by Kathleen Wedl Spring is dead to me. Around the time heart-shaped leaves emerge on my Eastern Redbud biting gnats like dark animus descend and swarm. The mother suckers travel 40 miles to sup my neck for the blood meal they need to produce 400 eggs, and so it Do Si Do’s. The buggers gift? … Continue reading The One About Eggs
By Melanie Smith I moved the paintbrush over the light blue bedroom wall, swish-swish, and laid down a hefty stripe of white, then stood back to assess it. I had chosen the right color: “cloud white,” said the label on the cannister. It had enough pink tint that it wasn’t cold, and enough blue that … Continue reading Archaeology
by Sheree La Puma Brush back tangles from her eyes. Allow her to sing, unmuffled. Say nothing as she wanders. How unpredictable & new it is to follow the night sky. Let your heart bleed silently like a tongue that has lost its battle with the knife. Do not panic as … Continue reading When You Pick Up The World & Hand It To Your Daughter
By: Hannah Marshall “A prompt delivers a nice, packaged “triggering subject” from which to write…” I used to hate prompts, their artificial sentiments bullying their way into my writing. Before I enrolled in the Converse College MFA in Creative Writing, I almost never used a prompt to jumpstart my writing. I believed in order for … Continue reading The Practice of Prompt Writing
by Stephanie Dickinson Clinton, New Jersey *** I am sick to my stomach and my heart hurts. Not only did my kids basically reject me but they never sent me a Mother’s Day card, not for the past three years. I have been crying, nauseated, and seeing spots. They ripped my heart out. —Lucy … Continue reading Maximum Compound: Prison-House Mothers and Their Children
by Kevin Griffin In Pelican Rapids, in July, the dried wheat fields just outside town still snivel for raindrops. Looking to cool down in dammed water, kids pedal bikes to the mill pond where, in ’49, my Uncle Bob sat up high, minding, lifeguard eyeing children on the brink. Hair was leaving the top of … Continue reading Revenant
by Anne Leigh Parrish The first corner to lift was the dining room Where candles were lit, wine sipped, Plans made, tears shed, voices raised, More than one plate thrown down For the pleasure of watching it break Could rain do that, they asked? Flood a basement, sure Sneak in under a loose roof shingle … Continue reading Even the Trees Went Under
By: B.A. France I was talking with a friend recently, when she told me that she couldn’t. Couldn’t what, I asked? I rolled into searching for the problem and looking for solutions, living my own cliché, when she stopped me. Anything. I can’t do anything right now, she said. The stay-at-home orders, the constant crawl … Continue reading Billy Collins and the Pandemic Haiku
by Alice Lowe Wherever you go, there you are. ←→ Wichita, Kansas My first husband, Terry, hailed from a long line of Texans, but his family migrated to Wichita, Kansas when he was a tot. He was the only one who left, first to college back in Texas, then to Southern California with the Marine … Continue reading Cities I Never Lived In
Brooke Turner The night I left him, he threatened to take a baseball bat to everything we owned, only we didn’t own a baseball bat. He didn’t even like baseball. He said he would smash our 37-inch flat screen, the glass coffee tables and end tables, the microwave, even the computer where he spent thousands … Continue reading Woman Friend