by George Bishop
It could be a drunk, a cop, someone
so familiar with exits they don’t need
a sign, they just take one. It could even be
me behind the headlights, going home
Continue reading
Driving Night Home
Filed under Poetry
Everything
by Sarah Brown Weitzman
Everything was his.
Everything had his name
Every flower. I had
to take his word
for it. Sky, earth, water,
even the air his choosing.
Every single creature,
even the snake. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Cleaning the Ghost Room
by Tatiana Forero Puerta
Mami made me dust
the ghost room as she swept
the kitchen downstairs, washed the fruit-
shaped porcelain dishes.
Continue reading
The Passing Spring
by Naoko Fujimoto
Inspired by the ninth waka from Ogura Hyakunin Issuhu
Cold rain falls onto blossoms;
fading their color just like her body—
pieces of dried skin and bone,
her long gray hair covers the lineless back. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
The Rip
by N. Marc Mullin
Jimmy Spins couldn’t spin a bowling ball to save his life and had nothing to do with the spinning of yarns or any such thing. Jimmy Pots had no potbelly, didn’t pot plants, and never smoked a joint as far as I knew. But I, Mighty Dog, once had curls like the poodle on a can of pet food by that name. So Jimmy Spins, our namer of names, got one right.
Spins nicknamed himself and Pots when we were little, and the titles stuck, never sounding as dopey as they seem now. We grew up spending summers at our fathers’ fishing shacks on Pig Bog, off the causeway to Lenape Island, New Jersey. Like our dads and uncles, we became tin knockers, sheet metal workers, monkeying on scaffolds and A-ladders, stringing ductwork through the towers of Manhattan. Spins named me while we worked the World Trade Center. I can still see him writing it in red marker on my hard hat. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
