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Dispatches From the Backseat of the Last Honest Service Taxi in Beirut
by Sara Saab
From Hamra to Bliss St, we’ll list the loves we’ve thrown in the sea.
Turbulence
by Maggie Smith
The sky shakes us / like a shoe with a stone inside. / Even the smallest stone hurts.
If I Have a Daughter
by April Ford
If I could have a daughter, / it would be my life goal to make sure she never—not in a million years ever— / confused one kind of touch for another.
Improv
by Roy White
Let’s make a wedding photo, you and I. / I’m blind and you weren’t there, but between us / we can do this.
Cheerleaders Practicing in Eveleth MN
by David Salner
In the North Country, there are blues so perfect / you want to tear your heart out to be alive / and sober.
Worried Playground Daddy’s Blues
by Justin Hamm
On the playground I strum guitar while my daughter dangles upside down from the bar above the tall slide, and inside my middle-aged brain a movie plays.
Going Once
by Allan Peterson
I believe it was either forever or an eight / no longer lazy on the page, / because things took longer after that, / had longer lifetimes, / and that was their sign in continuous curls.
Summit
by Natalie Homer
I wish the wild mint would bake its scent into my skin, / and I could drag it behind me, as if it were a train of silvery lace. / It never does, and that’s okay.
A Survey of the Sacred
by Isabella David McCaffrey
She says, “To write poetry about sacred spaces, I must understand what I mean by sacred spaces, il faut comprendre premièrement ce que je veux dire par Terre Sacrée.”
The Polar Bear
by Jennifer Givhan
What I’m asking is will watching The Discovery / Channel with my young black boy instead / of the news coverage of the riot funerals riot arrests / riot nothing changes riots be enough to keep him / from harm?
It all began around a campfire…
Beautiful language
is meant to be heard as well as read, and in fact words were vocalized eons before they were ever committed to clay or parchment. Storytelling began around campfires. We seek prose and poetry that continue the tradition.
Contributor Spotlight:
Love and Hot Chicken
by Mary Liza Hartong
Open Contests
by Stephen Parrish, with the editors of The Lascaux Review