by JEFFREY N. JOHNSON I wedge myself between a molded bench and syrup-splattered formica. The waitress caps her pen and grips the menu, says she ain’t serving until I move to another booth. She points to a wasp clinging to … Read more

by JOHN BLAIR . . . for charitable prayers/ Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her. . . .                                                      Hamlet: Act 5, Scene 1 Ophelia, lodged, fictive and unsanctified in her Danish dirt still waits for the … Read more

by LINDSAY WILSON Lake Buena Vista, California. At dusk, if you are lucky, this man-made lake’s surface lays as still as hand beaten metal, the thin imperfect mirror of which breaks with each fish biting at the steel ceiling of … Read more

by T.J. MCLEMORE The Osage orange (that little tree by the lake we called bodark) grows fast and stays squat, blackland native stout-limbed and braiding her coarse hair. The dense flesh, perfect to make a bow arc or knife handle, … Read more

CQ Poet Hyejung Kook’s poem “Invention No. 7 in e minor” (CQ 65.1) was featured on Verse Daily: http://www.versedaily.org/2016/inventionno7ineminor.shtml

Mimi Herman, to be featured in CQ 66.2, was selected as the 2017 North Carolina Piedmont Laureate! Congrats!