Fall 2022

Sandra Kolankiewicz

"I understand about your silence/now, how you craved quiet when your empire collapsed"

Lance Dornan

"The meat on my plate is rare and bloody. My fork works its way into my thigh."

Sandra Kolankiewicz

"You are grateful for my note, you say, and the/photograph of my mother the year you met her"

Karine Leno Ancellin

"Demeter was clearing the weed when Persephone/erred beyond the horizon."

Amelia Díaz Ettinger

"I want to see the depths/of my father’s heart,/the confession/of failed arteries,/the atrophy/of fate"

Roy Bentley

"if you're wondering, I come down on the side of loving him/bastard that he could be"

Judith Skillman

"Days and nights, moon and sun/storm and drought—all these happen/to the body as well"

Ana Fortuna

"We spill words on the street/afraid dreaming of vessels/but when we say goodbye/the gesture, like a wave,/draws houses on the pavement"

Cheryl Dumesnil

"The ones who/lashed plastic bottles to a grid of bamboo stalks/and christened it Hope."

Amelia Díaz Ettinger

my stained fingers working the soil’s mercy/its gritty coolness a slight measure of delight/and hallowed quiet/for broken nails

Roy Bentley

"I've never been a snake, that I can recall, but you get the picture"

jamilla vandyke-bailey

"and isn’t this beautiful? and frightening?/this beatbeatbeating beneath your wrists;/it’s delicate and wild and turbulent and here."

Cheryl Dumesnil

"Today’s caller takes the shape / of a child who emerged / from the fault line / after the earthquake"

jamilla vandyke-bailey

"i miss holding that laughter inside my bones, / and shedding tears like moist clothes, / and echoing soundtracks with my own howls"

Marek Kulig

"High time too that monarchs / are remonstrated / for their geometry- / non-conforming flight patterns."

Megan Markham

"PSAs from my school years reminding us to cut six pack rings, / more packaging than I asked for or know what to do with / covering us head to toe"

Lance Dornan

"I’d never considered myself a sailor before that night, when I slipped out from river into sea."

Stephen Newton

"I looked down into the black void beneath the bridge, and for a giddy moment, I felt weightless, like when a car goes too fast over a hill. My mother put me down, pulled my knitted cap snug over my ears, and asked, 'Can you find your way home?'"

David Capps

"I’ve known when to withdraw from a situation about to turn bad, and when to keep on, so I said, “LJ you can do anything in life,” which despite his “Godbless” struck me as lacking certain riders."

Jacob Schlote

"He says he ordered a kid’s meal to be just like you, but you aren’t old enough to understand. It still doesn’t completely sink in because you know there’s not a need to understand, only wanting to bask in the gloriousness of reliving the event."

Paul G. Heller

"We were grateful: The Buddha had given us a concept of which Form B was ignorant. And that evening, we astounded our siblings and our parents with The Buddha’s fiery wisdom: 'The present is now and now and now.'"

AM Larks

"I am usually the one in control, the one working, the one in charge of someone else’s life, their body, and appearance. But here at Singapore Electric, Cheng is taking charge of my body, my appearance, my life."

Katie Humphries

"She paddled backwards some more, making space, hoping the gator would not notice, but its mossy, knobby skull and snout were now fully above the water. They looked at each other once more."

Kris Green

"At night, I sit in my room with the lights out to see if my father or mother will notice I’m not around. My mother is a phantom in the house. They used to check my room to see if I was home. I can hear him pacing outside my door up and down the hallway. He’s humming a rhythmic tone and steady beat that goes nowhere."

Nancy J. Fagan

"Her mother and grandmother raised their faces to the sun, and I wondered if they sensed peril as I did. Though I angled my chaise away from the three of them, they stayed in my periphery. That’s something Vivi would have done; she looked out for strangers."

Cheryl Dumesnil

"Susan and I agree: there is a lot of life in this wrestling match with death. So much to be explored. So I am writing. We are writing."

Lizette Roman-Johnston

"The early evening glow surrounds my silhouette like a halo, and the flash of denim and pink grows smaller and smaller as I leave them in the dust and they watch me use my big, long legs to pump my way into the sunset."

Joe Baumann

"And although a small blip in my growing up, who knows how the trajectory of my life that followed might have shifted had I not spent months dwelling on Kerri Strug and imagining what it would be like to meet her, to know her, to befriend her."