fall 2021
Table of Contents
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Say It Delicious
Berry-Picking
Laura Cesarco Eglin
Upon Watching the Rotation of the Earth
Charlotte Vermue Peters
A wrist, a wren, a small knife
Ellen Stone
latchkey fragments
Frances Boyle
i decay, bro
erica hiroko isomura
She's a Pretty Bird
Susan Zimmerman
Making the Most of Our Voices
Ken Victor
Between Then and Then
Millicent Borges Accardi
Late August at the End of the World
Bren Simmers
On the Straightaway to the Rockies
Great Grandpa's Grain Elevator
A Nova Scotian Night Light
Ryan Smith
The Graveyard Metaphor for Euphoria Kaye Miller
What We Carry on a Pilgrimage
Granada, Take Three
Elena Johnson
No One Knows How to Be Good
Emily Kedar
When I See Lake Water
Kristin LaFollette
Somewhere within Kostanay, Kazakhstan Justin Timbol
Trust the Trees Wendy Wisner
Swans at the Golf Club
Ruth Daniell
Boy With Orange
Phillip Watts Brown
Trust the Trees
Erin walks through the woods, cramping and bleeding,
the baby unpeeling inside her.
Levana asks, Would you rather go home and rest?
Erin says, I’d rather feel this way in a forest than on my couch.
I’m home on the couch, the baby inside me
almost done, his legs crooked branches.
Who chooses the ones who live,
the ones who die? This morning on my walk,
a cool breeze, the dogwood fruits
ripe and fallen, splattered across the lawn,
the oak leaves already turning yellow and brown.
Eleven years ago today it was humid and sticky.
My husband walked over the bridge
while I sat on our stoop in Brooklyn,
the smoke from the buildings,
from the bodies, already wafting across the water.
Erin’s message to my baby is Trust the trees.
Interpret it however you want, she says.
I didn’t trust my husband would make it home
even as I saw his ashen body walking toward me.