It is cold, our voices carry like storksand the bonfire clashes with the stars.—from “Elegy at an Imminent End,” Volume 66, Issue 1 (Spring 2025) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I think my writing moved from random notebook rants to something more formal during my senior year of . . .
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“There is a time machine in Princeton, New Jersey. I’ve been a patron from time to time. By all accounts, it’s been there since 1865. However, I wouldn’t discover it for some 154 years. To find it, one must make their way to the Princeton Junction railway station, accessible directly via New . . .
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I. Evolution I dream of having wings. I fly in circlesabove the woods, out back beyondthe gate. My father raises a rifle at me,pulls the trigger. Shoots. Over & overhe misses, no matter how many times Icircle. The vacuum trailing each bullet, the wakes, & how my feathers fold into them. —from Jake Phillips’ “The . . .
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1I have a lot of referencesmore than enough 2the reference is meand I’m proud of it 3I mirror me and lighten with painforming families of wordsbaby pictures and older little sisters the mirror is meit’s me my true selfand you deform us—from Catherine Theis’ translation of Jolanda Insana’s “I Said Nothing,” Volume . . .
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The yellow seagrass was taller then. The dried stalks brushed my shoulders as I journeyed from the house to the beach. The journey was long, required wile. My mother twenty years younger watched me from the porch. She didn’t yet know what her life would be.—from Arro Mandell’s “Dream A Highway Back,” Volume 66, . . .
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To praise what knows only darkis to praise the seed before its soil-ceilingcanopies. The belly, too,moon that parallels the moon, tooth of a new bud thatcurls from its green casing.Quaint, too playful, word—from Michelle Lewis’ “Disaster Ode,” Volume 66, Issue 2 (Summer 2025) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.In my . . .
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“She woke up so happy. One of the nuns opened the bedroom door and crossed the narrow aisle between the beds. As the day’s first gentle sounds touched the silence—the door opening, the thin rubber soles on the wood parquet—some of the women woke up. Leaning slightly to-ward the window, the nun . . .
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“I’m in the call room at the Suicide Prevention Center (SPC) when the phone rings. I hate it when the phone rings. I’ve never had a three-hour shift when it didn’t ring, but sometimes there are long stretches of silence. I pray for those long stretches of silence.”—from Janis Bultman’s “Suicide Prevention,” . . .
Read More@josephbrodsky puts on a snuggly tune,tweets a few words: “December. Like counting spoonsin the sideboard after a guest is gone.”Grins on rereading:this is the perfect tone. Gets up, goes to the window, looks out. It strikeshim that the day, still young, has grown dusky. Likea snowflake that—having lived a second in flight,fragile, . . .
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“I have collected words for air in languages I know and want to know. Hawa, air, wind, foo, aire, breeze . . . I say the words consciously—to note how my mouth and its insides behave as I pronounce them. It opens, to let air in and out. Every morning I open . . .
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