, and imprisonment.
A dynamic dichotomy of all sorts.
A Nameless Bird
by Tyrel Kessinger
After my wife leaves for work, I round up my two daughters and we head to the backyard, an old raggedy quilt in hand. For a July morning in Kentucky it’s, quite surprisingly, a very pleasant one. Far too nice to not be taking advantage. My youngest daughter occupies the quilt with me under the shade of the one tree I can name, our Japanese Maple.
Forgetting
by Savannah Leigh
The two old men stood at the corner where Briar Avenue met Second Street. Bickering, they hovered over a phone, the faint glow of a maternity shop’s window display washing over them.
Postcards
by Michael Crane
My father left my mother today. He caught a taxi to the airport and boarded a plane to Mexico. This confused my mother as she didn’t believe he knew anyone there. I was my parent’s only child and close to my father as any daughter could be. I stayed with my mother for six weeks.
Prognostication
By Brent Fisk
The first time I married I was eight.
I thought my grandmother would forbid it,
but she let the ceremony play out beneath an apple tree.
A rooster was my best man, but he flew
into a locust tree and would not come down when called.
Like a Lord Under the Breeze of Waving Palms
by Edmund Sandoval
Is there ever a time to think of poetry? Of poets? Of the rivers of the delta? There are no Pyramids in Southern Illinois. Yet, Cairo. She called. She came over.
Marriage vs Infinite Space
by David Rodriguez
I’m never replacing my shoes.
These blue vegans may have
hallux holes and squeak, may
stay wet for days and seam-split
before I’ve worn the soles all the
way, but their reliability is enabling.
Shelter
by Michael Brasier
I furiously slipped on my shoes and hurried to the front room where my parents were putting on their jackets. The weather radar was on TV. A mass of red with arrows pointing in our direction on the map. A storm was quickly approaching.
Shut Ins
by Richard Dinges
Each closed door,
windows draped, shadows
dropped from dim
bare bulbs, harbors
A Matter of Focus
by Jason D. DeHart
They placed him in a low
reader class because he could
not recite from the board.
There was no special name,
not like there is now.
Frequent Flyer
by Sarah Kuntz Jones
I’ve been here so many times it should count as penance—sitting on synthetic fabric of spurious cleanliness and breathing cycled air—among the tired, the cranky, and the impatient filing on from the jet bridge.
Meditation 53
by Audrey Gidman
You stay in a place too long you start making
people sick—you get stagnant.
In the active silence she is broken
as a kitchen appliance.
Faucet dripping like slow church bells.
Crumbs in the sink.