fall 2021
Table of Contents
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latchkey fragments
Frances Boyle
i decay, bro
erica hiroko isomura
Boy With Orange
Phillip Watts Brown
What We Carry on a Pilgrimage
Granada, Take Three
Elena Johnson
Now
Erin Wilson
She's a Pretty Bird
Susan Zimmerman
A wrist, a wren, a small knife
Ellen Stone
On the Straightaway to the Rockies
Great Grandpa's Grain Elevator
A Nova Scotian Night Light
Ryan Smith
Somewhere within Kostanay, Kazakhstan Justin Timbol
Upon Watching the Rotation of the Earth
Charlotte Vermue Peters
When I See Lake Water
Kristin LaFollette
No One Knows How to Be Good
Emily Kedar
The Graveyard Metaphor for Euphoria Kaye Miller
Swans at the Golf Club
Ruth Daniell
Making the Most of Our Voices
Ken Victor
Say It Delicious
Berry-Picking
Laura Cesarco Eglin
Late August at the End of the World
Bren Simmers
Between Then and Then
Millicent Borges Accardi
Now
You are in your car in traffic.
Or in your work shirt, your smart smock, your suit.
Or you’re in the grocery aisle.
Or you are in your child’s room picking up toys,
the yellow and blue DUPLO spaceman
lying on his right arm (right, if he is facing you).
Or you are in your silk blouse with the plunging neckline.
Or in your red dress with its clever ruching.
Or in your wool sweater (the beloved one with wasted waistline).
Or you are at your mother’s house in cigarette smoke.
Or you’re in her house in the 2000s when she has given up smoking.
Or you’re at the OB-GYN’s again, acquiescing again, legs up again.
Or under your husband as he’s coming down onto you,
his breath close, becoming hot and salty.
Or you’re standing at the sink again,
washing those same chipped dishes
(the ones you swear you’ll replace),
scrubbing those same stained pots.
You are clearly in your life, vividly, standing there,
in the middle of it,
planting potatoes,
gingerly tipping their eye-sprouts upward.
Or releasing spuds, reproduced and earth-shunted.
Or it is snowing now, and you are standing in the snow,
your hair glistening, getting wet,
your larder full, for now.
You are about to open the door to begin your dissertation.
Your hand is on the doorknob.