Travel Advisory Level 4: Arkansas
Buckle up for one writer’s perspective
New Leaf Literary is facing criticism
I guess New Leaf needs to turn over a new leaf.
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Most banned authors of all time


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.