by Erin Carlyle
We set a girl to burn,
and in the ruin of her body we
stamp our feet—cake the mud
and ash. We set her to burn,
and we’ve been taught to hold
the tongue of ourselves, to kill Continue reading
Can’t Stop a Burning Witch
Filed under Poetry
Charlottesville
by Sean Lause
Fever hangs in the willows.
The man with the cocksure eye
awaits you down this road.
Trees spell their leaves in syllables of fear.
A black ghost and a white ghost
dance a mystery through your past. Continue reading
Filed under Poetry
Abecedarian: The Final Cut
by Debbie Hall
You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone
–Joni Mitchell
Aloha, Po’ouli, you shy little black-faced
bird, last one down from Haleakala’s slopes,
captive and tended by the hopeful, your one good eye Continue reading
Pigeon
by Nathan Alling Long
Before the pigeon, I woke up with worry, a stone of dread that would skip from the leak in the roof to the water bill, from the pile of unwashed clothes to the peeling paint on the window sills. It would eventually settle in one spot in the pool of doubt and sink down deep—to a reoccurring tooth ache, the check engine light in the car, the credit card bill that depleted its limit like diminishing oxygen in a mine shaft.
Forever 21
by Gene Twaronite
All the dresses
in the store look
made for people who
never have to worry
if they’ll fit.
Hawaii Pacific Review 