Maria Mazziotti Gillan Even After All These Years Even after all these years, a plate of spaghetti gives me comfort, the food my mother made three times a week when I was a child in the 17th St.…
THREE POEMS FROM REBECCA FOUST AN AUTIST’S MOTHER REFLECTS afraid to die before you but in this wild dark New Hampshire meadow fireflies glow like downed pulsars all incandescence like your face & no trace of errant gene or…
THREE POEMS FROM ANGELA NARCISO TORRES LILLI’S URN Jolted awake by a flash— a text from my college freshman awake in his dorm at 2 a.m. I rub sleep from my eyes, find an audio clip he’s written for…
TWO POEMS FROM DAYE PHILLIPPO SOON, SPRING Snow is falling softly past the windows, no wind to drive it, so the flakes take their time, turning, some rising a bit again like the clouds of gnats one sees…
TWO POEMS FROM STEPHANIE NOBLE UMBILICUS Umbilicus, long since buttoned, now invisible, a tightrope I walk, no safety net one misstep a fall from grace. COURTSIDE Perched on bleachers we watch our grandson, Number 22, and…
Devon Balwit MENTATION On the bus, I talk to myself, reviewing the day’s tragedies. For each humiliation, I shake my head like a dog clearing mites or like a person battling Parkinson’s. The oddness intensifies as I throw up…
Karen Rile RUNNING ALONG THE SCHUYLKILL My daughter skates faster than I will ever run. I struggle to keep her in my line of sight as she strokes past the boathouses. Men my own age follow her with their…
Theresa Senato Edwards Excerpt from “Wing Bones” Explaining Heredity to the Youngest Sister Theresa Senato Edwards has published two full-length poetry books and two chapbooks. Poems from her newest manuscript, “Wing Bones,” can be found in Stirring,…
Jenna Lê DOPPELGANGERS 1. Mother made a doll, a shrill squealer, two feet tall, saliva-dribbling, shivering as if in nicotine withdrawal. Now the doll and her sisters high-step around the amphitheater. In thickening suspense they tiptoe along the bleachers.…
Sonia Greenfield GHOST BABY Sprung from a dream, a clot, a stolen heartbeat, and she settles into the arms of a stranger, but when I look again, it is only the face of a stranger’s baby. The ghost baby…
Rachel Barton EVERY DAY THE SAME WISH —after Elizabeth McLagan Let this worn down sadness escape like the milk moons in his near-empty glasses from various ledges, I rinse and drain at the end of the day, the week, repopulating…
Anastacia-Reneé Mommy, Mommy, Mommy the airport kid has beautiful droopy eyes because he is sleepy & cold & at a weird place when he’s usually in his safe small car bed. the mom looks absolutely worn out & the…