Sam Norman A Hard Rain When the rain comes down hard, like that night in December, and Teri groans in her sleep while I hold her hand and stroke her arm, and thunder crashes, seemingly just outside our bedroom window, I count the time from the flash to the thunder and pray in the silence […]
Read MoreDarrell Petska A Million Years When I am part of the fossil record, along with the McDonald’s on the corner and the Social Security Administration, and dinosaurs and lowly tardigrades may have proved far more resilient and long-lived than inventive humankind, whatever comes to replace us, walking, crawling, levitating or running in place, might look […]
Read MoreTodd Mercer The Optimist “Keep on believing in UFOs, you magnificent bastard,” said the Best Man at my fifth wedding when I tried to explain to him how I make my decisions. Todd Mercer, who was nominated for Best of the Net in 2018, is going to keep on believing in UFOs.
Read MoreSteve Klepetar To the Reddened Earth My body fell away and I was glass and air, a handful of sand tossed against the window, then streaming down in rainbow patterns to the reddened earth. Steve Klepetar‘s three-year-old granddaughter looked out the big window at the back of his house and said “I love your view.” […]
Read MoreSteve Klepetar Before Bed Bleary-eyed at nine o’clock, I struggle to stay awake, book slipping from my hand as I climb out of myself, wander in moonless dark toward the pond, where a million frogs break their throats in velvet air. Steve Klepetar‘s three-year-old granddaughter looked out the big window at the back of his […]
Read MoreMichael Estabrook Old Dogs You couldn’t have convinced me at 17 that 40 years later I’d be raking leaves in my front yard stopping to talk with the old guy who walks his cocker spaniel by my house about how our dogs are getting old. Michael Estabrook, retired finally, writing more poems and working more […]
Read MoreKelsey Bryan-Zwick Home It takes me thirty-one years to see the green heron’s shape in the shadow of leaves, a bright spot in the sun’s softness the tree limbs still calling the child in my shoes to climb skywards, the nesting hummingbirds flitting past dragonfly also flitting past this lake is home where my mother’s […]
Read MoreKelsey Bryan-Zwick Kintsugi The art of repairing pottery with gold. I offer my broken body, time and time again upon the operating table, as rapid hands shine they pour in rare metals, trying to keep me whole enough to hold my own water, my own blood. Kelsey Bryan-Zwick is a Spanish/English speaking Pushcart Prize nominee […]
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