3 Poems by Christine E. Hamm [exorcism and purificatory rituals]* Look through the mesh — today the sky is white. Nine signifies judgement day in Islamic Number Theory. Rain yesterday; we imagined the drops cold, hard, sometimes soft. The green was throbbing. ...
Brave Woman Keeps Wolves from Body of Dead Husband ¹ by Ryan Burruss The September night was cool without being cold, and as she paced through the amber firelight, an unwelcome, wayward word alighted on her tongue: pleasant. Disgusted by the sentiment, she dragged her...
Past in Prints by Shraya Singh Sumie tells us it’s time to test our cups. She pours cardamom tea into each one, the mosaic of never-used post-glaze pottery catching the light that streams in through the window, a single ray refracted in the soft brown stream of tea...
Kathy, I’m Lost by Scott Nadelson Blame it on Simon & Garfunkel. Bookends was playing in the coffee shop where he stopped most mornings on his way to work, or maybe just Greatest Hits. In either case, those lyrics about laughing on the bus followed by...
Inside the Whale by Caitlin Dwyer I wanted to be wild and allowed to roam. Four months pregnant, I thought that motherhood could not change that instinct for exploration. Then I smelled the bear. Shit-smell filled my nostrils, rich and sour: the third scat we’d seen...
Iftar by Sascha Matuszak I walk alone through the streets listening to spoons and voices. It is iftar time, and I am racing the light down to the beach, where I hope to find my brothers. The music of spoons on dishes is a mercy from God, for without it I’d lose my...
