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interlude: the swan describes the war
by Maria Zoccola the first day, the big cheese sends half a can of waspkill into the nest on the porch. not truly a nest. a clump of gold and black bodies moving over and around each other, fixed at the join of siding and gutter. they fall to the cement with a sound like…
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Bringing a Gun to Chekhov’s House
by Robert Wood Lynn It’s a party everyone’s real happy to see you andyou’re not stupid you don’t show them the gun nobodyis happy to see a gun and after all it’s his house andyou know how he gets so you’re gonna leave itwith the coats and there’s gonna be someone realcute there at the…
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Ganyang Cina*
by Jeddie Sophronius I have found my kind hiding withinthe walls of their shophouses. They speak ina forbidden language among their own,one which I’ve never learned. They’ve changed their names into something easier to pronounce:a forest is shaped into a monk, amemory is molded into faith, andthe flood dries up and becomes sky. Some have…
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Notes from a brown mother
by Naomi Kanakia My thieving bairn is fullishcrafty kind, with rosy cheeksAnd a totty mind. She goeth throughMy cupboards all, desks and drawersThrow, and the impress of her butterHands, marks every bagatelleWith the sweat of her disdain.I seen her looks, her tiny toes,The mind that cannot kenThe language and the thoughtOf the Anglo-Saxon race.You’ll have…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The Measure of Progress
by Weston Cutter You’re made of stardust but you’re supposed to forget it.Same as you’re supposed to forget how lifeonce required escaping something trying to eat you every day.Everyone’s at least once been the answer to someone else’s questioneven when you were just reciting lists of ingredients:lemons to brighten dark meat, new dustpanto gather more…
