When the clouds are impregnated with infinite droplets of water, delicate enough to bequeath upon you a lifetime of experiences, and so Herculean enough to drown you away. A curtain of rain descends down from heaven, as a solemn dance for all humanity. As if it pens its own poetry to the cadence of its own music; an acoustic tune…
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The Stray by Jamie Nazario Black
On the best most special kind of Friday afternoons I’d sit in the velvety backseat of my father’s Buick, a tangled bundle of excitement, because it was time for a weekend at the house— “Aunt” Joanie’s house, where the cabinets were stocked with sour apple Blow-Pops, and my Lite Brite waited for me upstairs. Joanie’s house, with its tiny blue…
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You Keep Me Sane by Karen Manabat
And for the nth time I bend back my head Laughing at the absurdity of it all I realized what a little piece of heaven you are In a world full of hell
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Where I’m From by Ronda Redmond
I am from glorified rice and scalloped potatoes, from floors washed on hands and knees, carpets vacuumed stubby; from lemon wedges rubbed in the armpits of old white t-shirts. I am from Alfreda and Erna, and three dead husbands between them. From Sunday morning polka hour and faking sick to miss church. I’m from Come, Lord Jesus, and So help…
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No Sympathy from the Heat by Alyssa May Trifone
In Fort Myers, the weather doesn’t change much. Despite this, my grandmother will always tell you about the sun, how it chars your skin red as a valentine. How the birds, paying no mind to the humidity, will sing throughout the persistent Florida summers. How even the rain brings no sympathy from the heat. Every conversation with my grandmother unravels…
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full volume by Suzi Evelyn
Safe came in a spiral notebook. the tattoos left behind by lead showed me the unfiltered girl I’d almost marooned, buried in my labyrinth of words. all along, I’d thought she was hiding out of fear from the outside world, but the blank page was her utopia, its blue prison bars: her safe haven. Home was the rhythm of a…
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It’s in our DNA by Megan Tyler
we are suppressing ourselves the women in my family have engraved a distinct self hatred into the lining of their skin carved food rules into their bellies depositing magic pills and coffee grounds diet culture is tightly coiled around our vocal cords the women in my family are sick looking into the mirror with eyes that deceive and alter for…
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A Dreaming Rock Like Me by Lyra Zapanta
How does one reach a star That shines out there in the universe Not begging to be noticed But unable to control its effect On viewers all around it? Does one simply call out to it Hoping above the cacophony of voices Begging for a second of attention, Yours will stand out? Or does one build a spacecraft To take…
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Panters by Julia Nunnally Duncan
Her grandma called them panters and declared they ran through the mountains. The girl lay in bed under a patchwork quilt in the loft of her grandma’s house and listened to the waterfall rushing out back. But when she fell asleep and dreamed, she heard the panthers screaming as they moved stealthily in the woods, coming closer and closer to…
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The Stars Know All by Suzi Evelyn
The moment our souls first connected, I could feel the stars shattering because I was too young to have found my soul sisters, scattered among the streets of this tedious town. Forests vanished beneath the tip of my pen when I wrote about you, all of you, and the memories we made that year of incandescence. Lost in the laughter…
