Pandemic Playtime #1

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, a man, an invisible breeze,
something bad and she’d never see mommy again—

I let her catch as many crabs as she wants. She turns over
rock after rock, pries up their heavy, barnacled sides, scars
her palms and shins with their sharp-bladed prehistoric shells
as she flips them damp-belly-up and squeals, then scoops
the runners from the sand. I let …

by Keetje Kuipers | July 30, 2021

Break Room

by Terry Lucas | July 23, 2021

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 …

Yellow Wallpaper Resident Alien

by Sujash Islam Purna | July 16, 2021

Tie my shoes, my self-portrait running for fun

in the deep woods, poisoned with the soot

of another forest fire in the distance, another Oregon

I didn’t know how to spell the …

Guns on TV

by James Garrett | July 9, 2021

I like guns in TV shows.
The guns on TV shows are just like guns,
Like the people shooting other people
On TV shows are just like people.

I like …

WWW | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

WWW

by June Daowen Lei | July 2, 2021

In childhood, you thought that the world

could be had: consumed like cut-up melon.

Looking at the map curling up the classroom wall—

its gradient landmasses and oceans—

you thought, what sort of …

Beefy Heels

by Tonya Suther | June 25, 2021

“Put your shoes on,”
he says from the couch,
“There’s thorns on the porch,”
only I was knee-deep in the mop bucket.
The soapy grey water wouldn’t protect my feet