Browsing: MER Online

Jane Poirier Hart   How to Iron a Shirt: Lessons for an Imagined Son 1. Start with the collar. Spread it on out on the board, underside up. Press from points to the middle. Turn over. Now press the right…

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KT Herr Sealskin, to her selkie Into a middle drawer you tucked me weary & drack–– I feared tearing grew rank, patient & cracked along the fold like spent leather nestled among the t-shirts. How you itch strangely-clad in…

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Jennifer Franklin Eurydice in Hades I thought it would be dark, tucked into the earth like so many fighting seeds. But there is light enough to see my body, its fissures— collectors of secrets. There is light enough to…

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Hilary King Joan of Internet Slut They say on Twitter Whore They say on sub-threads Burn this bitch They say when she speaks up about #gamergate #metoo                                                 #anything She lived simply once, spinning wool beside her mother. She…

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Anne Graue   Piece of My Heart Come on. The rain fell on the long drive across New York, along the southern tier—each mile stretched out before and after with bare trees, creeks, and winding snow. The ice hanging from…

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Carol Berg Origin Story: Breath Particles can appear out of nowhere, science says. What our breath contains—frescos, cathedrals, mountain paths of green. What does the clementine exhale—what knowledge of the sea’s wind? When the oak tree’s leaves fall, does…

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Siân Killingsworth Inanna Speaks My manifold guises traverse the earth spinning facts, fictions, and associations I rest on pallets of red ocher gold of a goddess I warm my body with lions weak bodies of men writhe in worship…

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Marcos L. Martínez Amá (El Cruce) I. Puentes She drowned one once, caught its scraggly little feelers in the whoosh and spout of faucet, flushed its fragile alien body down the stainless-steel sink: black against silver, sliding and swirling…

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Elizabeth J. Coleman Two Subway Trains on Parallel Tracks The baby across the aisle in a yellow slicker flirts with me, eyes crossed in shyness, lodged in his mother’s safe embrace. He’ll forget me in a little while, ensconced safely…

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