By Hansuja Kandadi Sometimes I feel like I know it: This whole “life” thing, Like I’m steering a wheel, And I’ve got a tight grip. How hollow is that belief? Knocks me over till I bleed, Doesn’t allow me a moment of relief. Life sort of happens while we’re in between living. So now when I set sail, I stand aboard a sunny day, Perhaps I’ll be greeted by thunder, Perhaps I will tremble afraid, Now that I’ve drowned one too many times. Nothing to stand on? Then I’ll swim the ti

By Malia Waddles This city’s still mine, But it feels like yours. Screeching memories clash with This urban song: I breathe and bleed ‘til my heart does stop. Brighter and fresher days lie among The shadows and the stubborn light between. Pocket change and branching, aching joints, Promise and pity: I dream of trusting myself again. Words overused and bruised beyond salvation, I dream of feeling and believing. The love I deliver breeds doubt and loathing: Handwritten

Red eyes, stuffy nose, and overly sensitive ears… I am overstimulated, Full of love and hatred at the same time, so I cry to clear some space for a chocolate bar and my assigned reading. Why are people so mean and greedy? I cry making eye contact with a homeless lady; Maybe I never grew up, Maybe I was never ready to be so far away from family and friends, to count minutes for my shift to end, and to spend hours in the library rewriting my essay. I miss his presence

By: Sam McKeever A leaf catches in the gap of small, spinning wheels, slowing their inertial orbit around the shaded park. A balloon, tied in a bow around a sweaty handle, scrapes the twilit sky. Faint squalls float through the autumn air, while needy, unripe fingers clench flowering stems like a life raft. Their white petals, pure and unbroken, tremble in the child’s iron grip. I wonder— Does he feel the icy breeze beneath his thick red coat and tightly fastened brown scarf?

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