I Should Have Asked Sooner – by Gabby Gilliam

She looks beyond the fire to the flat surface of the lake. There is little in the way of moon and stars tonight, but lights from the lodge on the opposite shore glimmer on the water’s skin. In her eyes, the dancing amber flames ripple.

Nobody to Hold Her Back – by Atma Frans

Mama pulls down the attic ladder.Smell of dust and moth balls.I tug on her apron strings. I want to play.Clothespins click and clack.Papa’s shirts float down—flat gullsthat crumple in her basket.Alone on a shelf, a vase,sea snakes frozen in its porcelain.Their skins gleam wet.Don’t touch that!It’s a wedding present from Yvonne.Mama tells me how they […]

Poppy’s Handshake – by Lawrence Maxwell

He’d shake your hand as though he were pulling a weed.
And when I turned twelve he taught me how to
see through the soiled promises of earthly negotiations.

Stone Ground – by Jennifer Mariani

All the ways to drink tea were steeped in you: warming the pot as if it were a heart in need of devout attention. The fullness of time required to brew was the patience of good things you taught me to wait for. The tea cozy a relic of the women who raised us; purposeful, […]

Boxcar Betty Catches The Westbound – by Leslie Casey

There wasn’t a place could lure you to stay, you said, feet planted,/that big bosom swagger every tramp’s dream. You swore an afterlife/on trains…

Immense – by Jennifer Mariani

I am oozing, spreading outwards. I fill the crevices of places that once made me uncomfortable. I expand and echo; no longer silent. I am unhushed – loud- the voice my mother never had. I am vivid, plum and persimmon, seeping into the cracks of confinement; staining the walls you built to contain me. I […]