Excerpts from “Alva and the Beast”

L.S. McKee

These poems are excerpted from a series in progress currently titled “Alva and the Beast.” This project, through its central character Alva, explores tropes of passion, longing, loss, and mortality through the lens of nature and technology—and how these two…

Promise Me You’ll Hide a Part of Yourself

Darcy Reeder

When we kissed, her face was unimaginably soft. She had slate gray eyes, like some sort of magical creature. She’d slide her hand slowly up my skirt, while I taught her to cook, to bake, to trust. She showed me…

“What Hurts” and Other Poems

Sara Pirkle Hughes

Maybe what hurts should always hurt.
The throbbing thumb, the achy joint,
The tender foot in thorn-filled dirt.
Maybe forgetting is not the …

ALLAMERICAN

Margo Davis

Photographic projects, like life, have journeys of their very own. They grow organically, sometimes with purposeful direction, sometimes randomly. They have an arc of development which can be synchronous with the trajectory of one’s life. In my photographic work, my current project ALLAMERICAN has evolved from all the influences of my life’s journey from childhood until now.

Three Poems from We Play a Game

Duy Doan

Rat-tat-tat We heard Changes three times on the radio. First on the way to Salem. Again on the way to the grocery store on the way back from Salem. And then again on the way to pick up Becky and…

Select Poems from The Amoeba Game

Tara Skurtu

I stood at the stove holding a wooden spoon in my right hand, listening to butter sputtering against the splattered circle of an egg. Perhaps ...

4 Poems

Safia Elhillo

Ode to Swearing
back home this is the worst profanity
what men use when they need to curse . . .

The Ungrateful Son

Dinty W. Moore

Once a man was sitting with his wife. They had roasted a chicken which they were about to eat together. Then the man saw that his aged father was approaching, and he hastily took the chicken and hid it in a cupboard, for he did not want to share. ...

The Sword

Ben Loory

You got something in the mail today, the man’s wife says. It looks like it’s from your uncle. The man takes the package and holds it in his hands. He opens it. Inside is a sword. This sword was used…

Topography

Douglas W. Milliken

Sometimes—while hiking stretches of the Appalachian Trail, while driving cross-country, while forging new relationships—I imagine myself an explorer discovering inhabited lands. I imagine myself surrounded by plants I have never seen, mountains I have never climbed, rivers I have never…