Issue: NiftyLit #5

Patsy Creedy

"Knowing extends / Beyond / The elbow touched / On the bus / The sadness you feel a smell / Reflexive to breathe it in"

Yuan Changming

"It is a landscape newly relocated / Into my heart’s backyard. Then I sit / On my legs, meditating about there / Being no light in the picture"

Katie Doarn

"'She’s a witch, that’s what she is,'” said Colin, as they wrapped themselves in the scratchy flannel blankets. Each of them fell asleep thinking of ways to rid their land of Karina, though in their dreams they were learning how to keep her."

Megan Waring

"say no again and again to going / into work, to polite smalltalk dinners, to any invitation / that isn’t two cans of spray paint and a dusky overpass"

Zary Fekete

"My wife is fearless and, even though her Hungarian isn’t perfect, she will talk with anyone. I think it was this willingness which won her over to our neighbor who had initially seemed standoffish and confused as to why this American couple and their cat were in Hungary."

Natalia Batiz-Blanco

"It’s so loud. / There are no stop signs to cross the street so you run. / Thank you to the driver in the Mitsubishi who let us cross. / Almost there."