Issue: 2025

Your limbs quiver as the wood floor slips under your nails and your flanks knock into furniture. You’re braving your longest trek: from couch to kitchen to water dish. With lightning in my heart, I watch you unlearning how to walk—a puppy in reverse. T … Continue Reading

A poem tells the heart: it must be true— unless perception is a lie and all considered feeling false; unless we err by saying, steal the essence of the said or bury it among the speechless dead. If by my lines I mean to raise, to stir awake, to show, i … 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

The presence of their square bodies large and uncommon in our small rooms half brothers same shoulders, jaw, hips, same lack of height forty years from boyhood 400 miles apart visiting back passing through our home for an hour pawing through the sepia … Continue Reading

Emily – now I get it – no psychology here no diagnosis – no problem of the mind. It’s eggs and flour the call to rise – the call to write before the hemlock’s longest shade. We close the gate – latch the door plan a meal for two alone – melt the chocol … Continue Reading

(from the Summer of Three Foxes) It is easier to boil water than it is to freeze it. It is easier to write a poem, pay a bill, open a can of tuna, or peel a beet, than it is to read a book that has sat too long on the kitchen table. A sandwich is a poo … Continue Reading