From "Our Town Becomes a Number" by Alice Haines, published alongside "March Mud Season Rap":
"8 fell while rolling 14-pound balls at 10
white pins. The deaf still weep for 4,
who were tossing 6-inch bags through
6-inch holes...."
Ph: Sean Foster, unsplash, CC 2.0.
New short story "Friedman at the Reins" by Mathew Goldberg:
"'Pain comes in the dark,' his mother would say. 'It comes in the dark and we call it wisdom, but it is pain.' As a child, he imagined that his mother’s black bile allowed her to walk through walls."
Ph:Sander Crombach
From the essay "Backtalk" by Anne Kenner:
“You have a condition,” my father said when I called to complain. “You need to rest.”
“Dad,” I explained, “I have school.”
“What you have,” he answered, “is a scoliosis.”
https://t.co/2QUPleGDmK
Ph: Pawel Czerwinski, unsplash, CC 2.0.
From the poem "In Lieu of Flowers" by Harry Gordon:
"Why attend your ex-wife’s funeral
when the in-laws will only glare at you
as if you’d killed her instead of the Winstons?
I quit smoking about the time the fire..."
Ph: Mayron Oliveira, unsplash, CC 2.0.
"Ruth" by Donnie Moreland, published alongside "Cigna":
"Baby Ruth
Sweet Ruth, girl where did you go
New York bound from the sleepy, Carolina magnolia’s that spare petals like angel wings when you need to make a decision
where to land
by and by..."
Ph: Steve Johnson on pexels.
From the poem "Debt Portfolio" by Jana-Lee Germaine:
"John Louis slipped me cash
every month, enough to pay
some bills and start a separate
bank account. You tight?
he’d ask, bumping a stack
of brand-new twenties
across his pickup’s leather seat..."
Ph: Ryan Porter, unsplash
From our newest column Voices in the Classroom by columnist Marium Zahra, "Addressing the Mental Health Crisis":
"At first it sounded like a clear win: Two extra weeks of spring break in the second semester of my 6th-grade year? Amazing...."
Ph: Andrew Neel, Unsplash, CC 2.0.
New fiction story "The Puma Way" by Susan Fox:
For the past few months Brian has been on a journey, a quest, a search; whatever it is, Gennie doesn’t get it. “Don’t go all Zen on me,” she said to him one evening, laughing to try to make light of it.
Ph: Jerm Gonzalo on pexels
New poem "Where Are You From?" by Tran Tran:
"In my mother tongue, to miss
sounds the same as to remember.
I dare not ask my mother,
Mẹ nhớ ngoại không? To miss
what was means to remember
what wasn’t...."
Ph: Johannes Plenio, pexels, CC 2.0.
#poetry#writing#pangyrus
From the poem "A Gutting" by Navila Nahid:
"Womb slabs
a surgical tray
and my heart—
a ship
of Thesus
ripples
outside its body...."
Read the full poem on https://t.co/q9KVxFet6r
Ph: Pawel Czerwinski, unsplash, CC 2.0.
#poetry#literature#writing#poets
New poem "Articulation" by Kevin McLellan:
"paid extra
for the jade
tree in terra
cotta with
a blanket
of stones
because
as a child:..."
https://t.co/IhY1NyQ7nd
Ph: Alexander Grey, unsplash, CC 2.0.
From "fallen angels in the west branch narraguagus" by Suzanne S. Rancourt:
"translucent dream or memory – aquarium glass
she slid snug against its chilled pane
eased osmotically through a viscous veil."
Ph: Nikunj Singh, unsplash, CC 2.0.
From "sticky on the C train" by Eris Sker:
"into the park and out the bowels
in a single drooping summer eve–swallow wordings & all worldly light! –
whose yells are timely interruptions of each phoneme
yell fuse! intent! manifestation! coda!"
Ph: Harry Gillen, unsplash, CC 2.0.
New fiction piece "Editors in Chief" by Angela Townsend:
"Mrs. Fehr liked me, which led to the unprecedented. 'Then I’ll compromise.'
'Really?'
'Yes. I just need you to do one thing.'
'Okay.'
'Dumb it down.'"
Ph: Felipe Furtado, unsplash, CC 2.0.
From "The Unevacuated" by George Witte:
"It’s over anyway so fuck it, right?
I mean, who cares about bromeliads,
or dace, or honeybees beset by mites
when apex predators are dropping dead
like flies from recontaminated air...."
Ph: Ricardo Gomez Angel, unsplash, CC 2.0.
"American Sonnet: Sometimes, Overseas" by Joanna Grant:
"An unmarried Western woman, working overseas—
I often get asked, 'Where is your husband?'
'How many babies?' After explaining
never had any babies, not really likely to now..."
Ph: Brandon Day, unsplash, CC 2.0.
From "extinct: Nesopupa turtoni" by Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton:
"with no one to praise
your punctuality, you sleep in
the world lets you
go, scrawls a note
resumes its conference call"
Read the full poem on https://t.co/0Lds1XgmjB
Image: Buddha Elemental 3D on unsplash, CC 2.0.
New poem "Proof by Contradiction" by Ali MacLeod:
"You, though —
You could show up first to every party;
You could arrive to work at 4 AM.
You could sit down for Christmas dinner on Halloween and still..."
Image: Ir Solyanaya on pexels, CC 2.0.
#poetry#pangyrus
From the memoir "Telling Secrets" by Bethany Wiersma:
Dad is sitting on the steps behind her — he’s already rehearsed his role. He does a lot of nodding and clasping his hands, and sometimes he chirps out a shaky, “we love you very much.”
Ph: Polina Tankilevitch, pexels, CC 2.0
Poem "Undine Rising From The Waters" by Kelle Groom, published alonside poem "Lyonia":
It’s said she needs a man, to marry,
To have a soul, but what a load
Of crap–she’s an element a water
Spirit which means soul in fact
She is soul...
Ph: James Gaither, flickr CC 2.0