POETRY By Sheila Black Go lightly. The way pain enters each day. Light the candle of flowers that blooms half-des­ic­­cat­ed on the road­side. South Texas, south San Anto. The truck was parked through the hot morning. No one heard the cries that rose from it. Or recognized…

POETRY By Luke Johnson and Megan Mer­chant For M,   We could talk about the baby hump­back who washed ashore with a belly of trash and the net used for catch­ing thou­sands of fish. How chil­dren circled to see its slick skin flake in the sun of…

POETRY By Al Mag­innes We’d decided we didn’t need the new guy before he arrived. But he was a good worker, good enough for some of us to recon­sid­er letting him go. Until the morning he began to speak from nowhere about zebras and their yearn­ing for the…

FICTION By Chris Daly 1. Pre­lim­i­nary Report, with notes and “eyes-only” mate­r­i­al, includ­ing  recov­ered com­mu­ni­ca­tions, from the days prior to the inci­dent which has  come to the atten­tion of so many, sub­mit­ted by Sr. Vol­un­teer Patrol Officer  Childe Gordon, BS Crim­i­nal Justice Theory, BA English Lit, Bonito…

POETRY By William Jackson Lofton we know what is true, Christ did not destroy the stone but rolled it. turned over on a Sunday, i met a boy’s back begin­ning an early morning beg: claw at me here. his nose carries a hook a jeweler once knew. maybe this…

POETRY By Neil Flatman  For Matthew Wearing-in mourning’s lack­lus­ter suit, I took a walk: heather, like toffee-brittle Christ­mas trees, the copper edge of curling gorse illu­mi­nat­ing the way. You should’ve been here   a week ago. You said the Japan­ese had a phrase for it; Beauty in the…

POETRY By Heikki Huotari some animal con­cate­na­tions were more prob­a­ble than others      as intel­li­gent as any echo mech­a­nism my accelerom­e­ter at odds with my thought process­es the problem of hard solip­sism was not solved      I did not think to ask I…

POETRY By Kyle D. Craig If any­thing must fall on us, let it be morning. Tonight’s stories strike like knives through thick bone. I still cannot name half the places where bombs knelt last night. I know not every­one has access to ocean views, for many no forest waits to wander through, not…

FICTION By Michael Oatman and Jackson Smith Because every brother man’s life is like swing­ing the dice, right?   Pearson stretched out at the hos­pi­tal picnic table. His eyes forward. His hair slicked back. His new heart pumping, pumping, pumping. He had done well over this handful…

What do you write?  I’ve worked in Poetry, Cre­ative Non­fic­tion, and Fiction, but I con­sid­er poetry my genre. Is there an author or artist who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?  Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and Louise Glück are three pro­found influ­ences of mine. Each has an unmistakable…