by Christine Valters Paintner She treasures their golden gift, mixing herbs to make medicine for sisters with coughs, guests with aches,...

by Alexandra Corinth I was born underwater no legs, gills folded into my pudgy neck before the reef was scorched by the sun and the surf...

by Sheila Murray-Nellis I long for you: the snowflakes kiss my eyelids and layer white on white by my feet. How you sparkle all about me,...

by JC Reilly In the linden grove beside the stream a soft-eyed girl in weeds bends down to see a cat near death, his fur like cream and...

by David Swerdlow In this story of the hermit saint, one stoic thorn from the rose honors the responsible with blood and pain. The...

by Charles Kell A cold eel on a fish- monger’s shelf, half moon broken in the window. We were drawn to study this poorly supported art,...

by Ellen Deitz Tucker That we do not fall between the wide-spaced atoms plotting edge and surface in our world— that the world itself...

by Don Russ North CarolinaState Archaeological Site 31JK3 The heavens mapped? The spent mind of a wanderer mapped back upon his silent...

by Maggie Edwards She was old⎼so old she crusted over, and the crust smelt like decay⎼that senior home reek of fish bones and too long...

by Anna Elkins Beneath Rue d’Enfer, Paris There is no weather down here. It’s old & warm, always. The lantern light soaks into stone, the...

by J C Scharl I. It’s water does this to wood: petrifies the honeyed grain so time runs off the light-shot stone like rain, leaving...

by Jane Beal My dearest friend did not die when I was in España, despite the brain surgery – a fact worth remembering. I had felt so...

by Brandi Willis Schreiber I write to you, for the first time, after the year’s long ache. Do you remember our walk ending in ochre...

by LindaAnn LoSchiavo Our first apartment bordered ugly Hell’s Kitchen, a place for hanging your head out The window, yelling for...

by Chris Haven It came first to the waters. The shores thicken, nothing like life. Frogs, lice, biting flies. The buzz then the darkening...

by DonD.S. Martin When diverse colours in a forest blend the greens like olive emerald lime & jade the yellow of the daisies which...

by Amy Nemecek We followed him to the top of this great, high Mountain, grew heavy-eyed, footsore. I stuck one of those barking dogs into...

by Ace Boggess No cable TV. No internet. No power this morning. Gas leak, gas leak, gas leak— how the walls begin to speak through their...

by Laura Sweeney For the French teacher who drank herself into oblivion; for the nurse who couldn’t go through the courts because she was...

By Marjorie Maddox “If then we have angels, let us be sober, as though we were in the presence of tutors; for there is a demon present...