by Jennifer Wilson elephants never feel like this lost and looking for the bones of their mothers, extant flesh hooding their eyes with tears while their body rots beneath them O give me sleep, lumbering and heavy with a grey vastness to eclipse the universe give me bones cold enough to feel the skin I have left, to keep it Read More
Category: Rumbling Rhymes
Barren—not of Words
by Elisabeth Horan I sit upon my little clutch It’s three – five – ten at The most Speckled little curds of me Within them— A glow of life to be A bulb / a flint A match / a yolk A shell of calcium Encasing the heart It’s the best thing I’ve ever made No sperm encroached No fertilization Read More
The day begins again
by Megha Sood Silence rests on the edge of my hand a slight movement and it breaks the facade of stillness; of eternity, of longevity and more. my body lies supine within this tall grass scorched by the sun whitened by the heat emptiness seeps slowly making a long trail as that of the tears on my cheeks everything around Read More
Sleep and Jelly Beans
by Toni G. My boyfriend pops sleeping pills as if they’re jelly beans, sugar-coated candy with the only sinister intention being the rotting away of his teeth. I find him curled up on the floor in the bathroom most nights. Other times, he’s laid out in the laundry room or hallway. Once I found him on the elevator floor. He Read More
Susceptible
by Kristin Garth The doctor tells you when she’s five, first bout pneumonia, barely survived, that she is susceptible — protectable without exposure to much humanity. Kids are carriers, fatalities to be avoided to stay alive. Acres, pines, moths, servants, swans, beehives, she thrives, thin trees, cerebral climbs 60 feet to sunshine illuminating friends, odd names revealed when she, pretend, Read More
Bindle
by Lannie Stabile I ran away over steel tracks. My bad copper luck flattened as the whistle sang. Loose thoughts filled my pockets & two tight fists kept them company, as I walked midnight to nowhere. There are things I couldn’t leave behind: the park cedar heart I worked so hard for that first fall, latent fingerprints on scrolls of Read More
Song for Iris
by Michael McGill 1. Harder that morning, the sun pressed down, and everyone on the street lay brain-dead, sunbathing like cold corpses. Under fluorescent tubes, I waited for the glow boys, those weird ones who shimmer and glide in minor chords through dark interiors, or who loiter for hours in communal showers. I waited for the jangling of the gaoler’s Read More
Sonnetype at dusk at graveside of young woman.
by Elisabeth Horan He who gives Me – taketh the Stone Eats the Loverslips – sways her Bones To magical heights – or was it a depth A lapse in heart pulse – or justified death A Man who touches such as this – hands Never take their leave, I part my Ocean Seas – I forge a New Iron Read More
The Selfishness of Nature
by Toni G. Why is Thunder so full of hate, Lightning so full of spite? Sunlight is the only one who’s truthful, shining a light on his wrong doings, unlike Rain, who is always eager to wash away all evidence of his sins with a quick downpour. Tornadoes are jealous fools harvesting malice to rip apart all in their path, Read More
Sometimes You Get the Bull, Sometimes
by Jack B. Bedell There’s got to be a moment when the inmate clown wants the bull to stomp him out, that long second when the dust kicked up from the bull’s charge rises toward heaven and people in the stands hold all the air in their lungs, that hard pause when it’s not a life Read More