Poem
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Chips
by Sarah Seybold for Mamaw who worked at the Chesty Foods potato chips plant in Terre Haute, Indiana Conveyor belts roll by, and she remembers a road— Indiana to California, 1938. Her long, smooth legs and slender waist, her wavy hair ungrayed. Far away from that flat town, her mother’s ghost, her father’s fist. In Continue reading
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Kissed Stain
by Jennifer Mills Kerr Here, take these berries on your tongue, taste their tang as a sentinel of grief,and with the sun’s red glare, come intomy meadow to sip the morning air. See my mother, the crushed, crimson flower I handled, relenting to her hot temper,her weeping. It was never enough. And though she is Continue reading
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Becoming Swans
by Stefanie Leigh After Rachel Rabbit WhiteWe found each other’s eyes in the mirror—tendus, jetes, fouettés—for years. Our conversations, leaning over the piano, heldlike hands. Until my ring finger was freeto trace your throat, my whole palmon your jaw. Your gaze erasing our outlines, our limbsinhaling, gliding, like twilight on a lake. Stefanie Leigh is Continue reading
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What they don’t say about recovery
by Kathy Pon beyond a bunch of discomfort and the slogtowards some sort of body restoration is the delicious act of napping. For ushigh-strung overachievers better suited as boundless Springer Spaniels that flushfulfillment from fields or boardrooms, the notion of turning into a daytime zombieis terrifying. Who allows the brain to surrender its powered thought, Continue reading
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The Effects of an Erosion Lesson on a Public Educator and her Students
by Ash Maielle T I T L Eis erosion a good thing?I N T R O D U C T I O N & B A C K G R O U N D● she tumbled into the question.● after tiny hands filled with recyclables and hope scurried with severity. ○ how we depend on Continue reading
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Seen
by Eugene Datta The olive grove next to Hotel Karavostási is full of fruit. I didn’t know how bitter fresh olives taste until I ate one the other day. It took the sharp sourness of a half-ripe mandarin to tame the riot of tannins on my tongue. Two mandarin trees in front of the hotel Continue reading
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Gursha
by JK Miller We played with our fingers over the surface of thespongy, moon-like sourdough, rovers dippinginto the Misir Wot, the Kik Wot, and the Shiro Wot,roaming around the teff mons, and it wasn’t longbefore, in Lalibela’s on Fairfax, sitting across from each other at the small, square table,with the moon in front of us, Continue reading
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Ode to My New Fence
by Cecil Morris Seven-foot high redwood, board-on-board, the usual gaps overlapped, every view blocked by new wood gloriously bright in shades of red and blond, the fine fur of splinters waiting on ungloved hands, for skin as bare as the boards and ready, the gentle open arcs of rings, giant fingerprints fragmented, divided, and the Continue reading
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Against Overpopulation
by Michael Blumenthal I’ve never liked novelswith too many characters in themjust as I’ve never liked partieswith too many guests. What I preferare intimate engagements between me and just one other person: Madame Bovary over War and Peace, The Metamorphosis over One Hundred Years of Solitude. Too many people between the same covers always confuses Continue reading
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Two Poems by Sara Eddy
MonsterAt the end of the horror movie, when our person has killedthe monster-villain, she–and I’m thinking of heroines here,Sigourney or Jamie Lee–looks to the camera and we feel delight for her, we know she deserves this relief from all the hard work of killing and life.We relax a little, we undo some fears and let Continue reading
January House Literary Journal 