fall 2021
Table of Contents
Return to Home PageNo One Knows How to Be Good Emily Kedar
Making the Most of Our Voices Ken Victor
i decay, bro erica hiroko isomura
When I See Lake Water Kristin LaFollette
latchkey fragments Frances Boyle
Late August at the End of the World Bren Simmers
Upon Watching the Rotation of the Earth Charlotte Vermue Peters
What We Carry on a Pilgrimage Granada, Take Three Elena Johnson
Between Then and Then Millicent Borges Accardi
Say It Delicious Berry-Picking Laura Cesarco Eglin
The Graveyard Metaphor for Euphoria Kaye Miller
Boy With Orange Phillip Watts Brown
Swans at the Golf Club Ruth Daniell
Somewhere within Kostanay, Kazakhstan Justin Timbol
She's a Pretty Bird Susan Zimmerman
On the Straightaway to the Rockies Great Grandpa's Grain Elevator A Nova Scotian Night Light Ryan Smith
A wrist, a wren, a small knife Ellen Stone
No One Knows How to Be Good
We want to be risky with our long tables,
saying come,
join, eat.
But we don’t
always know
how to be useful
like the leaf
who throws no
argument against
the alder’s body
as she drinks the light
for that wet wood
to thicken in rings.
We don’t always know
how to be still
like a heron
when the moment
calls for stillness,
our knees too weak
to stand so long in one place.
We don’t remember
how to pour over
without emptying
a single drop,
like this honey light
here, in late autumn.
Listen—
what I’m trying to say
is plain:
very often
we want to be good
to each other
and ourselves at once
and we don’t know how.