by SUSAN COMNINOS after William Wordsworth’s “Nuns Fret Not”   Within the sonnet’s scanty plot of ground someone sings off-tune. Someone’s plotted novel flips off-road. Someone’s plot to leave a neutral town — paved over, by shift in plot to … Read more

by Emry Trantham I still hold my breath going through the dark of a tunnel, through a mountain somebody’s granddaddy blasted hollow so as to make space for this black and yellow asphalt trail. The dark in the bowel of … Read more

by JOHN DUDEK If the angels of vengeance are generous, they will place in your hands some icon of a long former love. A favorite mug you can pitch to the hard floor of a dumpster, a claddagh ring to … Read more

by BRAD JOHNSON At night, my wife and I lie in bed like we’re stranded together in a wooden boat in the middle of the Atlantic afraid the dawn will deliver uprooted trees caught under the overpass, bill collectors using … Read more

by PAULANN PETERSEN You’d think water’s female aspect would be a pond, a lake—deep, reflective, still, taking the sun and moon and clouds onto its slick-shimmered skin. Wrong. You would be dead wrong. Being a woman, I know at least … Read more

by HEATHER SELLERS She slept in my bone body for three years. My missing her a lonely hush. My grief a gold thing I carried as a ring, immanent. And now I see her in various cars, in thin blue … Read more

by CAROLINA HOTCHANDANI The trees, the redwoods, waving, skimmed her thought of the trees the way the wind grazed the canopy of the forest. Some trunks creaked, while her mind fell quiet, heightening to the falling capacity of trees that … Read more

by BRIAN CRONWALL So, I called your cellphone, left a message on your land-line, texted, emailed, faxed, sent a letter first class, left a note on your car, carved words on a park bench and a bamboo stalk, had the … Read more

by KAREN HARRYMAN 1. An overhand knot is usually tied at one end of a long marriage. When pulled tight it can be used as a stopper to prevent unraveling or slipping through one another. This is the knot at … Read more

by JESSI LEWIS My father is planning on burning the brush pile. Pieces of childhood are gathered, braced with dead pines. I don’t know if I recognize this stretch of earth, this mile. Blueberry bushes bleed indigo, broken at their … Read more