Lucidity

by Laynie Browne

From shine, lux, light, sleep with the dreamer awake, languid as if in water

If we were free from obscurity would everyone pause as instructed

The way birds dip and dive then …

Étude

by Travis Chi Wing Lau

Lotuses unfolding
into dreamfish,
slurrying into
queer failure:
how the
compression
fails me
(or have I
failed the
vine and
charcoal?),
too untrained
for even fingering,
too feral
for firmness

TWENTY-SIX BLOSSOMS

by Lisa Moore

I have been living in this house for eleven years
today is the day I began to inhabit it

the glass table in the corner of the room
the hand-sized chunk …

Portals Are Having a Moment

by Julie Choffel

on the TV & I’m having a moment that’s not
my world not ripped apart by light or arms
weary from swimming the multiverse
Harjo says I cannot walk through …

Sakura, Sakura on the Radio

by Naoko Fujimoto

 

the voice

by Marcela Sulak

The woman often wondered what voice the girl
had when she was alone. Of course, it was possible
that the voice only sounded in company, and that
when the girl …

ANTEPARTUM: GIRL

by Faith Gómez Clark

The ultrasound technician probes
the mother’s bulging belly,
wiggles it, trying
to get the fetus to share
the secret between its legs.

But the mother already knows.
She thinks of her …

At Blue Lake

by Nicole Callihan

The hands are not stopped at noon,
are pouring clean water from a green pitcher.
The vacancy in me flashing from the road.
Swimming pool. CABLE TV. Park in back.

Marriage Lesson: Fight

by Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Am sea deep and seaweed thick tangled. Am
weighted blanket, hide.   Am hush of woods, not

a needle stirred. Am crack of oak, fallen.
shush of purpled sky under fist …

Missing Church Again

by Eric James Cruz

Today, no song, God, repentance
ringing as words flute up through rafters.

What remains: a bird feeder heavy
with seed, like a soon-to-be

mother swaying. And finches,
cardinals, away from …

Pandemic Playtime #1

by Keetje Kuipers

Because my daughter is afraid. Because she checks
and double-checks the doors, the windows, the ones
even that hang thirty feet above the ground. Because
there might be a person, …

Break Room

by Terry Lucas

Walls, once milk-white, now scalded from the flame

of years, a broken black line from folding chairs

leaned back, scuffing paint. You can tell

full-timers—propped-up feet, the way they sit

on brocade cushions …