When They Come
When they come, hold your hands above your head, don't look them in the eye, and donāt spit on their shoes. James is going to want his frayed fluorescent orange t-rex, but we march to the speed of those voices of the men with the guns. His lip will quiver, and his hands will tug at your shirt, but heāll ... Read More
Gene Pool
They call it zero entry, the way the surround leans into the water and becomes the bottom of the pool, slowly angling deeper and deeper beneath the waterās surface. This way, toddlers can reverse their lives and, guided by their mothers, ease from dry land into a worldly womb as wet as the ones they left behind, though much colder ... Read More
Triplewart Seadevil
Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Cryptopsaras couesii Down in the body-lit night-sodden sea, somber, sub umbra, Iām this tiny restless inchling, a mere appendage, a would-be hanger-on. Dimorphic nub-end, destined to be a rudder attached to some underside. I blunder the deepsāI nose around for this blubbering fish out of Bosch, mega- mouthed she-goblin, face flush with cicatrix, visage like the dehisced petals of ... Read More
Apology
Each morning she swept stars from the wood floor, cursing as the bright bits scattered, and barked whenever Iād whine. Her list of reasons why I had no right to be unhappy landed like lashes. At the open door she bent and snapped the broomās bristlesāforbade the stars to return. I didnāt ask how they got inside our roomāthe cracks ... Read More
In the Old PackardĀ
Maybe a hand-me-down from Uncle B, smells like a garage. Surely heād found it, fixed it up, tinkered with it,
Night Blindness
When you wake me I am blind, closed around the night and faded like the quilt, born of the black
Everything is the Same, Only Quieter
I push my dad past trimmed plots of Bermuda lawns orderly with hedges, hawthorn bushes bordering garage after garage unopened,
Bioluminescence in Newport Harbor
When the water glints like onyx shushing the dock, empty sailboats huddle and rock, when a red-winged blackbird tricks
Den, the VomitousĀ
Isaac was in love with his T-shirt. It was pure, breathable cotton, size L, with sleeves that hit just below
Apprenticeship
My brother & I memorized our parentsā epic ā their screams & grunts ā mastering that pidgin of volatility. We
I Think I Did It Wrong
University. Waverly. I kept saying the street names in my head. Greene.Ā Astor. So Iād know how to get back
Childās Play
One by one, Kate picks up photographs from the piles of mostly black-and-white shots strewn around her on her parentsā
Judy In The Sky With Toxic Masculinity
Judy invented this sport where she loaded a herd of cattle onto a cargo plane and took it up to
Hopper Man
Ā (āMe only cruel immortality consumesā¦ā Alfred Tennyson, Tithonus)Ā Grasshopper stoops; his shadow, an elephant holding a parasol, plods along achromatic
The Things You Wear
You stand near the arboretum gate, your hip against the ornamental rock etched with the resonant words of a conservationist.
Into the Mystic
āHead up,ā my father says softly as my eyes open. His dream-voice sounds just like his real voice did fifty-plus
Interview with Maureen Pilkington
Maureen Pilkingtonās fiction has appeared in anthologies, journals and magazines includingĀ The Antioch Review,Ā Ploughshares, Puerto del Sol, Confrontation, Bridge: Art &
Interview with Reuben Jackson
Reuben Jackson served as curator of theĀ Smithsonianās Duke Ellington CollectionĀ in Washington, D.C. for over twenty years. His music reviews have
Melanieās Song by Joanna Biggar
A sequel to her 2010 novel, That Paris Year, which followed five California girls on their junior year abroad, in