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Ink
by Erica Orloff
my grandmother has hate tattoos / carved into her arms / goose-stepping numbers marching / wrinkled, onion-paper flesh / human ash and cattle cars
The Ultimate
by Robin Becker
I’m a line-sit for the Ultimate Roller Coaster. At first, I thought the job would be depressing, everyone standing in line waiting to ride-n-die, but what I do is altruistic.
Prone to Manic Episodes After a Motorcycle Crash
by Luke Patterson
he was twenty years old with dark eyes. / I will write patient suffers from / paranoid delusion in my run report / and later just call him crazy
Souls of Finland
by Günther Bedson
Like a tree your roots are gnarled and twisted / in the dampness of this earth / your yellow leaves swirling D-major triplets / dancing down to the square
The Burning Girl
by Davin Malasarn
She told him to lie on the floor. His father lit tall, yellow candles and placed them in cups of sand on the shrine. They covered him in a tablecloth that his aunt crocheted herself.
Creation
by Philip Appleman
On all the living walls / of this dim cave, / soot and ochre, acts of will, / come down to us to say: This is who we were.
Adultery
by Janice D. Soderling
One day he was cock-of-the-walk, full of jokes and juice, strumming his guitar, waxing the big fins on his red Chevy, knowing another woman in the biblical sense.
Günther’s Tree
by Lois P. Jones
Because you are strong. / Because your branches span out ahead of you. / And in so many years, age has allowed breadth to match height.
Closer
by Sarah Hina
Brake lights on a highway. Not her favorite sight. It must be an accident. Or road construction. Either way, it wasn’t right. Not when they were so close to home.