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November 2018

suicide paula’s weak moment leaving me early sad lonely feeling nightly she returns softly whispering her lost love still in my heart bliss alone in library empty used bookstore roaming shelves sacred experience like attending church feeling hopeful promise quietly turning pages becoming dreamer again freedom waking to birdsong before first light building small fire boiling water from stream instant coffee oats in tin cup ready for journey picking way over deadfall brushing aside cobwebs escaping...

Ticket to Romance

J. Ross Archer The blinking red, white, and blue lights I saw in my rear-view mirror startled me. Daydreaming, I must have not been paying attention to how fast I was driving. I pulled over and waited for the officer to approach my car. I knew to be aware of...
Jessica Bergquist I wonder how this looks, but I don’t wonder long enough to stop myself from walking in the door. I am faintly aware of the story that the tears in my black dress tells everyone around me, but I still open the door. It’s the first time I’ve...

From a Feminist Lens

Nikita Parik Caked in mud caged in faith prayers keep me alive 108 names but I recognize none (“Devi 2.0”) The binaries of personal and public must be subverted when seemingly personal concerns voiced through personal expressions transcend to achieve a universality of sorts. In her debut poetry book, Apostrophe, Barnali Ray Shukla’s versification of seemingly...
THE MAGIC OF STILLNESS AND THE CHAOTIC Some people, lost souls, caught in the absurdity of noise, create magical stillness out of the chaotic outwitting comprehension. Other lost souls, caught in the absurdity of silence, create the chaotic out of magical stillness sidestepping incomprehension. I, confused by both noise and silence, adoring absurdity yet not knowing which is more magical or comprehensible, stillness or...
Anthony Ilacqua The soda burned my nose a little. I took half the bottle in one swallow anyway. “I want to see the glass blowers,” Jill said. I pulled the soda bottle away from the face. “The air feels good here,” I said. The clouds over the ocean were rolling in...
They Won’t Forget to Pray (verses in response to “So Long Marianne”) In the night, you asked for silence to speak to angels for Marianne, for Marianne. You opened your lips and dry as they were still breathed the confession of stillness. Darkness approached as you addressed love in its trembling thoughts. I can’t hear your voice. It is quiet and...
Love-Child Hugging his belly against my womb He chimes exuberance galore Through the placenta of my soul And chase my hum in a strum Like a frisking fawn With melodies stacked Under a banished bay Drenched in kaleidoscopic notes We gather them with bare hands To compose the sky mottled gray Like a charismatic vowel Dilating a barren consonant He conducts In return,...

Poems by Ricky Garni

TRIATHLON Jane was in Vancouver one day and she stood at the window and saw a woman crawling out of the sea. The woman started running really fast on the beach until she reached a bicycle and then she hopped on it and kept going. “Wow!” Jane said, “I just saw the evolution of mankind in...

Poems by Moinak Dutta

POTPOURRI 1. The other day When we became very political, We flagged our posts; After the sabbath, We put hashtags On our souls. 2. We survived like tramlines in the city, Some parts remained, Some tracks gone, Some lines forgotten, Some kept like tradition. 3. That plectrum which you held Between your fingers And with which you awakened Fire and ice, Found that under the mattress, And you told...

Poems by Lucy Wilson

Distant Thunder I. Monster Mash My sister noticed first: “You walk like an old lady.” I was forty-six, but she was right. I could not, would not, see. One day on the beach in Hermosa, walking along the shore, I stopped and looked back. The sea tried to hide the evidence but I was too quick: step slide, step slide,...
Writa Bhattacharjee Fantasy fiction is one of the fastest growing genres in Indian popular culture today. Spurred by access to international books and media, as well as the rise of a new breed of authors, fantasy has been rising in popularity over the last couple of decades. But what exactly...