by J Chester Johnson Highlights of the Massacre and Aftermath: During the Red Summer of 1919 when racial conflict between black and white Americans flared throughout the country, the Elaine Race Massacre in Phillips County, Arkansas, along the Mississippi River Delta, stands out as possibly the most brutal and murderous conflagration. From Tuesday, September 30th,
by John Compton we are rust or maybe rustic * our hands are searchlights our lost bodies’ buoys pulled & pulled * years find us searching backwards too late to mend too stubborn * we fight the current to have space still separate: our shadows between waves John Comptonjohn compton is a 33 years old gay
by R.T. Castleberry I used another name last night, took initials and a ringleader’s bandanna into calibrations of changing moonlight. I carry knives in every pocket, a coin lucky for the week. Loose on my hand, the signet ring is a stranger’s fit. I use Crown Royal to share my voice, a shoplifter’s Mont Blanc
by Susana H. Case Sometimes on the Q train, I’m tempted to stay all the way to Coney Island, the end of the line, commuters clutching Starbucks cups under cement skies, to where love is, where I might walk barefoot on sand, or eat Russian vareniki with fried onions, watch the old people sun themselves
by Emily Browne gather to see the bones that spell out met-a-mor-pho-sis vertebrae drifting in single file stars one hundred and two feet down strewn across the bottom of a dried-up well the blonde boy without history names dead stars in the order of their collapse what songs there are are of deserts sand wind
by Carla Botha It always starts like this: with coffee somewhere — coffee shops coffee trucks ice coffee on breezy summer days on lush lawns hot July days it always starts like this it never ends like this. Carla BothaCarla Botha completed her MFA in creative writing at New York University. She currently lives and works
by Madeleine Beckman I was at the Mudd Club you were too probably watching or with another young artist high (most of us were) on something potent but not as potent as youth. I was probably dancing (what I did back then). Music was my drug, movement my master – every muscle, tendon taut, tantalized in
by Jordi Alonso Had I but world enough and thymeand leisure too, to pass the timewhile buying—I would window shopthe newest pans; the freshest cropof lavender from France, flown inlast night would fuel my only sin.Extravagance in cooking makesfor novel drinks and tastier cakes;I’d, by the checkout counter finda tool to grate an orange rindin
by Nicholas Johnson When you came and sat on the edge of my bed, lowered and raised your voice, I knew your voice was the best medicine. It conjured up visions of our recent holiday, the houses spread out at random, the jazzy blues of the meadows where the inhabitants always awoke at dawn with
by Hilary Sideris I know ligo, a little, Ellinica. I make a pot of avgo- lemono feeling a fever coming on, pray to small gods called saints who do favors & specialize. A semi- colon is a question mark in Greek. Sideris means blacksmith like Ferraro & Eisenstein, but siderenios, of iron, said to a