Clutch
Megan Gallagher
2010 Runner Up In the spring, my father had a black thumb and too many blisters. Pear blossoms and new tomato worms kept him busy. He cared for the land like a newborn, rising early each morning to make coffee…
The House and Garden: The Emergence of a Dream
W. S. Merwin
Editor’s note: This essay is a portion of a summary written for the formation of a Conservancy on the north coast of the island of Maui in 2010. It is intended to answer practical questions about the Merwins’ house, land,…
Homecoming; From the Gray Legends; Before Midsummer above the River Again; By the Front Door
W. S. Merwin
Homecoming Once only when the summer was nearly over and my own hair had been white as the day’s clouds for more years than I was counting I stood by the garden at evening Paula was still weeding around flowers…
Buoys
CJ Hauser
I have two lobsters in my bathtub and I’m not sure I can kill them. New England will know if I don’t. New England will strip away my stripes and scissor my membership card if I cannot kill these lobsters.…
about face
Stefi Weisburd
it is possible to infer character from features —Aristotle rubber cheek anvil brow what does a face mean hucksters & physiognomists’ claim to decipher moles like tea leaves read the ticker-tape of intent behind a stoic gaze which pinched nose…
Books Aboard: A Navy Man’s Reading Tips, 1943-45
Richard Snow
“I did go to our little library this evening, and renewed my card. The same nice librarian was there, and I came away with some books and a perceptible lift in spirits. Libraries are so congenial. Wherever they are it’s…
Bird
Sejal Shah
I have not been to Cobb’s Hill since last summer, when I returned to Rochester for a wedding. I was with A. We had each flown in from the larger cities where we lived and we were restless in our…
Despite my Bunkered Heart:
Khaled Mattawa’s Tocqueville
Hilary Plum
New Issues: Kalamazoo, MI, 2010. 72 pages. $15.00. Khaled Mattawa’s fourth collection of poetry, Tocqueville, answers to its title, bearing witness to consequences of US foreign and domestic policy. The endeavor is “enough to turn a reporter into a novelist,…
Essay on Collective Paranoia
Charlotte Pence
Metaphors, like epitaphs, must be fitting. —Bion Theophilus I. The Incident: A New Method for Death and Metaphori Waiter carries a tray across the hotel lobby to three men clustered in fat arm chairs. Litvinenkoii dunks in his tea bag.…
In the Gallery of Severe Head Injuries
Matthew Olzmann
my kid brother is still in college, caring for a man who tried to kill himself with a power drill. The task that has been entrusted to my brother is simple: make sure the tube in this guy’s throat doesn’t…
When It Hits, It Hits Us Good.
Randi Beck
They all agreed it sounded like a train when it hit. Like a train howling across a track of human bodies, all laid out in a row, screaming. Except one woman, who’d grown up near a tree farm. She said…
The Show Goes On.
Cheyenne Nimes
It’s night & the wolves have begun to circle. When the flashlight shines on something with yellow eyes, the children scream & run from the house. Drop miniature planes, precisely sculpted in stainless steel and brass. For both hands reach…
Interview with the Taster
Stephen Marche
Mason Withers has tasted the seeds of every species of tree found in Europe and North America. He has tasted arsenic. He has tasted every part of a Mexican rattle used in Precolumbian rituals used during human sacrifice. Like the…
Crossing The Square at Dusk
Austin Woerner
Translated from Chinese by Austin Woerner Where does a square of a bygone era begin? Where does it end? Some cross in an hour, others spend a life in the crossing: children in the morning, at evening old men. How…
Review of Room by Emma Donoghue
Elliott Holt
Little, Brown and Company: New York, NY, 2010. 336 pages. $24.99 There is a risk in telling a story from the point of view of a five-year-old: such a limited narrative perspective can limit a novel’s scope, and its ability…
The Crickets’ Prayer
Norman Ellis
The door is ajar, and I can see Nonie on the table, just her middle. Her belly is almost flat. McCabe’s spidery hand smoothes her skirt underneath the straps. I hear Nurse Stein and McCabe talking in muffled tones. Usually…
Distance: a definition
Alice Baumgartner
a. The fact or condition of being apart or far off in space; remoteness. I have often been told that I look like my mother: pale-skinned, tight-lipped, small-breasted, with legs as long as the Mississippi. Our looks are unremarkable, except…
For my brothers and sisters the suicide bombers
David Rutschman
Thaw 20, Deshelio 20
Katherine M. Hedeen
Burning Glass
Christian Piers
The People Infinity and Your Reply is Necessary
John Gallaher
The Need for Dreaming, The Heat of the Sun
Carl Phillips
