by Benjamin Balthaser On Jaffa Street, I watched Russian mobsters beat a man to death in front of a bar. The sound of the pipes striking bone was strangely hollow, long boxes of darkness that drifted down the empty street. All that was left of the beaten man was gauze and the black triangle of
by Benjamin Balthaser The red hooded birds on this island city run in formation, like disciplined school children, boxed on branches, scattered before the windshields of King St’s blue scooters. Everything else is heat. The banks of the canal blaze into green. The sky darkens like wool under water. There are so many possible bridges
by Kathleen Hellen He says he checked the tires. The battery for free. A less complicated being? Unlike me, asking where he dumped the oil, under the gray hydraulic lift. Where he drained the antifreeze. I know the planet’s bubbling hot, sopping up the ice sheet, a million species headed toward extinction like the auk.
by Greg Huteson Lance the boil on your calf. If it’s necessary, pinch it as you grit your teeth and gasp while staring at the shuddering wall. Have a cotton kerchief handy to absorb the pus and swab the cinctured wound, the wet that courses down your luckless leg. Have the kerchief ready also for
by Kathleen Hogan You are dust and roses. I am a teller of tales. Your browned lace crumbles beneath my arms as I bring you into the ring of my trees. How should I give you this story, with syrup or knife? Your bones break, with my every word as I speak of the abandoned,
with M. by Daisy Bassen I was another man’s wife for an hour last night In the hotel lobby. You think I was a whore, Wrong; in flats and a cardigan, pearls close to white, Double strand, like jawless teeth at my throat. A bore Perhaps, the roleplay of the long-married, pretense Limited by our
by Marilee Pritchard I The wife, the Buddhist nun— enveloped in a cloud of saffron dressing gown, fragile as a flake of snow, transparent as a tear, her brown moon eyes pull a resistant tide. A pool of laundry puddling at her feet awash, undone, she chases a sound— one hand clapping while I stoop
by Lois Roma-Deeley for Kerry 1. We’re stuck on a raft lurching down Snake River, having come a long way just to find some peace. In this aerial
by Richard Levine I think of us, of how, at first, being kind seemed enough. Though we didn’t say it, we thought, if forests grow from red-clover meadows, why not love? But like and care are not strong enough to send down roots deep enough, or carry water far and high enough to make them