spring 2021
Table of Contents
Return to Home PageFits and Starts Natasha Pepperl
No Fixed Thing Space Follows Adam Day
The Deer Who Sneak Into Father's Butchering Shack at Night L M Schmidt
arma virumque cano Revelation on Baptist Hill Libby Maxey
White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum) Coyote (Canis latrans) Blue Morpho Butterfly (Morpho menelaus) Jordan Mounteer
The Retrograde of a Frigid Planet Self-Portrait as an Internal Dialogue on Rue St-Laurent, 2016 Lauren Turner
Drought Flash Flood Samantha Jones
The Guilt of Not Wanting Ashley Prince
The Year We Considered Foster Care Sunni Brown Wilkinson
Self-Portrait as Used Condom Riding the Wonder Wheel Melissa Eleftherion
Ghazal With Malbec, No Cigarettes Oxytocin Pandemic Love Poem Lisa Richter
Flash Flood
They lie down, sluggish,
stems limp, draped over the lip,
purple and yellow pansies
in a terracotta pot.
I cross the cobbled yard,
the flesh of my bare feet
fills the gaps between
the rounded stones,
the weight of me pushing
down hard enough to
bruise the skin on my soles.
I was born in the house
of the water bearer.
A green can, spout clogged
contents sloshing
out of the openings,
I make it pour—
onto leaves baked yellow,
their edges curled by
July afternoons.
Water fills the pot
faster than it can drain.
Dirt bobs to the top
and spills over the side
plunges then meanders
in a muddy river twisting
across the wooden step—
floating flakes of mica flicker
under the three o’clock sun
before the stream carries them
over the edge and away.