Issue: 2025

                                                    for Arlo The black night of old constellations has not yet thought to open its eyes. You are tucked in your car seat, bundled against the pre-dawn cold. In the glow of the dome light, I lean close to … Continue Reading

She turns off the news and watches the yellow and black fat waxy caterpillar make its steady trek through the goldenrod and the ferns over and under the leaves and up the milkbane to find the perfect slender stalk. She watches while it sleeps then turn … Continue Reading

So, my mental illnesses and I are talking in my head, and it looks like one of those therapy-based support groups. I’m sitting in the middle since it’s my turn to go. They all have their outfits. Autism wears the third new outfit that day, bright and m … Continue Reading

Dusk after sultry dusk you brood in the window ‘For the air’ you say but we both know It’s for the darkness. You flash to the thundercrack of my horses My arm hard across your stomach wrenching you breathless All the way down. Your mother wept for your … Continue Reading

In old age, parents flutter like moths at the edge of sight. You know they’ll be gone in the morning. They leave a smatter of wing-colored dust, tiny scales that don’t wash off. Are they waving a white flag? Am I? I remember once, I asked my father why … Continue Reading

Now I will never go to the tern colonies where I learned to spot nests in the sand and collect chicks for you to band swiftly, noting their sex and type: Common or Arctic or Least. You blew on their bellies with a straw to show there are no feathers th … Continue Reading

Naked in a canoe, you emerge blossoming like tawdry April in a town that’s turned its back to the river. The span is iron trestle, riveted to carry freight, all green and rust. Magnolia, dogwood strike out improbably against the wet and dark forgotten … Continue Reading

How lucky I would be if I could stand upon a branch and soak in the blue and greens of a spot of water instead of placed around a table with people who don’t take time to breathe or understand each other? … Continue Reading

We came upon the overturned boat engulfed in catbrier, timbers rotting, far from any body of water. How had we missed it? Hardly any blue left on the hull. You were leaving me, I was leaving you, but neither of us had so declared. One thing we always d … Continue Reading

The conference room was decorated in that sterile version of New England charm often found in banks and dentists’ offices, a family of ducks marching proudly around their wallpaper border in tiny straw hats. Old pewter kitchen utensils hung on the wall … Continue Reading