“Falling” by Barbara Swihart Miller

I feel like I am falling. Surrounded by the darkest abyss, I am drowning. Weighted limbs are pulling me under, Aided by terrible foes: Worry Anxiety Responsibility Time. The inky blackness is closing in, Choking the life right from me. Above me is a light. Stretching my hands I long to touch the unreachable: Solitude … Read More

“Inventor’s Domain” by C.M. Pickard

An inventor’s paradise—hand built, secluded down the shadowed track where the sun’s final rays caress overgrown foliage and dirt-streaked glass, fixed into the ramshackle shed. gray, plastic cord hung on weathered poles led to a sheltered engine, powered by oil that shook the walls and rattled its windows —embedded hinges above their panes hint at … Read More

The Antiquity of Youth

Poetry by Joe Amaral 1. I scry through ancient farm walls of warped scrap wood, rustic as concentric heart rings; a crenulated tin man. Unripe blackberries dangle off oxidized trellises. Emaciated figs, brazenly sour oranges. Along rows of blighted tomato vines I mire in stagnant trenches once irrigated by the leaking tank house. Sit astride … Read More

Eulogy for Pa Pops

Poetry by Joe Amaral There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot. —Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 He passed peacefully on an early spring afternoon, his fruit trees in full bloom, winter … Read More

The Potter

Poetry by Joe Amaral Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. —Zen proverb In the brooderhouse, the farmer stares at a digital clock whose red slashes smile 3:AM He finishes spinning clay, squeezing wet bricks out white barrels. Wheel-throwing mugs, vases, and candelabras. Come daylight he tends chickens, splits cords … Read More

Down a Hole

Poetry by Scott Dalgarno for Lucie Brock-Broido When I was very young every once in a while there’d be a black-n-white report on television of some child that had fallen down a well or who had gotten stuck in an impossible crevice somewhere deep in the earth and all day and half the night it … Read More

Roses and Honeysuckle

Poetry by Nancy R. Yang The afternoon’s calm rhythmic clicking, the chime the grandfather clock at Nana’s the hall dark and scary like a tunnel the back room, the rocking horse a fall to the hardwood floor, my nosebleed. Nana’s warmth, my head near hers as the pain waned. The memory blends of South Carolina, … Read More

Father says to bow our heads

Poetry by Nancy R. Yang Sometimes when I fret I see sugar chalk on malted chocolate, in dreams, hidden prizes in grass, bunnies and bibles, long altar calls: Lord, I come over and over my young stomach rumbles while Mom holds the red-covered hymnal down so I see, so I sing along: watermelon, watermelon, deviled … Read More