My Last Day at Holy Cross

By Celeste Doaks Outside the school they argued as the sun danced on black asphalt. Momma’s nostrils flared as she spoke to the nun in short staccato phrases. But she’s not stupid. Sometimes she gets flustered. At age six, flustered didn’t compute but I knew my troubled tongue was the problem. When reading those Nan […]

Call of Duty

By Howard L. Craft My wife’s womb is a world My son lives inside At night I sing him his ABC’s I want him to talk early I place head phones on my Wife’s belly and play 90’s hip hop I think about holding him and rocking Him to sleep with Wu Tang instrumentals I think […]

Covered Dish

By Lindsay Green McManus She can do it all in her sleep: Sift, knead, separate, Roll up and drop The one inch balls. In the other room, the baby Is plopped in front of the television, Picking up and dropping a small Piece of paper, fascinated by The slow, uneven fall, Over and over. She […]

Annunciations

Annunciations                                 on attending a Marie Howe reading By Terri McCord The poet, hair massed like moist cradling hay, spoke first of Mary, said                   we could all be mothers of Jesus—quoting […]

Excerpts from Worthy Evans’ Green Revolver

Green Revolver Four weeks ago Matthew moved some bones from the back yard to the front yard. Three weeks ago he helped his mom around the house, picking up laundry, throwing loose paper away. She gave him two dollars. Two weeks ago I took him to a dollar store. Matthew walked back to the wall […]

A Certain Stretch of Road

By Ivan Young I held the V of a slingshot the length of the band, forearm tensed, eye closed. It seemed like all day I stood wondering about death, whether I could trust instinct, or had I failed already; in the ecstasy of release, I knew the truth. I set the stone tumbling, became an […]

Husked

By Terresa Haskew At just thirteen, Tommy Lett, in his pegged-leg jeans, called her beautiful, pulled her behind the kitchen door, face so close his freckles blurred. Breath nearly left when she smelled him, unfamilial and urgent, her heart flooding with blood – a diastolic drowning – as his tongue went into her mouth. Something […]

Terri McCord

Reprinted, with permission, from The Art and the Wait, a chapbook published by Finishing Line Press (2008). Principle of Uncertainty The very act of observing a phenomenon inevitably effects that phenomenon in some way. Werner Heisenberg’s Relativity Principle I am nothing lacking him. When he is not present, I am everything. If he walks out, […]

Worthy Evans

POEMS BY WORTHY EVANS FROM GREEN REVOLVER (Columbia: USC Press, 2010) Outer Marsupials I must be peculiar for a secret agent. I sign my name to just about every document that came under my hands.  Receipts, checks, handbills, hotel registers, all of them I mark, Mr. Lawrence Delmore. People know me as Larry. I speak […]

Ivan Young

POEMS BY IVAN YOUNG FROM A SHAPE IN THE WAVES (Columbia SC: Stepping Stones Press, 2009) The Taxonomy of Want The sun has baked the marsh mud to a hard edge.  I smell brine on the air, moisture on my coffee cup tastes of the saltof skin. I name the birds of morning.  You first […]