spring 2020
Table of Contents
Return to Home Pageshe is in the kitchen now Nora Pace
Communion of Tongues Hege A. Jakobsen Lepri
sold separately Lesley Battler
Humid Weather Me of Me Catherine Strisik
Supermarket Lobsters Robbie Gamble
There Is No Substitute for Good Planning Erin Kirsh
A Twohanded Cut The Tornado Cut The Pandora Cut Torben Robertson
Stem of Old French Creistre, To Grow Of Stinging Nettle Page Hill Starzinger
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Nachos Jessica Covil
Family Dinner In Which I Re-name My Father Poem Containing Only Words I Hate griffin epstein
Tchaikovsky, Age 52, Finds His Inspiration John Barton
Moon Turned Her Half Face From Me Lawrence Feuchtwanger
blue light Stephanie Yue Duhem
A Symptom of Resignation The Gee Whiz Element of Tropical Storms and Symphonies Jen Karetnick
Another Vision Patricia Nelson
Breathturning Chris Checkwitch
Like the best myths Medusozoa Sarah Lyons-Lin
Monologue of a Fly's Shadow Monologue of a Cow's Shadow Danielle Hanson
Six Gray Moons on a Screen Eleanor Kedney
The Gee Whiz Element of Tropical Storms and Symphonies
During the opening of the hurricane,
the water drains, a rapid decrescendo,
from the shoreline. As silent as sand,
we gather dinner, our nets replete with
those flounder neaped before the coming
movement, caught on a shard of harbor
as if on the ego of a king. We explore
with a microburst of confidence gusting
as hard as the earth’s last heated, swollen
breaths. But this lazy adagio will not hold,
written to return like a horn section da capo,
da capo. If we’re lucky, we will escape before
the pour accelerato, before thunder so tympanic
we’re held captive and captivated,
spectator and spectered, carried away on
a diaphragmatic surge to a horizon that we can’t
see and are able, despite such fine-tuned
percussion, to deny how this ending could be so.