by Ben Heins
And in that mouth,
in that black hole
of dangling stars
I’m staring at so many things:
your teeth, pink inner-cheek, tongue.
Continue reading
Dallas
Filed under Poetry
Lai`eikawai
by Mary Alexandra Agner
Woman in the twilight, last sun
on the pali, brightness dwindling
in the mountains’ misty lei,
I have paddled island to island
for the awe in a storyteller’s voice.
Step down onto the birds’ wings
step down onto the night beach
and speak to me in the moonlight Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Guns and Country
by Meg Thompson
“To him who is in fear, everything rustles.” — Sophocles
I grew up watching my dad aim at groundhogs out the kitchen window. This is to say, my parents are rednecks. There are many variations of redneck, and they are the quiet and meditative kind. You can tell because they rarely speak or leave their farm. My dad has spent most of his life smoking cigarettes in a field, staring at the heifers. My mom has spent most of hers wondering where my dad is. Getting a glimpse of them out in public is like sighting wolverines. Continue reading
Filed under Nonfiction
She Runs Where
by Christopher R. Vaughan
spikes claw trammeled sod,
where grass whistles like wind through cattails,
where dusk’s coattails are a slithering
and a disappearance. She runs where
the glint of a rumor inches into awareness,
the door shut like a gunshot, deadbolt Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Crazy Horse’s Girlfriend
by Erika T. Wurth. An excerpt from her novel Crazy Horse‘s Girlfriend (Curbside Splendor Publishing)
Driving up, I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. It was late May, and although the mountains still had some snow on the peaks, it had been a hard but short winter and things had been warming up for some time. We had packed Mike’s big, blue SUV and were on our way up 103. His right hand was resting on my leg and he was driving with his left. Our windows were rolled down, and Mike was playing another one of his white noise bands that I didn’t recognize, and I closed my eyes and let the raspberry, deep green, pine, dirt smell roll over me. It didn’t take too long to get to the foot of the mountain. We were planning on camping somewhere around the lake, but we decided to drive to the top of the mountain first. They had just opened the road up for the season and we drove, things getting bumpier and bumpier, which just made us laugh as we rocked back and forth in our seats, firmly buckled in. Continue reading
