Jennifer L. Freed “Have You Locked up the Knives?” In answer to Ms. K, Department of Children and Family Services Staples, thumb tacks, twist ties, tooth picks. The tips of unfolded paperclips. The spirals of wire binding her college-ruled…
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Nicole Hospital-Medina the PAPER poem I found the paper on the kitchen counter under the peacock blue Parenting magazine. ~ I would enter a forest of animals, a zebra, el loro, the ugly ducklings. I would decorate a river…
Margo Berdeshevsky God Bless The Child That’s Got His Own (for labor days poised to shatter) My friends are losing mothers and fathers My world is losing air Today my father died, he says to me My…
Legacy – Rage Hezekiah Legacy is a new series in which poets and writers reflect on a writer or writers who inspired them, whose works spoke to and influenced them and whose legacy continues to inform their work. Curated by…
Muriel’s Cyclone Kathy Fish It begins with a snowman who catches Muriel’s eye. It begins with Muriel standing at the drawing room window of her tiny home. The winter cyclones, once rare, are now common, fierce as lions. But…
The Return Tara Laskowski Our child was there, and then she wasn’t. A reverse birth, if you will. She was there, and then she went back inside, back to the lava-lamp-like existence, floating, warm, head upside down and skin…
Sparrow Mary McLaughlin Slechta Juanetta passed the abandoned house every year since third grade and paid it no mind. She didn’t pass close because now she was in high school, she walked in the street. But one afternoon, when…
Giving Up on the Professor Julia Strayer Most of us live underground now, which is fine by me. Under the city, under the streets, because that’s the only place safe for now. Scorching temps and fast fires left…
When Words Clung to Paper Dawn Raffel The water rose slowly at first and then in a rush. This had happened so often that now we evacuated quickly, with maximum efficiency: children in hand, the papers stating our identity,…
Honesty Sherrie Flick The steam rises, it’s a choir rubbing up my fat belly, then swirling to a hallelujah at the ceiling. Thirty-six weeks. I’m an island of flesh in this clawfoot tub. The water laps at me each…