by Jeffrey Zable
Of course we’re all in different stages of dying,
but it seems that those who are closest to it
are mostly the ones talking about it.
Just One Different Thing
by Randall Amster
I awaken every day knowing that one thing will be different—one item out of place, one song lyric changed, one person here or not, one event remembered differently by others, one part of myself altered in a way that only I would notice. I’ve named this experience temporal arrhythmia because it sounds cool and smart and sciency, but I have no idea what it all really means in any tangible sense.
Read More »Push Through
by Doug Raphael
There are days
Adam and I would walk
by the sawdust silt banks
of the Medway River,
to a patch of grass
The Blue Hour
The Cost of Freedom (Your Feet)
by Debbi Voisey
I remember your feet coming from me; the first thing I saw. And your screams and your crumpled face.
A breech birth, and ever after, different to everyone.
Read More »Unstuck
by Scott Bethay
1.
Profane, breathless June
air thick with perfume
of cigarettes and makeup
Made in America
by Margaret E. Gillio
After reading Jordan Salama and Adrienne Rich
See the dark trucks
across the street.
They encircle a man,
pin him down.
Draw the blinds, stop
answering the door.
We watch in a silence like a rushing river
where I drown. I fear this silence.
Learning to Live with Fear
by Matias Travieso-Diaz
Freedom is when one hears the bell at seven o’clock in the morning and knows it is the milkman and not the Gestapo.
– Georges Bidault
The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.
– George Carlin
The sudden banging on the front door startled Ricardo, who was not expecting visitors that early in the morning. His first instinct was to flee, but there was no back door through which he could escape, and his two-room apartment had nowhere to hide. He approached the door and asked: “Who is it?”
“It’s the Posse! Open up!”
Ricardo opened the door and was shoved aside as four armed men wearing brown military fatigues entered and encircled him. “Are you Ricardo Trovador?” asked their leader. “Yes, I am. But…” started Ricardo.
“Mr. Trovador, you are under arrest. You have ten minutes to get dressed and contact any friends or relatives.”
Read More »One More for the Pile
by E. L. McKee
Impossible to separate them;
like the grain of sand around which
a mirror-bright pearl is formed,
Read More »In View of What’s Returned
by H.T. Reynolds
A mother strokes her daughter’s hair,
carefully avoiding the ventilator tubing,
humming You Are My Sunshine through
tears and mechanical breathing