image curtesy of The Public Domain Review

by Jeffrey Skinner

Feeble wind, speak up.  I am not the I am.  Important to note.  Work, for night is coming.  And pick up eggs on the way home, pls.  About your losses.  Have you looked in the space between tic and tock?  I lost a few years there, once.  FOFL.  James Wright taught me rivers.  Everyone should call him James, I think.  Formal sadness.  Wonder if the signal between us is fresh?  Kind of mid, maybe?  The river’s a slow learner.  Churner. 

Sometimes the moon,

art by Catherine McGuire

by Derek Jon Dickinson

(for S.K.S.)

Parched wind snapping my clothes, shadow billowing like a black sail, or empty net—its taunting vacancy, useless as seawater.

a rook or a bishop, chess-piece

of the desert

The Atacama plateau—desiccated, rain-shadowed. When our bus stopped at the Chilean border, the young officer dropped my passport in the sand and,

art by Ami Watanabe

by Amanda Gaines

One you is a beaver and a flood is coming. All your fellow beavers say Yeah, of course. There’s always one disaster or another on the horizon. But you are convinced this flood will bring an end to everything you’ve built. You are leaving this colony to join another in two months with your beloved in the hopes that together, you will be able to brace the coming storms as a solid front. You will construct a humble dam where the two of you will groom one another and eat cattails until your bellies distend and watch the eastern sky burn with sequined holes that remind you of all your once-lives.

art by Stephanie Ann Farra

by Dana Salisbury

  

* 
Headshot--
one knobby shoulder higher than the other
narrow torso 
tiny wideset nipples 
swirling chest hair defining sternum, breast, rib cage 
a smattering of old-man arm-hairs 

cocked head
big red ears
stringy red neck 
scraggly shoulder-length fine light brown hair
only fuzz left on top

high forehead 
lightly furrowed semicircular brow 
solid nose, long upper lip
craggy cheeks
short scruffy blond and white beard

self-accepting eyes 
that look straight at you
narrow lips 
wide slightly-cockeyed closed-mouth smile 
that would laugh if you will too

* 
In the bedroom.

by Anastasia Nikolis

Anastasia Nikolis is an Assistant Professor of English at St. John Fisher University. Her academic research focuses on confession and secrecy in post-1945 American poetry, with special interest in poetry and the public humanities. In her creative writing, she explores the intersections of visual art, place and the body. You can find her work in Stone Canoe, Ghost City Review, Arkansas International and Tampa Review.

by Don Schofield

(December 11)

This morning, a Sunday, I was at the Athens airport, flying to California, to you, dear Brother, stopping and starting in a roped-off, zigzag line, waiting to check in. I was sure I’d slump to the floor weeping before I could get to the counter. You were dying, Larry. But I had to focus on the immediate—lift my suitcase, let them weigh it, tag it, toss it to the long, black conveyer belt behind them. Watch it disappear.

At Security I followed blunt orders. Took shoes and belt off.