by Shideh Etaat

fisherman? not what I think of when I think love, more like the smell of guts, or

wet boots. let’s say I met a fisherman from Ecuador and in three days I could

say something like I love you.

in Peru on the beach, so close to the equator, it all unraveled, over broken

coconuts mango skins cheap rum hangovers, he pointed out

birds to me, asked me if I knew why they were flying around in circles above

us, told me things only fishermen know.

in between sandy sheets, I asked him about the scars along

his shoulders where I lay my head,

and in the quiet of a room with only a mattress

and a toilet he told me how his younger brother died. how he didn’t. but there

was still this scar, like a burnt mountain or a big empty hole inside the earth,

inside the skin of him,

and I wanted to say – how beautiful, but instead I went to sleep and hoped that

the stars wouldn’t go out just because I had shut my eyes.

I kept changing my bus ticket to the next day, and then the next, because I

started to believe that home meant wanting to let someone grow things inside

of you. but what did I know?

except that petrichor is the name for the smell released into the air after a first

rain, and that certain mushrooms can only

grow in soil that has just been badly burned. I’d be happy if I was a fish,

I think.

he took me to the ocean to say farewell, because love shouldn’t be written in

stone, but in water, and I walked along the shore like a drunken peacock.

am I beginning now? I wanted to ask him, but

instead I waited for him to not kiss me goodbye, and watched as the hungry

birds still

circled above us

by Shideh Etaat

by Theodore Wheeler

When he saw the flat-bed trailer parked at the curb in front of his mother’s house, Scott Ritter’s stomach sank. Papier-mâché sombreros and dozens of novelty Mexican flags were packed on a trailer at the curb, along with snow cone and cotton candy machines. On the side of the trailer was a hand-lettered sign that read M&M Ministries: Games, Music, Choirs. Scott crouched next to the sign, pinching the wire frames of his glasses to make sure he was reading it right, then looked at the ad again. Petting zoo, puppies, and story-telling. Silent auction. Auditions for cherub, youth, and adult choirs. Cinco de Mayo floats!

“Oh, God,” he thought, straightening to read the sign again. He took the newspaper clipping from his pocket. A man at work had shown the classified ad to him. “Listen to this,” the co-worker said. “Christ Centered Mobile Ministries. Win prizes or C.C. Bucks. Free concert. Baby items, bicycles, books, clowns and clothing. Coloring contests.” Scott had laughed himself, reading derisively, “BYOT: bring your own trike!”

(more…)

by Jilly Dreadful

My mother slaughters rabbits.

My mother breaks their necks and spines,

Feels life slip between fingertips.

She played piano when she was young.

Such sturdy fingers.

An apron she wears to stave off blood.

Not that rabbits always bleed,

When she cripples them as they still breathe.

“But sometimes,” she said, “spine snags skin.”

Their mammalian hearts, so used to beating.

I had a fondness for rabbits.

Their soft fur and wet eyes.

The unexpected presence of claws.

“Blood is surprisingly thick in rabbits,”

My mother says.

by Jilly Dreadful

by Geoff Schmidt

On the upper bunk awash in its moonlight, Sherm whispers to his cockroaches. He sits cross-legged; they line his legs. Franklin tosses in his sleep below. He’s been in and out lately. Never out for long. Each time back he’s a little crazier. He’s only been back for a day this time. He’s already talking about pipe bombs and poison. Sherm doesn’t want to wake him up.

The cockroaches tell him about their night, the food they’ve found, the eggs they’ve laid, the lovely cracks they’ve scuttled through, the really interesting interior wall of Warden Brown’s office with its slightly crumbling drywall.

Tell me more about that, whispers Sherm. Does Warden Brown ever hear you?

Oh no, the cockroaches chuckle. We’re very sneaky.

What is Warden Brown doing while you explore the inside of his wall?

Well, we can’t see him, but he mostly makes phone calls, anyway.

What does he say?

Who’s coming, who’s going. We knew Franklin was coming back days before he did, they say proudly.

Is anyone leaving soon?

The roaches shift uncomfortably. No, Shermie. You’re not leaving.

What about Vi?

No, Shermie. She’s not leaving either.

Sherm runs his hands through his bristly hair, looks around the moonlit cell. The walls are old stone, cool and rough, the mortar flaking onto his sheets. The bars of the window are crinkled with rust. Franklin snarls in his sleep.

