Articles

The length of the sojourn is unknown  The link to the world is only a phone My eyes of the world are not my own They are brother, sister, mother I have grown in knowledge, others in earth tones Memories like webs hold like ketones Life is wasted away like a melting snow cone  sweet …

The shrink prescribed me three little blue tablets. Told me to take them every morning with water. Take them to fend off reality. The brute. Also, a little pink and gray capsule. God only knows what’s in that one. But it, too, must be taken, she said. Who am I to question her? She is …

Today, while I was on the gate, I watched Cheba’s dead body being carted past the cell I lock in.[i] He was distinguished only by a look on his face as if he were breaking the seal on a tough bowel movement. If it hadn’t been for the Sergeant yelling “what’s the time,” I wouldn’t …

A slamming steel door wakes me up at 2:30 AM. Pulled from another dream of another world of freedom. I lay there semi-conscious until 3:00 AM. I get dressed, pull my boots on, stand up and collect my I.D., scratch my head, then urinate. The day has begun. Overhead, at roughly 3:15, steel doors start …

“Xetery!” Joyce shrieked, hurling Great Grub magazine the length of her spacious kitchen. The cover shot of her own airbrushed face sailed over the breakfast bar and her husband Roger then hit the wall and crumpled onto the spotless floor. Roger looked up from his croissant. “What the…?” “Xetery!” Joyce barked and stormed out. “Xetery?” …

Jeanne Yu is an emerging poet, life-long environmentalist, an engineer and a mom who loves to hike in the beautiful Pacific Northwest forests. She completed her MFA at Pacific University in January 2023. Jeanne’s work can be found in Rattle, Breakwater Review, Paper Dragon, Intima, The Inflectionist Review, New Letters, Otterhouse Arts, and the Oregon …

Absent billions, conjure dumplings: eggs, flour, gleaming hands interlaced, jam jars kept loose-lidded. Muster nectar. Open piquant quinces. Ribbons strung through unlatched vaulted windows,wind-waved, violet, umber, turquoise. Read, reread. Quote poets on needful matters, lunar kennings. Jump into handsprings, giddy for everything—drifting, clapping bells, alleluias. Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Ornament, winner …

Please put the hearts on a skewer—you can call theman appetizer if you want to, charge me more than they are worth. I’ll buy it. I only have an appetite for what’s unwanted;all the foods I grew up on now made gourmet.It’s the fish collar I want, bony triangle of tendertucked between the gills, a …

I imagine my true tongue ignitinghis fist—see my future prophecy losing its grip, swinging to make blue-blackmy eye, but I won’t die. I call my sister, rehearsing what she’ll say: Run away.Come home. I’m nearer than the road suggests. I feel my chest heave a century of women leaving scared & singing with straight spine …

I am sitting on the futon wondering when I will earn my parentsa house. A poet in Vietnamese is nhà thơ, thus, the body is a housefor the poem. I want to contain more than one. Maybethis is too much to ask because my parents never got the chanceto learn more than what they already …