Veronica Kornberg A Daughter Leaves Home You’re moving clear across the country, your first real job, with no idea even how to sew on a button. Last of the packing done, and you hold out a black wool jacket, the…
Elana Bell Ruins As a child I loved to be found I slipped into the alley behind my house My mother called and called and I did not answer until I heard the net in her voice The ruins…
Melissa Andrés Pressed in Silence My Mother’s arms became a shawl to keep us warm in our aloneness, her smell, not of flowers, but of smoke taped our past against the cold – She is the beauty inside us all…
Anna V. Q. Ross Heaven Knows It’s like this—some days, you wake up and the light in the field is like swimming or moving through a clear fog, something that pushes back, not startling but steady pressure, the wall-to-wall of…
Angelique Zobitz We manage limited resources against unlimited needs so we cleave to one another tight as wet clothes plastered to damp bodies we – open hydrants that lift one another off our feet choose belief in the enough soothe,…
Mary Buchinger [selections from The Transformation of Material Things]a baby cries & I turn to see what’s the matter a woman robed in blue climbs steep cellar stairs emerges beside me into grey morning air the wailing baby cradled…
Allison Blevins The Name in the Doorway My daughter waits in the doorway. She mouths Mom silently. My name floats from her mouth, hovers wordless above my body in bed. A blue and humming three-winged bird, my name waits…
Tina Kelley Like You Are, for Me Pa, your binoculars make me bionic. They transport me to three feet away from the warblers invading the oak. I can see one’s breast expand as it starts to sing, its beak…
Adina Kopinsky Adina Kopinsky is an emerging poet living in Israel with her husband and three sons. She has work published or forthcoming in Rust + Moth, SWWIM Every Day, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry,…
Dayna Patterson Aunt Norma Aunt Norma is the tiniest silver spoon dipping into my little brother’s ear to fish out a golden bead. Aunt Norma is a crockpot of warm wax and strings for dipping candles. Aunt Norma is…
Deborah Bacharach The Polyamorous Understand You Don’t Understand I wanted a husband. The pumpkin settles in by the dark door. She did not. I wanted a child, sideways teeth gone devil may care. She did not want one of her…
Jennifer Givhan Jer Bear & the Magical Thinking that Keeps Me safe. Meow meow I’m a cow croons the child beanstalked each night til he’s taller than me & the two plus two equals blue two lines that never…