Five Short Poems
by Simon Perchik
These gravestones left stranded / warped from sunrises and drift / —they need paint, tides, a hull
Serving
by Kari Gunter-Seymour
Remember that time your dog died and I didn’t tell you for months
Not Homework
by Jennifer Gennari
I want to be president / she says unprompted. / Her unfinished writing task / lies on the table between us.
Two Poems
by Karen Paul Holmes
When fifteen hours of Wagner’s Ring draws to a close, please Siegfried, don’t take the potion making you forget Brünnhilde.
Spoiled
by Michael Mark
My father puts the milk carton / on the kitchen table. Declares, She bought it—before.
Some Things Are Decided Before You Are Born
by Marissa Glover
Doctors cannot tell you when you’re born / how many pitches your arm contains.
Foal
by Lois P. Jones
In your next life you will be / birthed in needles / of hoarfrost, your eyes still / in the blue gauze between
The Mourner’s Song
by Roy White
You can die in January if you want, / and lots of people do, but this far north, / nobody gets into the ground till spring.
Grace
by Joseph Fasano
You’ve seen them in the deep sleep / of the season: figures sitting in a garden, / light on their faces as you enter.
America
by Katherine Riegel
I never dreamt of you but of your parts: / my flatland home, the mountains my mother loved, / beach where I could look out and see only not-you.
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