The Lilac Shadow of a Tree
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I am you and who I see is me, if anything
happens it happens in me, it happens in you,
I see the lilac shadow of a tree and it seems
to me...
Three poems by David Dephy
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Ghost Story
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by Laura Freudenthaler
Novel excerpt translated by Tess Lewis on behalf of the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York. Published in the original (Geistergeschichte) by Literaturverlag Droschl, 2019.
Anne closes the apartment door from inside. She sets her purse on the stool, looks at her phone, and puts it back in the side pocket. She has...
The Bee Kingdom
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Joy Garnett
For years I tried to put together a picture of my grandfather. He was an Egyptian Romantic poet of some notoriety. All around me were his books and photographs from my mother’s childhood. His portrait, painted at the turn of the century, hung framed in the hallway along with a portrait of my grandmother by the same artist. Legend has it they met on a London bus when...
Like Lips, Like Skins
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by Andrea Scrima
Like cans with expired shelf lives, stored away at the bottom of a box of old books, I happened upon my father’s journals after moving to a smaller apartment with my son. I took them into my hands, hesitated, then placed them gently aside. The next morning I began to leaf through this strange shorthand of lived life written in a “Top Scholar” composition...
Two Poems by Margo Taft Stever
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Summer Rain
Mosquitoes attach themselves
to the undersides of leaves;
their husks litter trees,
shimmering underthings.Children’s voices
unfold, always hungry.
They suck my limbs; their cries
bind my narrow bones.The sawed-off edges
of their voices splinter,
crack. Children...
Like we all do
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by Megha Sood
Pain unravels slowly
like the filigree ends of a fern leave
unfurling in the dewy winter mornings
nature gives away the love
it stores and nurtures
Two Poems by Larry O. Dean
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by Larry O. Dean
Yanked from the freezer,
it doesn't resist, cubes dispersed
unevenly, one
side of the pale blue plastic tray
weighted down by a half-
Three Poems by Uche Nduka
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Mbari 4
Now you see them now you don’t. Scraping by. Yardwork of archival stock.
Paramnesiacs cracking the greenstone with gold leaf.
Even at Hotel Viking and Omni Hotel.
Disequilibrium and dictum in a rendezvous.
Sinking into the profoundest headbutt. Twilight on Hanging Rock.
An offloading of off-paths...
Evening Shower in Post-Byzantine
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John Casquarelli
There’s a kind of music that
plays when the warm water
runs down her hair
Two Poems by David Dephy
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by David Dephy
I will never understand the world where:
The Life is the Death.
The Death is the Love.
The Love is the Lie.
The Lie is the Truth.
Coming of Age(s)
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I never really considered my twenties until now. But here I am.
How can it be that I’m now old enough to be left for a younger woman? To have to attend a funeral on my birthday? To embrace apathy by fixating on work, which mercifully leaves little time for self-reflection at the end of the day (supplemented with weed at night to ensure dreams don’t...
all about love, nearly
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by Andrea Scrima
I know the tidal pull of the blood; that a mere glance can send plumes of fire curling through the nerves. After J. arrived: the sudden, mind-controlling molecular saturation of pheromones in the air, a maddening inability to concentrate, to think of anything at all. Intoxication, situational insanity, delusion. An attraction so fierce it made...