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The Cope Paradigm
by Jim Davis
But boy, I’ll tell ya, a moment / in the woodshed with Kathleen would shake the rust / from the long-handled lopper and the pruning saw— / she’ll make you think this whole thing’s worth doing, / and worth doing right.
Sculpting the Desert
by Robert S. King
Even in desert sun no scales crack through / your skin of almost pure light. / Your tracks do not hurry around themselves / like a twisted puzzle.
At Least One Point
Jim Tilley
My father never settled for clumsy solutions, / some leap of insight always required, / a transformation to an equivalent problem / easy to solve.
Prophet of Furnaces and Dust
by David Salner
After Vietnam, he came home to fight / with the dust, went wild with the injustice, / waged war with everyone and lost.
Secret Friends
by Jessica Bell
I don’t know how to pray, / but I’ve seen them do it / on TV; kneeling by a bed / in nightgowns, hands woven / like secret friends.
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
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
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.
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.
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