By Samantha McKeever Last Thursday, or at least what I remember it to be, seems all too far away. Like words that hang lifeless in suffocating air, or anger that sleeps in poorly made beds. It’s normal, really, is what they say over long phone calls in silent rooms: dialing in and out of consciousness is nothing to be concerned about. It’s just the way things are. Things, at least, feel different. Calloused, warped, faded — all the words seem empty. I suppose that’s normal, a

By George Brown In Memory of Jill Brown Grandma tells me it's an unusual time. She is bruises and bone, upper lip catching on her teeth. She tells me much has become clear: She is grateful. The Lord doesn’t decide when the spirit must leave, He can only mourn, surrounded by his children. She still laughs like a penny, still remembers driving Mom barely nine months pregnant with a Goldfish on her lap to the new house, me in a car seat. She tells mom: you taught

By Rajika Bajgain I know there is no truth in the draw of the wine-dark river. I know each light on the trees is a star breathed alive by a blessing. I know your absence sweetens your memory, and that it's not your fault, nor is it mine. I know, I know, but like crystal dew on the lips of dawn the tears just fall so freely.

after Clementine Von Radics By Julia Glazebnik The woman across the street once told us she liked a story to be sad. I like it better this way: Summer, small talk. The triangles of streetlight. How I watched your hands, their never shaking, undo the knots in mine. Everything would have been dark if not for your neck, pale in the fluorescence. Everything was still true then. All motionless, your body, mine. That day I’d watched my father take a baseball bat to a nest of w

By George Brown Brother: Look to me – do you not see your own reflection? You know what misery is; then winter should have meaning to you. I am unlike you in this only: I do not impose on the shelter of my form, rather I lie around in its being and live that it may become my own. And what will I know of me that self disguised as matter when it becomes all there is to know; do I know your winter, brother, and if I do not, will I know the spring flood when it c

by Rajika Rex Bajgain No, I cannot stay the night, not for eyelashes of blonde spruce needles nor the pale-faced son of Raphael’s Madonna nor the moonlit forehead furrowed ever so slightly (what is he thinking of?); when it is over you will want it again, it is our parting that makes our togetherness sweet. You ask me now to stay the night your gentle eyes kindling up at me, to bed the stars inside our pillowcase to wed fantasy to reality to entwine your hand in my olive twig

By: Samantha McKeever Part of me wanted to follow the wind as it blew through the train station into some far-off place around the street bend. The rest of me, halfheartedly existing in something you could call the present, wanted to stay right in this spot. I watched myself, pathetically, from the other side of the tracks: using ghosts as anchors in the sea of time, crying only in dark rooms and in the rain, wearing too-strong perfume to mask the scent of shadows, fo

By: Hansuja Kandadi I’ve been looking at the moon closer, It looked a little different back home, I’ve noticed. Not the shape nor the color, Just something of the way, it shimmered. Don’t misunderstand, It glows ever so beautifully. Upon this foreign land, It couldn’t have shined more brightly. But there is something missing, Something only I’ve seen. Nobody else can know, Nobody else but me. Perhaps it’s because I’m the same as the moon, I shine brighter now,

In memory of my best friend by George Brown When they glance at this small soul the rips seem like your smile. So in the night when I do the mending, with twine, matches, needle, sage, a red pen, a few lashes, I sew shut the rips as you are far gone and should not be here; with the morning, the rips have grown, they leer; the bloodied body of the past stitched to an abomination, looking on as I pass I see you there, everywhere – so I stop to gawk at this pas

Graphic by Josie Zevin Long ago, Crouched in a final goodbye, I swallowed a spoonful of Nesquik to coat my lips In childlike tenderness, one last time. My tongue: Slick with bliss and nostalgia. My gaping jaws: Coiled in the sweet fluency of my mother’s knitted love. The sugar melts to a plain and bitter angst, but A warm body reaches through, Pockets of love hidden in the space between: A feathered neck seeking my attention. Too little, too late. The stale and quiet halls, C