Where there are women there is safety. I am on the couch in my grandparents’ living room. My grandfather’s arthritic mutt, Prince is on my lap. I stroke him calmly while my mother, grandmother and aunt clear the dining room table. Their voices rise and fall reassuringly. This ocean-like murmur is interrupted only by my […]
pirates shmirates—let’s cross the ocean we’ll unhitch a schooner fast at night sail south or west, away from land its maddening gridlock where we squabble in August hotness over which lane or who gets the bike the dog on board can be named Matey his rear left leg made of a teak post you do […]
‘How did the world begin?’ asks the child. That is the very first question of all, liquid and innocent. The words themselves begin a world, putting history to a stop and breaking time’s arrow. Therein, creation stirs anew, and the mind and the world. The child is eternal in us, and its question too. When […]
For Anne Burton My daughter hates magic, which is to say that after all this time she still hates me. Her mother was a tight rope walker. Sometimes I want to tell her of the extraordinary, gravity defying love she was born out of. Getting pregnant threw off Angel’s center of balance, and then rooted […]
Just told some dude with a poodle to fuck off. My pound mutt humped his puppy’s ass. He pretends to call the cops. No answer and I knew it. Bigger problems in this town. I will never understand the appeal of anger. So bored. Weather exhausts me. You call this winter? I’ll show you winter. […]
David Appelbaum treads a thin line between poetry and philosophy. A professor of philosophy at SUNY New Paltz, his work in a series of books focuses on the performance of voice. Publisher of Codhill Press, which he founded fifteen years go, he has produced a booklist of nearly one hundred titles, including several local authors. […]
Barbara Harroun is an Assistant Professor at Western Illinois University. Her most recent work appears or is forthcoming in i70 Review, Sugared Water, Per Contra, The Riveter Review, Pea River Journal, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Mud Season Review, bioStory, The Lake, Emerge Literary Journal, Sediments Literary-Arts Journal, San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, The […]
