When You Got Out of Prison, Did It Take a While to Adjust?

by Ace Boggess

Question asked by Sarena Fox.

 

At night, I can
turn the world
to darkness
with a twist,
no having to
tie a sock
around my eyes.

Friday, I walked a lap
of the yard. Just one.
It wasn’t the same. Continue reading

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After Leaving

by Shannon McLeod

There’s a surrender and ease in being told what to do. It was something I never would have anticipated missing after leaving him.

Once I’ve settled in at the Best Western, I think of calling my sister, Astrid. I’d hate to disturb her, though. She’s recently given birth to twins. I don’t want to burden her. I’ll wait to talk until she asks me for help, I think. She may want a babysitter soon.

I decide I’ll take myself out for dinner. It’s been so many months since I’ve been out to a restaurant. Date nights dwindled after the early stage of our relationship. I suspect he didn’t feel proud of me anymore, didn’t feel I was worth showing off or spending money on. Continue reading

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Spasghetti

by Lynda Scott Araya

Inspired by Mary Ward

In China, they eat birthday longevity noodles,
Lo mein, pulled thinner than my nerves,
cat-cradle looped over a mother’s hands like a girl’s
primary school game. Koru shaped,
they lie on a floured board,
eight metres long; perfect.
They spiral universes of possibilities, smell of warm milk,
a young baby’s neck.
Later, they are ladled abundant onto plates
and slurped unbroken for a long life to come. Continue reading

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Renters

by Desmond Everest Fuller

To our left, the neighbors we never see keep an immaculate lawn. Grass that’s beveled. A resentful neatness in their flowerbeds, while dandelions strangle our yard in yellow.

At the old green house to our right, the rhododendrons and the camellias receive tender care. In five years, we barely receive eye-contact. The fence between our yards is decomposing. We have, on occasion, wondered about shame. Continue reading

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A Sestina for the Death-Steeped Rivers During the Pandemic

by Debasish Mishra

Carcasses float in rivers
a head here and a torso there
like offerings in Tibetan sky
burials harpooned by hungry
vultures that splash the air
with blood and fear of death

The pulsating ripples of death
dance in the blood-steeped rivers
and scatter in the venomous air
like smoldering corpses. There
is little hope for the hungry
hapless eyes that gaze the sky Continue reading

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