Thomas Lux: And Still It Comes
thudding and tearing like footsteps
of drunk gods or fathers; it comes
polite, loutish, assured, suave,
breathing through its mouth
M. C. Benner Dixon: Will Pull Weeds for Cash
It was a good summer job for a college kid. A quick drive down Old Plains Road, past the AT&T tower, and pull in at one of the innumerable fieldstone … Continue reading
Adam Patric Miller: October 14
I walk for miles at night
arguing with a half-century old friend
who talks about the Middle East
like it’s a problem to be solved
Derrick Z. Jackson: Protecting Puffins in Maine Is an Emotional Commitment
After contorting under boulders for puffin chicks, chasing skittish tern chicks in the weeds and sitting as stone-silent sentinels in bird blinds to observe feeding and behavior, the five-person research crew on Seal Island relaxed in their work cabin in the orange and purple sunset glow.
Roberta Hatcher: Two Poems
In February that year a man entered the wilderness,
drifted down a river forty days and forty nights.
He emerged to a world utterly transformed.
Dick Westheimer: Skeleton Key
when his bones—
burned and ground to dust—
reassemble, they visit here
and tell me to
clean my room
Jennifer L Freed: Angel
she the last of all
the rest, and oh
how everyone cheers – Go, Angela, go!
Mark Danowsky: The Rocky Mountain Locust Surge
One story is about the farmer
who just started running
right into the black mass
Frank Lehner: Mrs. Nussbaum’s Monkey
Pops never said much, but there he was in his T-shirt and loose boxers telling Jessers about the Easter Tuesday night he lost his mother and taking the streetcar to go to work because there was nothing to do until the next day, and the plant owner only gave two days off for deaths.