Poetry |
“Post-Pandemic Professional Development Pantoum”
“We make our hands talk like puppets with funny voices / while Leadership predicts the future of the college ten years from now. / The Speech Professor whispers that management prefers to be called Leadership.”
Fiction |
“Scavengers”
“It looked like the discarded contents of a suitcase from twenty yards. Cloth and leather. But then Francis smelled it — sweet and rancid. Sulfur and ammonia.”
Poetry |
“The Gospel of Gold”
“’Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all / he wishes to in this world,’ writes Christopher Columbus, / ‘and succeeds in helping souls into paradise.'”
Lyric Prose |
“Little Bells” & “Land of Joy”
“When I entered the church, there was music playing. / Shoulder to shoulder, silent women, / from nearby Reserves, had roused hope / to fill plastic bags with worn children’s clothing.”
Essay |
“Uplokkid”
“Like medieval mystics in their anchorages, my mind was on the long-term rewards of short-term sacrifices. I found myself embracing solitude for a higher purpose: not holiness, but haleness, wholeness.”
Poetry |
“In Heat”
“When sex was new, // that smell felt free. I believed giving / my body helped me own it. When an animal / is in heat, does it perceive what that will bring?”
Literature in Translation |
from So the Day Begins: Grief Refrain, poems by Anja Utler
“So the day begins, / kettle vibrates, something in / the sink is clinking / chatter of metallic teeth”
Poetry |
“Horseless” & “Cherokee Parts Store”
“The distant past is indigenous. / The present hints at prophesy, / a country with more cars than drivers, // three hundred million vehicles.”
Poetry |
“The Boys, Waiting (Petaled Gloaming)”
“He was a queer anarchist / with a mouth on him so when hassled / by a cop for riding his bike / on the sidewalk he jumped off, bike chain / clutched in his scabbed fists.”
Poetry |
“During elementary school, I was pulled out of class”
“A decade and a half later, / only my laptop kept time during jail visits. // Here in Arizona, in a house with no clocks, / only overpriced electronics / signal the hour.”
Poetry |
“Given” & “After Some Words Scrawled on a Bathroom Stall”
“I go by a name not mine but given to me / among mountains by Italian hosts impatient / with my own, its clash of consonant // coming to bear like sandpaper upon / the tongue.”
Poetry |
“A Moose Breathes Onto My Palm”
“In the painting, a rabbit / is riding a moose] / or perhaps a reindeer. I’ve never been good / at identifying large mammals …”
Poetry |
“Refuge”
“My mother painted a colorful jungle / on the upstairs balcony with a deer, bear, / lion, elephant, wolf, lamb and birds / looking at me as they flapped.”
Fiction |
“In the Walls”
“Mice. The realization hits me, and then I am on my knees by the bathroom sink, hands shaking and snatching at the Lorazepam I’ve spilled. Panic hits this way, like a revolver fired to your head from behind.”