Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire

by Jason Schneiderman

Can we talk about the wax? The way the wax
would have felt on his skin, slick 
at the first signs of melting, a spreading
warmth that felt so good …

In The Kitchen

by Joe Somoza

So we’re remembering the years
in San Francisco, the apartment
on Gough followed by stays
at two nearby boardinghouses—
breakfast and supper and a double room
at the end of …

Ode Where Milk Was Rare

by Cynthia Dewi Oka

Aspirational Self Portrait on the Color Wheel

by Patty Seyburn

Lips, perhaps, in Pyrrole Red (pigment used in automotive finishes):
my first car, a small Ford built
to replace (impossible) the Mustang.

Eyes designed by Guignet of Paris, who patented the …

Mexican American Sublime

by Rodney Gomez

From space the river is loose thread. Frayed but clearly discernible.

A wall but not a wall.

At county, a jailer winds it around his neck. Surrenders to unconditional embrace. …

Two Constellations

by Sarah Cohen

Orion

He doesn’t know his belt’s gone out of style,
or that he needs a license,
that hunting has a season now.

He is still in the endless forests of his past,

Arkansabop

with Lucinda Williams

by Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

Faulkner County reeks of burning leaves;
other days, smelt from the refinery.
A whiff of manure when the breeze
turns just right. All seasons, this air
is heavy with rainwater: …

Passenger

by Barbara Alvarado

Tuesday feels like every day, so today is every Tuesday.
This goddamn day won’t goddamn change
my going back and forth between the sure and doubt,
the front door opening …

Memorial to a marriage

after Patricia Cronin

by Liza Flum

It must be their feet tangled past the hem of the blanket
(a big toe pressed to the top of a pale, carved foot)
that make me pause, scroll back …

Eve and the Pit

by Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez

The wind had to do with the places we couldn’t touch.
The branches were the places we did,
lying at the roots
with your arms around me. We watched the …

[If every life is four-dimensional]

by Justin Rigamonti

If every life is four dimensional,
if your “now” is just one segment of your whole
and your body spans across the surface of time,
then I could trace the …

The Dog’s Insomnia

by Susan Joy Dickman

Keeps him moving all through the end
of summer night, nails loading the floorboards

with the heaviness of sleep that cannot
land. Drowsing, he moves

his basket room to room, searching …