Student of the Month, by 7-Eleven

TJ Butler
During the summer between tenth and eleventh grade, I moved into my first group home after a few years of large residential centers. I had lots of headaches that year. Rather, I said I had them. I just didn’t want to go to school. Eleventh grade was my first public school since I became a ward of the state at ... Read More

Ars Poetica

Matthew Moniz
You bred those hounds. Now send them loose. Your prey has a vivid pelt, though you know it’s redder on the inside. You wear a red coat, too. You’re wrapped in intent. You wait for a trail, then you’re off. Red is not a scent. Though your quarry flashes brightly through the undergrowth, the dogs follow in dog ways. Pursue ... Read More

The Challenge of the Sunrise

Jim Daniels
Watching the sunrise on the east coast is harder than watching the sunset on the west coast. Ask what’s her name. My younger brother and I camped in New Hampshire or Massachusetts at a state park in our father’s old canvas house tent that smelled like musty childhood. We had escaped a Detroit summer of factory work and ran off ... Read More

de Kooning’s Imagery of Vacancy: Plumbing the Depths of the Void The Late Paintings, de Kooning in the 80’s

Peter J. Dellolio
We might look at Abstract Expressionism, Modern Jazz, and Free Verse not only as indigenously American cultural phenomena but also as different stylistic branches on the same creative tree. Certainly the heyday of these contemporaneous movements (from about the late 40’s to the mid-60’s) shows us a common element or spirit of expansion, of spontaneity, of some form of ambitious ... Read More

The Spider in the Funeral Parlor

Holly Day
The spider does not recognize the woman as human as it crawls across her stiff, starched collar en route to

On Bukowski

Nina Adel
Middle-aged divorced writer ladies don’t love Bukowski. We don’t love your cats. Our souls don’t mate. We assume you love

Antiquing

Fred Pollack

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Cardboard: balloons, monkeys with cymbals; the lid a foggy early plastic, but the works elaborate and clean. When I

Move Him Into the Sun

Fred Pollack
He had different ways of sitting with his eyes downcast and his hands neatly on his knees. For some they

I’M NOT YOUR HERON POEM

Jay McClendon
I’m not some graceful, silent bird, its wings spread wide, its feet skimming the water in the pre-dawn fog. I’m

Roll for Initiative

Hildie S. Block
A common die has 6 sides. With a pair, you can roll boxcars, snake eyes or crap out. With 3

Making Demons Run

Michelle Hartman
God stays away because he’s afraid of his little creations. Any friend turned enemy has been hating since day one.

ELLIOTT COLEMAN – A Remembrance of a Poet

Timothy Resau
I became familiar with Elliott Coleman and his incredible poetry in October of 1967. I had just gotten a job

Invitation to the End

Sally Zakariya
So much to treasure here and now –       the smooth tea cup in my hand       the conversation of

Berenice 360

Sally Toner
The night of the Columbine shooting, Gabby made my nipple bleed. She was cranky, fighting sleep, and the jagged ridges

Writing Letters for the Blind

Gary Fincke
Once a month, on Saturday afternoons, Craig wrote letters for Bill Nelson, who was blind from untreated glaucoma. Nelson’s white

I tell Henrietta about the swans

Tina Barry
When the need to render a beak lived inside me, I’d swing one arm around a subway pole, press the