by Nicholas Smith

I woke up

after a night

of reading

Deleuze

and found

by Phil Flott

Mama saved money for Daddy

in her worry of scarcity.

She used soap until the bar was a toothpick, 

made us bring home today’s bread wrapper

by Veneta Masson

I collect them,

these rascally articles of faith.

They’re like the ugly stepsisters who

end up with the prince and two shoes—

by Rachel E. Hicks

But we had hoped

this paper life

these shadow lands

might be fleshed out

thickened into

themselves

by Lynn Domina

Not the white of ice-blue glaciers

calving, nor the white of an old man’s beard

flecked with gray and one or two black hairs,

nor the hazy white we attribute

to spirits, even those of us who deny

feeling haunted. Nothing

by Melissa Poulin

geranium sits beside the bookcase

familiar hand-shaped

leaves in miniature cling to the stem

a brown husk left

for dead in a corner of the yard

by Melissa Poulin

past midnight we dimple slowly

back to youth in their rooms our children

sleep but on screen they don't yet exist

just pixel and code inside moving backward

by Ardith Brown

Chellie arrived before dawn, lightly tapping on the glass. Her boyfriend dead one year, his last drug deal gone wrong, a wire fence breaking

by Ardith Brown

Amid fine dust and cool sweat of damp adobe, 

crutches and canes lean on burnt sienna walls. 

We walk as cottonwood fluff floats airborne; 

pilgrims sip Diet Cokes, their journey complete, 

by Jason Myers

When I was a child

is one of my favorite

ways to begin a story.

To be direct is not

my business, nor light’s,

by Jason Myers

Beloved shoulders of my beloved that give my hand a home.

Beloved seasons that teach us, in their delicious trickery, to wait, to expect, to call the tunes that match the tones of the visible unclear.

A Poem for Pentecost

by Jacqueline Wallen

I’ll always remember the day

God’s spirit fell as tongues of flame

that rested on our heads but didn’t burn.