Articles

Mercedes Lawry   Swimming in a Miro sky, my fingers trace waves, spirals, curled creatures and colors like words. I beg you, do not pull me down or utter prayers. Let me navigate, wind loosening my bones as I become every blue, deep dark to pallid ink. And you can remember me in the sea …

Mercedes Lawry   In the laboratory of art, a secret language took form. The animals stepped from their cages as a shim of moon prowled the high windows. The paintings on the wall were echoes and rain and errant explorers. The wings that had been folded on shelves opened in a slow stir of dust. …

Ellen LaFleche   The androgynous lobster with its swiveling hips and pugilistic paw, bless it as it creeps back into the spit. The jellyfish flopping like battered ghosts onto a mattress of seaweed, bless them as they sleep. And the littleneck clam that crash-landed in its flying saucer, its nude body floating in a lather …

Cindy King I hate the sound of the human voice as it bursts from the radio at sunrise, when yellow holds its breath and pretends again to be orange. Daybreak: blood in the palm of morning, prison-soap pink spilling onto the horizon in the so-what of dawn. I hate the sight of the human form …

Kathleen Boyle The remaining fraction Of an unsettled sky The world unequal In almonds and Degrees of winter The clouds are Some inverse cauldron roiling Above us now Boil over, now simmer The wind and the world Still we drive through it These tinted windows don’t Hide me Why bloom and why Only half?   …

After Rimbaud Kathleen Boyle   1. The first sign of winter A slight undergrowth of emerald Above the geologic accidents Then the seashore Cold     Quick Sharp Then an umbrella I throw it         Like a dart 2. I as a wild man running Through violet shadows To the left To …

Anthony Blake I keep some loose change in the attic when the gravity shifts           I hear it scrape past chifferobe       sounds of wood on      metal old newspapers         sounds of paper on     metal the pipes        sounds of …

(after Rodney Jones) Leslie Marie Aguilar Together, we drive south down US 277, listening to a song by Iron & Wine. We share a slow way of listening to folk music, as you drive your Jeep Grand Cherokee towards Dead Man’s Curve. I hear the whining guitar, with its useless longing, then the bearded man …

Kate Washington In my family we gnaw the bones. We chew gristly bits that stick between my teeth. The sharp point of bone split smoothly with a butcher’s saw stabs my tongue when I pick up a lamb chop. My brother cracks chicken cartilage between his teeth, and any drumstick my father has eaten sports …

Natalie Vestin Movement reveals the purpose of muscle. Barricaded by bone and tendon, locked in the tight swaddling of the fascia, the muscles jostle and nuzzle their partners. They communicate their position and desire and intention to nerves buried deep within them, sending messages through the cushions of the limbs, the tiniest hint of a …