Category: 19.2

  • The Hog Reeve

    by Francis Walsh As the hog reeve, I lived beside the town animal pound, and at night the breathing of the animals lulled me to sleep.      But one evening, the bell on the door of the pound startled me awake. I lit a candle and crept outside to find Goodman Willis crouched before the open door…

  • The Fourth Leaf

    by Jami Macarty *standing in the trees the color of fatigues someone wholly addleddraws his pocket knife           cuts cedar limb from cedar tree           whittles the bark from the bow                                                whittles wood to waster *where violets dress the undergrowth hell-tanglePiper palms moss                                        her knees turned mauve           for a sunny noneconomical find: a…

  • Garden City, Cairo

    by Sara Elkamel There is a black and white portrait of my grandparents on their wedding day framed with a red velvet trim in the small house of my childhood, where my grandmother taught me to pray. She’d stuff my head in one of her many prayer scarves, which held me like a tent. I’d…

  • Much Madness Is Divinest Sense

    by Courtney Kalmbach emily dickinson     would you place a tea towel on your head in the middle of a forest     would you sing to an apple snail sliding across your boot     would the apple snail write a pink script of apple snail eggs on your shoe       would you slough the billet-doux bubbling amuck       or would you let another hour hatch     meaning…

  • It’s so brave of you to be here

    by Sam Herschel Wein she whispers loudly to my mom.It’s my reading. It’s my hometown.She’s my Rabbi’s wife.It’s so brave of you to be here,I say to my blanketas it tucks me in to bed.And then my bike said, you’re braveto be here,riding off this cliff.The chicken is brave for boilingitself through the night, becoming…

  • Girl

    by Kristina Andersson Bicher Girl squanders her fish sticks     beats her gums against unjust                                                 monoliths She     is a gifted bootlickerher bootlicking is prolific— Father LOOK     our Girl is aphenom! Let us toast to her Very Promising Future her parents feed her        an enormous chainshe burps gold and they are stung with glee        when she spits…

  • Under the Porch

    by Dinah Cox My next-door neighbor—Charlotte was her name—had four kids, five Labrador retrievers of various colors, and a small income she earned exclusively by delivering the morning newspaper in our neighborhood. She must have collected child support, too, though she never said anything about an ex-husband. In the afternoons, she listened to the police…

  • A Third Tongue Enters the Arena

    by Adriana Rewald Two Glots sit on a rock and swap farts. One makes a sound the other can’t quite match and they laugh. What one starts the other fails to finish out loud, though it seems the perfect cluster of expression. Words that can’t be formed splash away. Words that can are regurgitated and…

  • Sweet Nothings

    by Brenna Womer A sixteen-year-old high school junior goes to Zales in the mall with her boyfriend’s mother to pick out the ring she wants him to propose with. Both the girl and the mother know there’s only one diamond in the case he can afford—a fourth-carat stone in white gold—so they pretend it’s the…

  • When the world ends,

    by Yvanna Vien Tica may I be found sleeping in a gardengrown wild with insect wars murmuringthe many names of fireflies: lampyridae, firefly, alitaptap. Whether I woke to their happinessor distress, I can’t tell, and at my feet are all the homes I crackedand mixed in a stymied omelet. Even if the world points at…