(more…)

by Will Dowd

Will you be a reader, a student merely,

or a seer?

—Henry David Thoreau

Seers win a trip to the school psychologist.

Tell me, son, about your alternate ending,

the one you scribbled in the margins.

Tell me about the night of first snow,

the flurry of strange footprints,

the grunt at the window sill.

Tell me about Thoreau’s white body

drifting across the night sky

at the end of a fishing line.

Tell me about the tall

reeds of downward

rushing stars.

by Will Dowd

by Kirk Curnutt

The first thing he did after tossing the shotgun, ditching his F-450 at the quarry, shaving his goatee, and dyeing his hair, was Google himself.

Three hours and two hundred miles earlier, Jarvis Murple had shot his father and three of his father’s poker buddies at point-blank range. The men had mocked his negligible skills at Omaha Hi once too often, Murple had snapped, and now he needed to know if he was wanted for murder or merely attempting it.

What he couldn’t quite admit was that he was also eager to see what people were saying about him.

(more…)

by Anna Clarke

I’m reading, I suppose, and I notice

a middle aged couple sit down quietly

to butter their bagels. Their conversation

is limited to weather and the glare of the sun

hitting the window beside them.

I don’t think they’re tired,

I think they’ve just run out of things

to say. Silent on Saturday,

nothing but baked goods between them.

What happened here, somewhere

between her red curls and his long legs,

maybe found in college, a park,

a loud, smoky road-side bar.

I notice a fly that lands on their table.

They both try to brush it away, missing hands.

by Anna Clarke

by Kai Flanders

September 1

Pop,

Sorry to have been so long in writing. Things have been so busy with the move. I would have called but I know you prefer letters.

We moved in last week- the house is spacious and airy and has a big backyard. It is so strange to live somewhere new. The smallest things, like the color of the oven dial or how fast water comes from the new taps, are the most surprising and feel the most unnatural. Though the town is much the same as the last: lots of manicured lawns and track homes and little parks with names like “Mulberry Meadow” or something like that. Everything is fresh off the assembly line. But there is still some land the developers haven’t yet gotten to.

If I was not so busy I might feel alone. Oh Robert has his friends from work, John Deere likes to transfer their employees en-masse, but I know hardly anyone. There is one woman I went to college with, but I barely recognize her. She took me to a cocktail party the other night, but all they did was get drunk and talk about their husbands. I think I need to buy more sundresses.

Gene is still doing his stick game. I don’t mind at all, but Robert wants him to grow out of it. He even bought him a bicycle, but Gene has ridden it maybe the once. It’s silly really to see him jumping about in the backyard. He keeps breaking my close-hangers.

All my love,

Beth

(more…)

by Katie Cappello

To stick a latexed hand inside

one of four thick-walled,

marbled stomachs, and pull out

a handful of masticate,

green and fuming, is to

wonder at the world.

How can he stand there,

open and aware, without care

for his exposed anatomy

on display at the family picnic?

And this gut, four-chambered

like our four-chambered heart—

where love, then, finds its home,

above the udder, that swinging,

vulgar pendulum?

Slide aside the strip of skin,

slip on a glove, and enter.

Raise it to your nose and smell

a stretch of field, sun-warmed,

wide, an eternity of grass

to work on slowly, the way a monk

finds balance between poles,

or a baby, newly afoot,

uses belly to stabilize.

All the time in the world, God here

underfoot, between flat teeth

grinding away, or resting

in stomach number three,

readying for the long journey

back to the earth.

by Katie Cappello

O Time Thy Pyramids

She dug for earthworms, planted
Amaryllis near the barn, cultivated
Daylight when the bad boys came to her
And she never sent them home.
For her alone, they spoke in tempered tones
And reached for manners as they reached for seed.
She gave them tools to dig with,
Voice to their voices, ears to their hearing.
She finished when the work was done,
And then it was time for them to go.
They were safe with this labor of bulbs,
The loam that stuck to her soft gloves
Stuck to the bad boys’ canvas shoes.
Their shoes took rich earth from her barn,
Pieces of the one who never sent them away
Who showed them how to plant crocus,
How to plant even after she’d gone—
Their safe tiller in the damp earth—
They became like the best of the boys
She never sent away, the one
She kept and cultivated until she was gone.

(more…)