by Chrys Tobey
I’m not sure if she was always a planet
far off in our solar system, farthest from the sun,
made of ice and rock – or if it happened the year
I was born, the year the great blizzard swept through.
Continue reading
My Mother was Neptune
Filed under Poetry
First Season
by Lynn Holmgren
During lifeguard training, Shelley and her nine classmates were shown videos of ho beach blanket crowds, sun glare and splashing hands; runaway umbrellas and riptides. Now Shelley was a single red dot on a cool foggy shore where they had yet to drop off her lifeguard chair. She pulled at the tight seams of her new one-piece bathing suit, which rode high on her hipbones and pulled her small breasts flat. An oblong patch on one side of the suit read “GUARD”. She positioned herself to the right of the boardwalk that led from the small parking lot, sitting upright on her hard, red buoy. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction
The River in Which I Almost Drowned
by John McCarthy
Cold showers move the blood,
an injection, like milk spreading
through coffee, the billowing
visible through a glass cup.
I think of ice, warmth
transformed and the guard rail
giving way like memory,
the plummeting
into frozen river. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
A Man Walks the Plank
by Jon Simmons
I’m standing up from my chair to stretch when a tall man walks into the office. He pulls a stubby, black revolver out of his pants pocket and says, “Okay everybody, listen up. I want all the money from the safe and make it quick.” He gestures with the revolver to the conference room door. My boss, Gina, looks terrified. Nobody moves or says anything. Continue reading
Warrior Pose
by Lori Lamothe
The Romans referred to these tattooed tribes in Latin as “Pictii,” which translates as “The Painted Ones.” -John Corney
The past opens its pores until at last
I’m drawing a diary of remembering—
battles strung across the small of my back,
a lover’s ghost haunting a shoulder blade,
the birth of a child balanced on a curve of hip.
My skin pricked with so much blue
all the pain turns inside out— Continue reading
