Issue: NiftyLit #2

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"

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."

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."

Roy Bentley

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

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

Cheryl Dumesnil

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

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"

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."

Judith Skillman

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