Ilka Scobie’s Any Island

Review by Daphne Astor Ilka Scobie’s new book, Any Island, published by Spuyten Press, is a powerful collection of lyric poems and free verse contemporary elegies that are delivered with wit and courage. Scobie is a lifelong New Yorker, born in Brooklyn in the 1950s. She writes in deceptively plain language about daily life at

The Cake Topper Problem

by Genevieve Creedon If you set aside the fact that I never wanted to get married, you might understand my love for cake toppers—not the black tux and white dress kind, but the LEGO minifigures, Monsters Inc. characters, Bert & Ernie varieties: what would you be if you could be anything? First, there was Pluto,

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by Shan Rao My grandmother was learning to die when I was born. Age 56 they say (maybe) no one can be sure, those records not kept carefully. [Lung cancer; cells spoiling.]. In my first memories, I am sitting on her silent bed stacking stuffed bears against the headboard. I have never known my grandmother’s

Day One

by James Croal Jackson Mocktails were the catalyst, but we drank greyhound cocktails to tales of your great- grandfather, the activist who jumped in front of a bus at rush hour– we didn’t rush the first night, long after Oddfellows, when I came home into your arms the first time, the last time this would

Arrival

by LindaAnn LoSchiavo Before my father stops hugging me, before he dries his frosted eyes, before he commandeers my suitcase, I know our agendas are beating different drums, his expectations clouded with denial. Before I arrange her medications, consign the complex sequences of patches, dosages, and Roxanol refills to a spreadsheet, before I gently peek

Observing this Body

by Luis Lopez-Maldonado I sometimes can’t really feel feel, my feet the tingling sensation like the white noise on an 80’s TV, I sometimes find little marble-sized balls beneath my brown skin, I push on them, and they hurt doctor says they aren’t cancerous they’re just fat and if they grow and hurt really hurt

Switchback

by Barbara Lawhorn Rattlesnake Gulch. We switchbacked mid, morning, up the sides of Eldorado Canyon. I was high on sunlight, elevation, lack of sleep. Far from home. Hung over from 16 hours in the car, an excess of joy-confusion, the six drinks with and after dinner. One shoulder kissed by carpet burn. We fucked the