by John Sibley Williams | Mar 1, 2018
John Sibley Williams was a finalist for the 2017 Neil Shepard Prize in Poetry Piñata Body broken into. All the sweetness torn out. Brightly dyed paper flakes linger in the grass as if someone has sanded down the sun. The husk of an animal hangs loosely...
by Tony Magistrale | Feb 22, 2018
So many of my adult friends have filed complaints against their fathers, thick dossiers residing inside heavy metal cabinets marked D for disappointment— the alcohol, the silences, the parsimony of soul— embodiments of the distances and distress, the...
by Erin Hoover | Feb 8, 2018
Erin Hoover was a finalist for the 2017 Neil Shepard Prize in Poetry Gifts Some mornings at my office in Midtown, post-9/11, shopping bags appeared on my desk. In them, four-inch Louboutins, a vintage bomber, Japanese stationary, a Dior tote stuck with a...
by Denise Duhamel | Dec 22, 2017
BEHOLDEN I remember running into a tenement building, up to the second floor, then looking out a hall window where my friends were doing the duck walk to prove they weren’t drunk. Jeff had thrown a book at a storefront window, setting off the alarm. We were...
by Brianna Noll | Dec 11, 2017
When the shadows look to you like sheets of tin and the light like sodium flame, you’ll know even God is an alchemist. One day, we’ll discover a planet where the rain is made of glass, and we’ll remember that everything shares constituent parts, materia...
by Kerry James Evans | Dec 1, 2017
In me a man busted to pieces sinks —like shrapnel—clear-through to bone. I pull out one piece at a time— occasionally I use tweezers, other times a backhoe, but each time it hurts worse than before, and It gets better is the world’s biggest lie. The...
