Forecast
More goddamn rain.
Payday
a bowl lowers down twinkling with popcorn balls, lacquer candy apples, Bazooka gum wrapped in comics, neon-yellow smiley stickers or the motherlode: full-sized Clark bars
Perennialism
“Put everything on it,” I said. “I want the greenest lawn in all the world. I want people to look at it and think Helen lives here.”
News!
2019 Pushcart Nominations
With 2019 having just ended, we are pleased to announce our Pushcart Prize nominations. Congratulations to our following contributors!...
December 2019 – Pushcart Nominations
History From the Print
“Relax,” the tech urges. “This will take about an hour. You won’t feel much, maybe a slight buzzing sensation. The procedure is perfectly harmless, but it may temporarily stir up some memories.”
Anonymous Letter Written to a Boston Newspaper by a Lowell Factory Girl From the Print
The speed was raised just as we could bear it, and often, almost always, at our request, because with the increase of speed our pay increased.
The Mineral Pools at Oxley From the Print
Hardly the “glow mantling” promised. In every respect, the most disgusting pool imaginable.
December 2019 – Pushcart Nominations
Your Dad Dies / I Google Atom Bombs From the Print
Today, girls and boys soak sugar sacks in gasoline, light and glide them up over the wall, hoping to land their kite bombs in their enemy’s future
grain fields.
The Survival Book From the Print
The honeycomb is perfect for learning math. “Exact hexagons,” it says. I like that word. It’s a word my mother would have liked, too—she was a word person.
Graveyard Shift From the Print
Nanveet was certain the new girl had been drinking a couple of Cokes every morning and throwing the cans into the wooded patch behind the service station. Who drinks Coke at seven thirty in the morning, he thought. How can a person do that?
September 2019
Great Little Death Wish Thing
We wish, just a bit, for the curve in the mountain highway
Shame
I lived beyond life and the sick, beyond ruin, hung from charred trees. I felt the ghost of otherworldliness.
Summer at the Range
we get sunburned. we get tan. we read book after book
July 2019
The Minotaur Visits His Mother
I’m in the maze again,
playing what I thought was a
game
My Son is Trying to Forget Himself
I have loved him all his life,
dedicated myself to the act itself
The Second Coming
The only thing missing was Jesus himself—not the one in the tabernacle, but the actual guy, who they all said was coming back and would be one of us; maybe even me, Jimmy would sometimes think.
June 2019 – from Bellezine
Honey Rivas Smokes Cigarillos
Honey Rivas smokes cigarillos delicate
burning olive branches
living in her bruised hands dying
in her angry lungs
Seaweed
endless gulping glugging bubbling tug
swallows the ocean into its maw
Wrinkles
I’m afraid of the fleetingness of my skin’s elasticity.
Every day begins with a dollop of sunscreen
April 2019
Last Day of the Viaduct / Linda Waterfall Is Dead
have you ever fallen asleep on it
can you even imagine no ulterior
have you been declared unsafe
only music and love
have you planned to drive around it
singing a cadenza
Probabilities
the empty road ahead—
no gas stations, no rest stops,
not even a phone booth to call for help.
Ars Longa
Even with cancer the dog
has to be fed and the trash
has to be bundled
March 2019
The Rural Chronicles : Junctures
But I keep looking for the core world, a deeper place, that bright bell of sun. We’re not Presbyterian school girls, after all; we’re in the middle of a wake-up call.
Ubh
I’m struck dumb suddenly by this egg, this enormity.
This immense incomprehensible oval and its lovely silence.
Basil Leaves
this is our home she says, skin and bones built up with love
we put basil on everything
February 2019
The Burial
My husband says he wants to be buried by the sea, like Neruda, so when his eyes can’t see the ocean anymore, his body would still be close to it.
Waiting for Rescue
Drifting here on the far side of the moon and sun, she feels strangely at peace. Trigger does, too, in the falling rain and the question of goodbye.
January
I will be home soon in bed. I will wake up in six hours. I’ll be home in nine minutes.
December 2018 – Pushcart Nominations
Pirate Town From the Print
In a few minutes, predictably, the air brakes gave an angry hiss and the ton upon ton of steel strained to stop the momentum of its own barreling progress. The train finally came to a stop in the open desert.
12:59:51:06 From the Print
Looking back, I can only remember the nickname given to the luger at those 2010 Winter Olympic Games in British Columbia: “BAM-BAM!,” they cheered. He was a favorite for gold. I can’t recall which country he was representing, just his…
You Prefer Hearing Poems Read Aloud to Poems on the Page From the Print
I’m trying to explain my poems.
Sonnets equal boxes, into which
we place the cat, a gun, & all our problems.
December 2018 – Pushcart Nominations
You Should Be Dancing From the Print
The ground seemed so much farther away than usual. The soles slid on the carpet. She felt like a little girl in her mother’s high heels. She did not feel sexy.
End From the Print
Always late, and always your sleeves carefully folded. A cat knows the sunny spot.
Drinking Dead Birds From the Print
Before I had my son, I thought I was too careless to be a mother. I had a bird for eight years that I’d gotten from a flea market as a gift. His cage was cleaned when my parents told me to clean it, his water bowl goopy and pink.
July 2018
The Boy Who Was Divided into Time Zones From the Print
In the mornings he pulled on the trousers of the day but could not choose between his corn belt and his bible belt.
Remember Floating From the Print
She asked me, “do you like Miss Donne?
You’re both girls. But my dad says that’s okay.”
Company From the Print
Les just sit togeddah, we talk story.
Bum by Aunty sing a song, but fo now goin talk story.
Bout a beudeeful girl who wen bump her hed, jus like you.
June 2018
The Unknowable
she—having regained composure—messaged him: Your mother needs to know you are all right and she foolishly expected an immediate response
Bodies
What’s needed now is bodies—
when the cold wind blows
Although, Etc.
Why didn’t I steal you
before doors were barred,
make a camp under the boughs?