Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
I search the blue dawn for her fire. She scents of smoke and burnt matches. I steer her back to the house. My stepfather will wake soon, demand bread and tea, snatch her by the hair, rattle until the lights turn on. Sometimes, I want to push her towards the open gate, watch as she crosses the slip of road right into the side…
______________________________ Image: “Urban intervention 2018” by Chifumi Krohom is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
eyes swelling like a housing bubble and before i can even introduce myself, asks What should I do? The bank is trying to take my house. I have a family. I have no way to pay. What should I do? i should have something useful to say. i’m a lawyer. but all i can think of is my studio apartment carpeted with dirty laundry how…
This poem originally appeared in the 2018 issue of Portland Review. We are republishing it online in remembrance of Molly Brodak, a poet and memoirist, who passed away last month. I’m my mom and my dad. Two blanks, coat and hat on a rack. Mom’s hands, endless sea reach without sound, Dad’s downturn luck, god-wrest force of coin. At night the moon won’t stay at all,…
Keening nuns turn to boreal fiends on their tidal island, filing through blind arcades fighting nor’easters. Heading chapel wise their habits keep their foreheads cozy. But the altar has gone green. The girls drop their coarse cut cloth and get low, to prostrate. Lithe moss virgins, their green bodies light up the damp stone. A ring of thorns has sprung up suddenly outside—proper protection for…