Poetry
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Ghost Wedding
by Xingyu Zhao After Boey Kim Cheng’s Clear BrightnessApples, persimmons, and orange sponge cakesShining under halogen glare, and mother and IWatch Bai Wuchang toss his divining blocks, Inviting the spirits to enter papier-mâché Dolls dressed in red silk robes. Peachwood Tablets sway above their heads in humid wind, Pregnant with the scent of lilies and Continue reading
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The Trophies in the Brother Mausoleum
by Emma Lagno wink their gold heads and smooth mouthless faces and flat fingerless hands. On the shelves, softback books on baseball and the wilderness crackle. They say how to be a boy when the plane goes down in the woods. How to hold a hatchet. How to swing a bat. It’s the inside of a basketball in here. The air brrrings Continue reading
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Two Poems by Charlie Brice
Winter Walk in PittsburghBlizzard so bright the sky turned dark.Pleasant-sting of flakes against cold-flushed cheeks. A parka-bundled neighborshovel-scrapes his front walk. We gesture to the snow, palms up, as if in prayer. I love it, I yell. Me too, he says. Cold-mist erupts from our mouths—incense to the gelid gods. I get worried, I say, Continue reading
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Wish List
by David Rodriguez Whether it’s one year or five decadesbefore we board an ark of silica ceramics,of flexible insulation blankets or whateverwe have (oak timber and tallow, like do-it-yourself Vikings), may I be donewith all my pettiness and grief,all my lists of tired resentmentsand whimpering dreams of renewal,bedside medicines, phone calls tono one and profile Continue reading
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Conversations With My GP
by Letty McHugh Would you describe your experience as dizziness, light-headedness, or vertigo? My brain has broken and now I’m constantly aware I am a stationary body on a spinning planet in a spinning galaxy in a spinning universe. I would describe it as that bit on a roller coaster when you pass the peak Continue reading
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Concrete Elegy
by Sofia Bagdade Yesterday I fell off my bike. The truth is,under lamplight, the bruises rich as berries& blue too from all the pinching, when my knees hit the pavement it was prayeror the white pews peeled with paint and backsweat, our thighs almost touching on velvet seats. White-hot moment of suspense, my hipbent to Continue reading
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Subsidence
by Francis Dylan Waguespack Millimeters (Annual Measurement)In Terrebonne Parish, subsidence occurs at a rateof thirty-five millimeters per year, a disappearance actmeasured in a stretching distance between step and ground,in water lines on buildings like faded magic-markercharting growth spurts on your childhood bedroom door.The Corps calls this relative sea level rise, a bureaucrat’s term for drowning.Once, Continue reading
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The Resolution of a Woman’s War
by Kaci MoDavis Kaci MoDavis is a Pennsylvania-born writer and MFA Candidate in The Writer’s Foundry in Brooklyn, NY. She’s the Fiction Editor for Mouthful of Salt and Assistant Managing and Marketing Editor for Tabula Rasa Review. Continue reading
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Two Poems by Elizabeth S. Gunn
Invitation I cannot describe my aeipathy for you, so I sift through an orange and stony desert. Its immense worldbeneath each fuzzy, violet Antelope Bitterbrush. Its pouring screeand dry bed rivers and hot antivenom for indifference.Mycologists comb for lichens that find their way through ancient plutonic rocks to thrive on petrified wood. Waters come and go. Monsoon Continue reading
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DIES IRAE
by Garrett Speller I think, it would start with the wind, a simple,Summer thing, winding its way over whitecaps and waterboardsSkirting up mountains to mingle with clouds that hangOver mountaintops, then descending into forests and bringingThe first hints of storm, A whisper of rain, a darkening sky crawling fromBehind verdant peaks, their descent inevitableAnd brutal Continue reading
January House Literary Journal 