To rearrange the actors again and want life to imitate art, to want my mother to stop batting her eyelashes and lying upon the train tracks. To want the truth and not some family folklore, not some mythos where, when asked if there were any relatives left in Vienna, my mother said none, when prodded, your grandfather got out, Tante Didi, Wolfie, Ruth survived. Everyone…
Birds by Lizz Huerta
My brother Oscar’s burning sage again. Some new white girl must be over, feeling like she’s about to be one with the sacred wheel of the fucking universe. I look out the window, there’s a hybrid parked out front. This one will be stupid easy; a dream-catcher hangs from the rear-view mirror.“Some people,” Oscar’s told me, “Need to feel they’re more than what they are.”Rolling…
Tanka (The Cursed Sapling) by Jenna Le
I’d rather make a bonfire by heaping the hazel eyes of my dead forebears than break off a branch of that dried-up hazel tree you once straddled like a horse
The Flotsam Conundrum by Jacob Appel
She knew dogs and I knew boats, so we were an ideal team. On paper, at any rate. In reality, we started arguing while still loading the empty cages into the runabout. “You’d kill two living creatures to save one human being?” the girl demanded— as though I’d suggested fricasseeing babies. “I can’t believe you really buy into that sort of speciesist bigotry.” “Well, I…
Tavern Books on Poetry State
As if founding and running Portland’s own nonprofit poetry publishing house, Tavern Books, wasn’t enough, Michael McGriff and Carl Adamshick have started another incredible project. It’s called Poetry State. I’ll just say that if it were a state of its own, I’d have to move there. Since it’s actually a project designed to benefit library patrons in the state where I live, I’m feeling pretty…