Jenny Mueller Aspen Index finger laid at the lips. Paper lips: paper face, sand whisper. Give an old woman a doll made of aspen. She’ll place it inside a trembling [...]

Rob Griffith Suburbia, 4 A.M. Sleepless he sits beneath his darkened porchlight, the lawn spread out before him like the sand of some strange beach, and listens to the surf [...]

Rob Griffith Slow Apocalypse And so, that’s it. The kitchen light is dead, the dog is fed and watered, and all the locks are turned against the coming night. There’s [...]

Patrick Ryan Frank The Gun in the First Act It came home in his briefcase. He showed her its clip, the trigger and the safety, the proper grip.It wasn’t as [...]

Liz Robbins Lust Finally, a humiliation: that with age, lust never goes. Some days, sudden as a tail light, red nudge in the loins, a braking. Or the purple-cursive note [...]

Liz Robbins The Roswell Incident Even now, in the 21st century, we reject the versions offered by the government: UFO’s are weather balloons, aliens are crash-test dummies. Who so dilatory [...]

Lisa Lewis Taxonomy of the Missing You couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. They swaggered when they walked And wept when they sat down. The bones shone through their skin [...]

Gary Whitby Adding up the Days First there was a bird that spoke inside a tree inside my hand. The tree then grew beside my house, the one we lived [...]

Elizabeth Arnold Arc I was out of time before I started,the meyer lemon blooming while full of fruit, our breezeway lettinga breeze through, its floor smooth, that kind that stays [...]

Kenny Williams On the Boulevard                      Richmond — May 9, 1912 Preparations for a hanging-- executioners in shirtsleeves, a scaffold stage, [...]

Marjorie Stelmach Survival in the Northern Woods                         In ancient Rome it was considered a sin to eat the [...]

Estaban Rodríguez Cactus Mid-August. The last of July's clouds curdle through the sky like expired milk, stain the dry Bermuda grass with shifting Rorschach shadows, and a sense the afternoon [...]