by Gay Baines
It all started with a little argument he had with his mother, coming out of a larger, more important argument with his father.
His father wanted him to be a scientist. “Something practical.” But Jesus liked words: English lit, writing, acting. Especially acting. He would be the next Raul Julia. He imagined himself playing Romeo, Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear. He would show the Anglos how great a Latino actor could be. Continue reading
by Anastasia Stelse
Because I am visiting home,
I shovel snow
pregnant with more
than the average moisture
as it whites out the world,
houses merely mountains,
houses the peaks of Swiss Alps
where lies a castle carved
from so much ice—a glacier Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Jacquelyn Markham
A myth on the Bikini Atoll, claims that Libokra, an evil female spirit, once lived in the southern Marshalls where Rongerik was originally located. She stole the atoll, hid it among the northern islands, and attempted to settle at Bikini, but was driven off by Orijabato, a benevolent male spirit who resided there and guarded the Bikinians. The elders say Libokra fled and everywhere she visited, fish became poisoned and the crops declined. Her body, cast into the lagoon, poisoned the fish that since then make people sick when eaten.
—R. Kiste, The Bikinians
Libokra, my father said it was you
that came to Bikini before the people had to leave
and that Orijabato drove you off
because you were evil
Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Derek Mong
When the last phone cord unslithers
from a sleeping teen’s fingers,
and all the TV knobs have spun
off into orbits unknown;
when the word tablet can glisten
without beeswax or mason, Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
by Robert Miltner
(after a photograph by Andrew Borowlec)
Leaves fall along rows of tree trunks in the late October orchards. The last apples hang, red as the cheeks of pretty children playing in the first snow of winter.
In town, stunted skeletons of burr oak, catalpa, and Osage orange irregularly line the waste lots located along the train tracks. Wasps buzz, ready to swarm relentlessly if their underground nests are threatened.
Filed under Nonfiction
