by Mary Biddinger | Mar 17, 2015
Until twenty I was just another hairnet, my hands part of the great machinery like a congress of sparrows, a dynamo powered by gossip and wintergreen. Every bearing was sticky as an old lip. Many of the ladies on the lifetime plan considered me inferior, gawked evil...
by Christine Rhein | Mar 15, 2015
Winner of the 2014 Neil Shepard Prize in Poetry He changes into his flight suit, goes to war each morning— just a twenty-minute drive from Vegas, his wife and kids. He doesn’t talk much about the base, the windowless days, trapped smells of coffee, candy, sweat. In a...
by J.G. McClure | Jan 10, 2015
The man walks backward into a lamplit studio where like him the woman is crying. They scream in each other’s faces until the tears recede back into their eyes, turning them from red to white. The two hold each other, grateful for this cure. They undress...
by Cynthia Atkin | Jan 5, 2015
No good can come of this. There is only oxygen in my palm, where cracked lines undulate and follow the salty tunnels of years—faucet drips, mouthfuls of testimonials. Earth is collected in a toddler’s plastic cup, clumps of grass and stock-piles of sticks, like curios...
by Emilia Phillips | Dec 27, 2014
A falling plane as vessel. As Valkyrie— The espresso shots tremble, darkening; the ounces chatter on the tray as the unceilinged twin- engine roar scourges the ear of the drive-thru worker who only made out double tall. Out the window, the plane jerks...
by Matt Bialer | Dec 20, 2014
1909 Lights appear in the sky Say, it’s that machine Isn’t it? Tillinghast Machine It all begins December With Mr. Wallace E. Tillinghast Vice-President Sure Seal Manufacturing Company Worcester, Massachusetts Curled mustache Dark hair smooth And slicked back Shiny...