Category: Poetry

by Ian Hall My mother’s father was a fountof cockeyed wisdom. Wooed by the far flung & farther fetched, he leftmy mother & her own sainted mother in an ungentlemanly lurch. Said he was fishingfor dignified work. Something that wouldn’t just make ends meet, but knockthe socks clean off his naysayers. Instead he spent the…

By Amanda Auchter Tomorrow I will dieif I eat this pear. If I eat this perfect almond, thisapricot. A whole bowl of fear at my fingertips—lips numbed, breath out of breath. Once,I boarded an airplane and began my ascentof panic. I begged my husband to ask the flightattendant to ask the pilot to turn the…

By Cami DuMay             You write what you need to. Once, when I was a kid, I saw a carcass in the woods,back behind my house. A deer collapsed in the humus,her skull still partly clothed in tawny fur, eyeless sockets,holes so black I felt myself pitching into their gravity. Here, a leg, and there, white…

by G.H. Plaag for Aiden Hale Tennessee rain is like the dewon a plum. whether you are clingingto the cliffs of Chattanooga or antiquingin Elizabethton, this holds true.today’s rain is the freezerburnon a Hungry-Man, ruinous and specific,shards in mashed potatoes. the rainfalls and reminds me where i amand what has happened here this year. Tennessee…

by Sarah Horner / hunger                               / taste                            / bruise              / build/ ease                            / rest                                                              / dawn The sun is round. The sun is round warm gentle lightAt dawn. I look right at it. You wake up slowlyYou wake up slowly                     You wake up slowly                                   / bloom Crack a window. Let the breeze meet                 Last night’s love-air                                                           / decay…

by Aliyah Cotton                   It was hopscotch and scraped knees    yellow monkey bars and      hands    rubbed raw    hands that knew exactly    the weight of a pinecone      and what it meant to the fallen thing    to be noticed and held    and thrown                  back down again    and it was not caring that the grilled…

By Kimberly O’Connor it does not meanyou didn’t drive the muleup the mountain every morning it does not mean the outhousewas a pleasure it does not mean you had enough to eator that you grew up easy that no one ever looked at yousideways and mean-eyedthat you didn’t carry water from the spring it does…

By Larry Narron                        I managed to fail           ninth grade English lit                       with a curling            issue of Thrasheror Big Brother hidden           behind the paper                        bag-covered textbook           in my lap, the one with                       the abridged version            of Great Expectations.Our lives are mostly           as small as a thumb                        nail photo           sequence unfolding                       in a borrowed skate mag            whose pages are allfalling out, one by one,           like the…

By Connor Watkins-Xu 1993 Young, younger, your mother, states away. No onecalls you crater-faced. You get to be Stephanie for a while. Summer goes until December, and boys love to hear you sayY’all are crazy down here, your Alabama accent in the ear for a moment, like sun-showers on beach-burned skin.You don’t have to worry…

By Elizabeth Higgins I. Seventh grade humanities class. Ancient Greece.Each table group is a city-state. Each teacher is a god. I sit in the southeast corner of Corinth.Our teacher stands in front of the class and tells us she is Aphrodite. There’s snickering because the idea is absurd,the comedic formula familiar: fat woman thinks she’s…