Three Poems MK Chavez What I Might Carry in the Small Cave of My Mouth Malcontent forked my tongue. It’s a mystery spot. “How do you do that?” That was the first question. And then the statement: “You’ve got a mouth on you.” I tie cherry stems. My mouth is a shady place. The…
Reading Instruments: A Fictionista Reports on Monika Zobel’s Poetry Collection An Instrument for Leaving Lindsay Merbaum If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know…
Locals Jenn Blair Early evening again, daylilies in burlap sacks, birds of blue glass askance on window sills, dropped shells ground down in the garden. And what shall ye say my people who grow old and die unthinking, your loves and hates gathered up now as naught in your spindle arms while visible motes of…
Lunch Hour at Planned Parenthood Sara Emily Kuntz My thighs and ass are clenched into tight-knotted ropes, I’m trembling. Sharpness, the iron scent of blood, the clean, cold speculum. I wish she’d stop poking. The pressure of her cotton-tipped wand is making me cramp. She snips a sample from the center of my cervix. I…
Getting Closer To It Rae Hoffman Jager The lies start little and by afternoon the sky is a soiled mattress pressing down on your head. How will you face the evening let alone leave the grips of the grocery store? Keeping a lie is the heaviest coat to wear my mother once said, as she…
