Category: 21st century

ESSAY | Corn and Chicken and Death and The Return – Alan Weltzien

The fact that we’d never visited Mexico apart from a couple of long-ago weeks in Tulum, Yucatan might explain my scanty knowledge of El Dia de Los Muertos or the Day of the Dead. I knew it wasn’t connected to Ireland’s Samhain or All Hallow’s Eve, beloved in my childhood.

ONE POEM – Adrienne Weiss

I find a seat,
hold a headache in my hands, cradle it like a rock
between fingers, think about how this birthday
will be soup and crackers and cancelled plans.

TWO POEMS – Chloe Hanks

I remember the shape of the word rainbow
on her puckered mouth, how we sounded
it out from my bedroom window.

ONE POEM – Morgan Boyer

Rain upon me your turbulent tales of locker-side loves,
the gossip of girls whose braces still encase their molars

ONE POEM – Elizabeth Seven

So next time you feel so anxious that you can hardly unlock the door,
remember that the world holds your feet

TWO POEMS – KG Newman

First day of the World Series,
autumn hanging on, each tree
seeing who can keep from
being a skeleton the longest

ONE POEM – Emilie Delcourt

one bright red strawberry on the strawberry plant

mist still low, tangled in the branches of olive trees

the way the pomegranates hang low
with the burden of their own weight

ONE POEM – Stephanie Russell

The past peels me off like red pared down to
parent rock (think barn, cadaver, three-wheeled
wagon upended in the bee garden).

ONE POEM – Erin Jamieson

My hand slips—crushed pepper
fills the pot, the water is boiling
not simmering as you said, you said
I needed to be careful, but look now

ONE POEM – Brian Alkire

That albino slug
looks like mobile marzipan,
bending its neck for a nap
in the stitchwort
tufted beside the road.