Conversationalists

by Visar Flour-sacks waving like flagson the windows in the afternoons. The people in this town sit by theirwindows, breathing on anything thatpasses. They sit on dead Volvos bearingBluetooth stereos on their shoulders,where the words are streaming, never ending. The caves in our skullshave become like whistles, to crack back sibilants at the world.Our tongues have ghosts in them, our Read More

Palimpsest

by Lynne Cattafi The boozy neighbor who said it was timeto “get the hell outta Dodge” packed up his car and left,unsentimental.The bumper, flaked and rusted,the muffler backfiringin a final fuck you to the old neighborhood.What’s left behind?A small toy elephant lost years agogathers dust under the radiator.Deep scratches in the worn floor which served as a map,places to avoid Read More

Old Journals in the Attic

by Karen Shepherd Through open doors, a waft has found an in,an entry point, a path to hidden roomsabandoned years ago. The air, so stale,holds sleeping ghosts that hang from ceiling beamsadorned with words and webs and dried bouquets.It’s not the breeze that makes them gently sway.A restlessness has been here, waiting. Lightwas needed to be shed, to break the Read More

Rest

They sway out of the dust, elongated noses and bottom teeth scraping at the ground. Huge, striped bulks of flesh and armored skin emerge from a storm they’ve carried from the steaming north. They look exhausted, but they won’t rest until they reach the flooded grasslands behind me. Indeed, this herd has marched relentlessly for hundreds of miles just to Read More

Dust

by Rickey Rivers Jr. That dust             does dance                        in the air                                    with little care                                                 for allergy                                                            or infant. Inevitable pest,            plaguing homes and such,                         a silent guest,                                     growing,                                                 ever growing,                                                             waiting                                                                         to be wiped away. Rickey Rivers Jr. was born and Read More

Congress of the Insomniacs

by Jennifer Wilson promethazine is bitter and makes dust on all things clouds on the hands and white around the fingers lines left white on the table tops and tastes of bitterness on the lips as they plume with wisps and spores like feathers plucked for a feast of public discourse and bald all the people gather in their nakedness Read More