feature image from wili_hybrid. fly back what you’ve dealt indelible name, seeds pine needles actually needles stiff as though or large her hands shape white scars in the air in death valley in a lake bed (“the racetrack”) spooky stones dig out tracks (“peripatetic” “ice collars”) war makes its ghosts irritable, all the incursions, […]
For months an innocuous blue envelope languished in the action box on my desk. A distant relative had sent a late Christmas card with a printed update (keeping busy with the Methodist church, the Lions Club, local Republican Party activities) and a handwritten note wishing me happy holidays. She closed with a simple request: “Please […]
[hear the author read this piece by clicking this link.] The old man will die in the river room. This is decided before they arrive, by a primly efficient nurse named Anna, who has been hired at great expense from the hospice center in Bristol. She greets them in the driveway, coffee cup in hand. […]
feature image from Dougtone. [hear the author read this piece by clicking this link.] It was a church then it was a barn with church windows then it was a photograph of a church-turned-barn. It was a photograph of the church-turned barn no longer standing and the standing of the boy who just woke beside […]
feature photo from Travis S. I took a wrong turn into a sun mask on mud, into straw-glue and smashed yucca. If you saw them rub feathers on their arms, if the claws of bear wrapped them, if the porcupine and badger were sewn to the skin, if gusts of God flew into lightning-riven […]
I recently found a scorpion on my father’s desk, which I have since stolen. Not a live creature, but a specimen, long pickled in formaldehyde. The handwritten label inside the jar reads: Paruroctonus silvestrii: Las Estacas, Mexico—1971. The scorpion floats in suspended animation, trapped in the jar I now balance on the flat of my […]
[hear the author read this piece by clicking this link.] The third Wednesday in September is Back to School Night, and as Stephen goes over his World History syllabus, he avoids the eyes of Mona McCullough and feels choked by the collar of his French-cuffed shirt. The summer is behind him, but its heat endures, […]
[hear the author read this piece by clicking this link.] Dream of the attic. Light pours through a lonely window. Everywhere crevices. A pool of old rain. You say, where there is water there are wolves. Spiders are drawn to piles of skin. Attics are lovely in the morning, though. Whatever wolves are lurking must […]
the clear water that holds up your boat. The water was clearly built to buoy the boat. It’s like how TV shows buoy the dead. After they’ve died, there they are, their kind faces float just out of reach like a rescue. Like that tiny island. I promise I’m not making this up. Today the […]
Again they can’t find anything In the pantry (even when you point Or turn on the light) they keep The heat Down to save All they have and they have A dog that keeps them Up at night (and other concerns Like where to bury Their landslide eyes At dusk) and dusk Means helping them […]