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 . . .
Read More“At my apartment complex’s scarf sale, I tried to give away my last boyfriend. But E was such a beautiful and soft red scarf. He smelled like pumpkin spice. A pumpkin spice–smelling scarf is too unique to give away. I didn’t want some other person enjoying the spices of my labor. So . . .
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I expect you would be surprised that your death affected me so much that I spoke at two services for you, that I am writing about you now. We were friends, but we had not stayed in touch. So, it surprises me too. But you were a friend to me during a . . .
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Ever since my mother stopped reading my poemsI have searched for death in the eyes of my friendsAs if I had been lodged in a fableThat insulates me from dying suddenly, and without reckoning.—Translated from Rana al-Tonsi’s “27,” Volume 66, Issue 1 (Spring 2025) Tell us about one of the first pieces . . .
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She became a lactation consultant, perhaps to help people like me, whose babies shrieked when breastfed as though the milk were poison, and then she became a Lamaze instructor, perhaps to help people like me, whose birth plans were ripped apart by malpositioned babies and maternal exhaustion.—from “What We Weren’t Expecting,” Volume . . .
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